Man, Past and Present Part 58

It is remarkable that in the Alpine region, especially Tyrol, where the brachy element comes to a focus, there is a peculiar form of round-head which has greatly puzzled de Lapouge, but may perhaps be accounted for on the hypothesis of two brachy types here fused in one. To explain the exceedingly round Tyrolese head, which shows affinities on the one hand with the Swiss, on the other with the Illyrian and Albanian, that is, with the normal Alpine, a Mongol strain has been suggested, but is rightly rejected by Franz Tappeiner as inadmissible on many grounds[1233]. De Ujfalvy[1234], a follower of de Lapouge, looks on the hyperbrachy Tyrolese as descendants of the ancient Rhaetians or Rasenes, whom so many regard as the parent stock of the Etruscans.

But Montelius (with most other modern ethnologists) rejects the land route from the north, and brings the Etruscans by the sea route direct from the Aegean and Lydia (Asia Minor). They are the Thessalian Pelasgians whom h.e.l.lanikos of Lesbos brings to Campania, or the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians transported by Antiklides from Asia Minor to Etruria, and he is "quite sure that the archaeological facts in Central and North Italy ... prove the truth of this tradition[1235]." Of course, until the affinities of the Etruscan language are determined, from which we are still as far off as ever[1236], Etruscan origins must remain chiefly an archaeological question. Even the help afforded by the crania from the Etruscan tombs is but slight, both long and round heads being here found in the closest a.s.sociation. Sergi, who also brings the Etruscans from the east, explains this by supposing that, being Pelasgians, they were of the same dolicho Mediterranean stock as the Italians (Ligurians) themselves, and differed only from the brachy Umbrians of Aryan speech. Hence the skulls from the tombs are of two types, the intruding Aryan, and the Mediterranean, the latter, whether representing native Ligurians or intruding Etruscans, being indistinguishable. "I can show," he says, "Etruscan crania, which differ in no respect from the Italian [Ligurian], from the oldest graves, as I can also show heads from the Etruscan graves which do not differ from those still found in Aryan lands, whether Slav, Keltic, or Germanic[1237]." Perhaps the difficulty is best explained by Feist's suggestion that the Etruscans were merely a highly civilised warlike aristocracy, spreading thinly over the conquered population by which they were ultimately absorbed[1238].

The migrations of the Celts preceded those of the Teutonic peoples to whom they were probably closely related in race as in language[1239]. At the beginning of the historical period Celts are found in the west of Germany in the region of the Rhine and the Weser. Possibly about 600 B.C. they occupied Gaul and parts of the Iberian peninsula, subsequently crossing over into the British Isles. In Italy they came into conflict with the rising power of Rome, and, after the battle of the Allia (390 B.C.) occupied Rome itself. Descents were also made into the Danube valley and the Balkans, and later (280 B.C.) into Thessaly. At the height of their power they extended from the north of Scotland to the southern sh.o.r.es of Spain and Portugal, and from the northern coasts of Germany to a little south of Senegaglia. To the west their boundary was the Atlantic, to the east, the Black Sea[1240].

Unfortunately the indiscriminate use of the term Celt has led to much confusion. For historians and geographers the Celts are the people in the centre and west of Europe referred to by writers of antiquity under the names of _Keltoi_, _Celtae_, _Galli_ and _Galatae_. But many anthropologists, especially on the continent, regard Celts and Gauls as representing two well-determined physical types, the former brachycephalic, with short st.u.r.dy build and chestnut coloured hair (Alpine type), and the latter dolichocephalic with tall stature, fair complexion and light hair (Nordic type). Linguists, ignoring physical characters, cla.s.s as Celts those people who speak an Indo-European language characterised in particular by the loss of p and by the modifications undergone by mutation of initial consonants, while for many archaeologists the Celts were the people responsible for the spread of the civilisation of the Hallstatt and La Tene periods, that is of the earlier and later Iron Age[1241].

It is not surprising therefore that it has been proposed to drop the word Celt out of anthropological nomenclature, as having no ethnical significance. But this, says Rice Holmes[1242], "is because writers on ethnology have not kept their heads clear." And in particular one point has been overlooked. "Just as the French are called after one conquering people, the Franks; just as the English are called after one conquering people, the Angles; so the heterogeneous Celtae of Transalpine Gaul were called after one conquering people; and that people were the Celts, or rather a branch of the Celts in the true sense of the word. The Celts, in short, were the people who introduced the Celtic language into Gaul, into Asia Minor, and into Britain; the people who included the victors of the Allia, the conquerors of Gallia Celtica, and the conquerors of Gallia Bel['g]ica; the people whom Polybius called indifferently Gauls and Celts; the people who, as Pausanius said, were originally called Celts and afterwards called Gauls. If certain ancient writers confounded the tall fair Celts who spoke Celtic with the tall fair Germans who spoke German the ancient writers who were better informed avoided such a mistake.... Let us therefore restore to the word 'Celt' the ethnical significance which of right belongs to it."

It is not certain at what date the Celtic tribes effected settlements in Great Britain, but it is held by many that the earliest invasions were not prior to the sixth or possibly even the fifth century. At the time of the Roman conquest the Celts were divided into two linguistic groups, _Goidelic_, represented at the present day by Irish, Manx and Scotch Gaelic, and _Brythonic_, including Welsh, Cornish and Breton. These groups must have been virtually identical save in two particulars. In Brythonic the l.a.b.i.al velar q became p (a change which apparently took place before the time of Pytheas), whilst in Goidelic the sound remained unaltered. q is retained in the earlier ogham inscriptions, but by the end of the seventh century it had lost the l.a.b.i.al element, appearing in Old Irish as c. Thus O. Irish _cenn_, head, as in Kenmare, Kintyre, Kinsale, equates with Brythonic _pen_, as in Penryn (Cornwall), Penrhyn (Wales), Penkridge (Staffordshire), Penruddock, Penrith and many others.

The two groups are therefore distinguished as the Q Celts and the P Celts[1243]. From the fact that Goidelic retained the q it has been commonly a.s.sumed that the Goidels were separated from the main Celtic stock at a time before the l.a.b.i.alisation had taken place, but many scholars maintain that the parent Goidelic was evolved in Ireland, and was carried from that island to Man and Scotland in the early centuries of our era[1244].

From an anthropological point of view, the Picts are if possible more difficult to identify than the Celts. But the question is not between tall fair long-heads and short dark round-heads, but between short dark long-heads (neolithic aborigines) and Celts. The Pictish question is summed up by Rice Holmes[1245] and the various theories have been more recently reviewed by Windisch[1246] giving a valuable summary of earlier writings. On the one hand it is maintained as "the most tenable hypothesis that the Picts were non-Aryans, whom the first Celtic migrations found already settled here ... descendants of the Aborigines[1247]." Windisch[1248] at the other extreme, regards them as late comers into North Britain, when Scotland was already occupied by Brythonic tribes. But the geographical distribution of the Picts in historical times suggests rather a people driven into mountainous regions by successive conquerors, than the settlements of successful invaders. Also it is not improbable that the language of the Bronze Age lingered in these wilder districts, and this would account for the fact that St Columba had to employ an interpreter in his relations with the Picts; though this is explained by others on the a.s.sumption that Pictish was Brythonic. The linguistic evidence is however extremely slight, only a few words presumably Pictish having survived and these through Celtic writers. "The one absolutely certain conclusion to which the student of ethnology can come is that the name of the Picts has not been proved to be of pre-Aryan origin[1249]." "For me," continues Rice Holmes (p. 417), "the Picts were a mixed people comprising descendants of the neolithic aborigines, of the Round Barrow Race, and of the Celtic invaders--a mixed people who [or at least whose aristocracy] spoke a Celtic dialect."

Before attempting a survey of the ethnology of Britain it is necessary to ascertain what ethnic elements the area contained before the arrival of the Celts. The neolithic inhabitants, the short, dark dolichocephals of Mediterranean type have already been described (Ch. XIII.). Their remains are a.s.sociated with the characteristic forms of sepulchral monuments the dolmens and the long barrows. But towards the end of the Stone Age a brachycephalic race was already penetrating into the islands. This appears to have been a peaceful infiltration, at any rate in certain districts, where remains of the two types are found side by side and there is evidence of racial intermixture. The brachycephals introduced a new form of sepulture, making their burial mounds circular instead of elongated, whence Thurnam's convenient formula, "long barrow, long skull; round barrow, round skull." But the earlier view that there was a definite transition from long heads, neolithic culture and long barrows, to round heads, bronze culture and round barrows can no longer be maintained. "It is often taken for granted that no round barrows were erected in Britain before the close of the Neolithic Age, and that the earliest of the brachycephalic invaders whose remains have been found in them landed with bronze weapons in their hands[1250]." But there is abundant evidence that the brachycephalic element preceded the knowledge of metals, and a number of round barrows in Yorkshire and further north show no trace of bronze.

Nevertheless the majority of the round barrows belong to the Bronze Age, and the physical type of their builders is sufficiently well marked. The stature is remarkably tall, attaining a height of 1.763 m. or over 5 ft.

9 ins. The skull is brachycephalic with an average index of about 80. It is also characterised by great strength and ruggedness of outline, with (often) a sloping forehead, prominent supraciliary ridges, and a certain degree of prognathism.

According to Rolleston's description "The eyebrows must have given a beetling and probably even formidable appearance to the upper part of the face, whilst the boldly outstanding and heavy cheekbones must have produced an impression of raw and rough strength. Overhung at its root, the nose must have projected boldly forward." And Thurnam adds "the prominence of the large incisor and canine teeth is so great as to give an almost b.e.s.t.i.a.l expression to the skull[1251]."

Although this type is conveniently called the Round Barrow type, or even the Round Barrow Race, the round barrows also contain remains of a different racial character. The skull form shows a more extreme brachycephaly, with an index of 84 or 85, and exhibits none of the rugged features a.s.sociated with the true Round Barrow type. On the contrary, of the two typical groups, one from round barrows in Glamorganshire, and the other from short cists in Aberdeenshire not one of the skulls is prognathous, the supraciliary ridges are but slightly developed, the cheek bones are not prominent, the face is both broad and short and the lower jaw is small. But the greatest contrast is in the height, which averages in the two groups, 1.664 m. and 1.6 m.

respectively, _i.e._ 5 ft. 5-3/4 ins. and 5 ft. 3 ins. All these characters connect this type closely with the Alpine type on the continent.

These round-headed peoples have been the subject of much discussion ably summarised and criticised by Rice Holmes, whose conclusion perhaps best represents the view now taken of their affinities and origins.

"The great mistake that has been made in discussing the question is the not uncommon a.s.sumption that the brachycephalic immigrants who buried their dead in round barrows arrived in Britain at one time, and came from one place. Some of them certainly appeared before the end of the Neolithic Age: others may have introduced bronze implements or ornaments; others doubtless came, in successive hordes, during the course of the Bronze Age. Some of those who belonged to the Grenelle race [Alpine type], who certainly came from Eastern Europe and possibly from Asia, and whose centre of dispersion was the Alpine region, may have started from Gaul; others could have traced their origin to some Rhenish tribe; and I am inclined to believe that those who belonged to the characteristic rugged Round Barrow type crossed over, for the most part, from Denmark or the out-lying islands[1252]."

After the pa.s.sage of the Romans, who mingled little with the aborigines and made, perhaps, but slight impression on the speech or type of the British populations, a great transformation was effected in these respects by the arrival of the historical Teutonic tribes. Hand in hand with the Teutonic invasions went a l.u.s.t for expansion on the part of the peoples in Ireland. Settlements were effected by them in South Wales and Anglesey, the Isle of Man and Argyll, probably also in North Devon and Cornwall. For many generations the south and east of England were the scenes of fierce struggles, during which the Romano-British civilisation perished. Only in more inaccessible districts, such as the fen country, may a British population have survived, though Celtic languages are not yet dislodged from their mountain strongholds in Wales and Scotland, and lingered for many centuries in Strathclyde and Cornwall. After the strengthening of the Teutonic element by the arrival of the Scandinavians and Normans, all very much of the same physical type, no serious accessions were made to this composite ethnical group, which on the east side ranged uninterruptedly from the Channel to the Grampians.

Later the expansion was continued northwards beyond the Grampians, and westwards through Strathclyde to Ireland, while now the spread of education and the development of the industries are already threatening to absorb the last strongholds of Celtic speech in Wales, the Highlands, and Ireland.

Thanks to its isolation in the extreme west, Ireland had been left untouched by some of the above described ethnical movements. It is doubtful whether Palaeolithic man ever reached this region, and but few even of the round-heads ranged so far west during the Bronze Age[1253].

The land oscillations during post-Glacial times appear to have been practically identical over an area including northern Ireland, the southern half of Scotland, and northern England. There was a period of depression followed by one of elevation. The Larne beach-deposits prove that Neolithic man was in existence from almost the beginning of the deposition of that series until after its conclusion. The estuarine clays of Belfast Lough correspond to the depression, and the Neolithic period extended from at least near the top of the lower estuarine clay to the beach-deposit of yellow sand which overlies it, or possibly till later. It is to this period of elevation that the Neolithic sites among the sand dunes of North Ireland belong; those of Whitepark Bay and Portstewart, for example, extend to the maximum elevation. A slight movement of subsidence of about five feet in recent times has left the surface as we now find it. The implements found in the Larne gravels correspond to some extent with those of Danish kitchen-middens; this was not a dwelling site but a quarry-shop or roughing-out place, the serviceable flakes being taken away for further manipulation; it thus belongs to the earliest phase of neolithic times. The sandhill sites were occupied, continuously and occasionally, during neolithic times, through the Bronze Age, and into the Iron and Christian periods[1254].

Nina F. Layard has recently studied the Larne raised beach and exposed a new section. She states that "Taken as a whole the flints certainly do not correspond at all closely either to the Palaeoliths or Neoliths so far found in England.... Some are strongly reminiscent of well-known drift type.... Again, there are shapes that bear a closer resemblance to some of the earliest Neolithic types[1255]." She believes that, from their rolled condition, they were derived from another source.

F. J. Bigger[1256] described some kitchen-middens at Portnafeadog, near Roundstone, Connemara, which yielded stone hammers but no worked flints, pottery or metal-ware. The chief interest of this paper is due to the fact that it is the first record of the occurrence of vast quant.i.ties of the sh.e.l.ls of _Purpura lapillus_, all of which were broken in such a manner that the animal could easily be extracted. There can be no doubt that the purple dye was manufactured here in prehistoric times[1257]. W.

J. Knowles[1258] suggests from the close resemblance--in fact ident.i.ty--of a great number of neolithic objects in Ireland with palaeolithic forms in France (Saint-Acheul, Moustier, Solutre, La Madeleine types), that the Irish objects bridge over the gap between the two ages, and were worked by tribes from the continent following the migration of the reindeer northwards. These peoples may have continued to make tools of palaeolithic types, while at the same time coming under the influence of the neolithic culture gradually arriving from some southern region. The astonishing development of this neolithic culture in the remote island on the confines of the west, as ill.u.s.trated in W.

C. Borlase's sumptuous volumes[1259], is a perpetual wonder, but is rendered less inexplicable if we a.s.sume an immense duration of the New Stone Age in the British Isles. The Irish dolmen-builders were presumably of the same long-headed stock as those of Britain[1260], and they were followed by Celtic-speaking Goidels who may have come directly from the continent[1261], and there is evidence in Ptolemy and elsewhere of the presence of Brythonic tribes from Gaul in the east. Since these early historic times the intruders have been almost exclusively of Teutonic race, and Viking invaders from Norway and Denmark founded the earliest towns such as Dublin, Waterford and Limerick. Now all alike, save for an almost insignificant and rapidly dwindling minority, have a.s.sumed the speech of the English and Lowland Scotch intruders, who began to arrive late in the 12th century, and are now chiefly ma.s.sed in Ulster, Leinster, and all the large towns. The rich and highly poetic Irish language has a copious medieval literature of the utmost importance to students of European origins.

In Scotland few ethnical changes or displacements have occurred since the colonisation of portions of the west by Gaelic-speaking Scottic tribes from Ireland, and the English (Angle) occupation of the Lothians.

The Grampians have during historic times formed the main ethnical divide between the two elements, and brooklets which can be taken at a leap are shown where the opposite banks have for hundreds of years been respectively held by formerly hostile, but now friendly communities of Gaelic and broad Scotch speech. Here the chief intruders have been Scandinavians, whose descendants may still be recognised in Caithness, the Hebrides, and the Orkney and Shetland groups. Faint echoes of the old Norrena tongue are said still to linger amongst the st.u.r.dy Shetlanders, whose a.s.similation to the dominant race began only after their transfer from Norway to the Crown of Scotland.

Since 1901 the researches of Gray and Tocher[1262] on the pigmentation of some 500,000 school children of Scotland have increased our information as to racial distribution. The average percentage of boys with fair hair is nearly 25 for the whole of the country, and when this is compared with 82 in Schleswig Holstein "we are driven to the conclusion that the pure Norse or Anglo-Saxon element in our population is by no means predominant. There is evidently also a dark or brunette element which is at least equal in amount and probably greater than that of the Norse element" (p. 380). Pure blue eyes for the whole of Scotland average 14.7 per cent., which may be compared with 42.9 in Prussia. The greatest density for fair hair and eyes is to be found in the great river valleys opening on to the German Ocean, and also in the Western Isles. The Tweed, Forth, Tay and Don all show indications of settlements of a blonde race "probably due to Anglo-Saxon invasions," but the maximum is to be found at the mouth of the Spey. The high percentage here and in the Hebrides and opposite coasts, the authors trace to Viking invasions. The percentage of dark hair for boys and girls is 25.2 as compared with 1.3 in Prussian school children, the maximum density as we should expect being in the west. Jet black hair (1.2%) has its maximum density in the central highlands and wild west coast.

Beddoe[1263] commenting on Gray and Tocher's results calculates an even higher percentage of black hair (over 2%) "either within or astride of the Highland frontier. Except Paisley, there is not a single instance south of the Forth, nor one between the Spey and the Firth of Tay.

Surely there is something 'racial' here." Beddoe's map, constructed from Gray and Tocher's statistics, clearly indicates the distribution of racial types.

The work carried on in Wales for a number of years by H. J. Fleure and T. C. James[1264] has produced some extremely interesting results. The chief types (based on measurements and observations of head, face, nose, skin, hair and eye colour, stature, etc.) fall into the following groups.

1. "The fundamental type is certainly the long-headed brunet of the moorlands and their inland valleys. He is universally recognised as belonging to the Mediterranean race of Sergi and as dating back in this country to early Neolithic times." The cephalic index is about 78, with high colouring, dark hair and eyes, and stature rather below the average. A possible mixture of earlier stocks is shown in a longer-headed type (c.i. about 75), with well-marked occiput, very dark hair and eyes, swarthy complexion, and average stature (about 1690 mm. = 5 ft. 6-1/2 ins.). Occasionally in North Wales the occurrence of lank black hair, a sallow complexion and prominent cheekbones suggests a "Mongoloid" type; and a type with small stature, black, closely curled hair and a rather broad nose has negroid reminiscences. The Plynlymon moorlands contain a "nest" of extreme dolichocephaly and an unusually high percentage of red hair.

2. Nordic-Alpine type, with cephalic index mainly between 76 and 81.

This group includes (_a_) a "local version of the Nordic type" occurring at Newcastle Emlyn and in South and South-West Pembrokeshire with fair hair and eyes, usually tall stature and great strength of brow, jaw and chin; (_b_) a heavier variant on the Welsh border, often with cephalic index above 80, and extremely tall stature; (_c_) the Borreby or Beaker-Maker type, broad-headed and short-faced with darker pigmentation, probably a cross between Alpine and Nordic, characteristic of the long cleft from Corwen _via_ Bala to Tabyllyn and Towyn.

3. Dark bullet-headed short thick-set men of the general type denoted by the term Alpine or more exactly perhaps by the term Cevenole are found, though not commonly, in North Montgomeryshire valleys.

4. Powerfully built, often intensely dark, broad-headed, broad-faced, strong and square jawed men are characteristic of the Ardudwy coast, the South Glamorgan coast, Newquay district (Cardiganshire) and elsewhere.

The authors observe that Type 1 with its variations contributes "considerable numbers to the ministries of the various churches, possibly in part from inherent and racial leanings, but partly also because these are the people of the moorlands. The idealism of such people usually expresses itself in music, poetry, literature and religion rather than in architecture, painting and plastic arts generally. They rarely have a sufficiency of material resources for the latter activities. These types also contribute a number of men to the medical profession.... The successful commercial men, who have given the Welsh their extraordinarily prominent place in British trade (shipping firms for example) usually belong to types 2 or 4, rather than to 1, as also do the majority of Welsh members of Parliament, though there are exceptions of the first importance. The Nordic type is marked by ingenuity and enterprise in striking out new lines. Type 2 (_c_) in Wales is remarkable for governmental ability of the administrative kind as well as for independence of thought and critical power" (p. 119).

We have now all the elements needed to unravel the ethnical tangle of the present inhabitants of the British Isles. The astonishing prevalence everywhere of the moderately dolicho heads is at once explained by the absence of brachy immigrants except in the Bronze period, and these could do no more than raise the cephalic index from about 70 or 72 to the present mean of about 78. With the other perhaps less stable characters the case is not always quite so simple. The brunettes, representing the Mediterranean type, certainly increase, as we should expect, from north-east to south-west, though even here there is a considerable dark patch, due to local causes, in the home shires about London[1265]. But the stature, almost everywhere a troublesome factor, seems to wander somewhat lawlessly over the land.

Although a short stature more or less coincides with brunetteness in England and Wales, and the observations in Ireland are too few to be relied on, no such parallelism can be traced in Scotland. The west (Inverness and Argyllshire), though as dark as South Wales, shows an average stature of 1.73 m. to 1.74 m. (5 ft. 8 ins. to 5 ft. 8-1/2 ins.), which is higher than the average for the whole of Britain. And South-west Scotland, where the type is fairly dark, contains the tallest population in Europe, if not in the world. Ripley suggests either that "some ethnic element of which no pure trace remains, served to increase the stature of the western Highlanders without at the same time conducing to blondness; or else some local influences of natural selection or environment are responsible for it[1266]"; and he hints also that the linguistic distinction between Gaels and Brythons may have been a.s.sociated with physical variation.

The English tongue need not detain us long. Its qualities, ill.u.s.trated in the n.o.blest of all literatures, are patent to the world[1267], indeed have earned for it from Jacob Grimm the t.i.tle of _Welt-Sprache_, the "World Speech." It belongs, as might be antic.i.p.ated from the northern origin of the Teutonic element in Britain, to the Low German division of the Teutonic branch of the Aryan family. Despite extreme pressure from Norman French, continued for over 200 years (1066-1300), it has remained faithful to this connection in its inner structure, which reveals not a trace of Neo-Latin influences. The phonetic system has undergone profound changes, which can be only indirectly and to a small extent due to French action. What English owes to French and Latin is a very large number, many thousands, of words, some superadded to, some superseding their Saxon equivalents, but altogether immensely increasing its wealth of expression, while giving it a transitional position between the somewhat sharply contrasted Germanic and Romance worlds.

Amongst the Romance peoples, that is, the French, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Rumanians, many Swiss and Belgians, who were entirely a.s.similated in speech and largely in their civil inst.i.tutions to their Roman masters, the paramount position, a sort of international hegemony, has been taken by the French nation since the decadence of Spain under the feeble successors of Philip II. The const.i.tuent elements of these Gallo-Romans, as they may be called, are much the same as those of the British peoples, but differ in their distribution and relative proportions. Thus the Iberians (Aquitani, Pictones, and later Vascones), who may perhaps be identified with the neolithic long-heads[1268], do not appear ever to have ranged much farther north than Brittany, and were Aryanised in pre-Roman times by the P-speaking Celts everywhere north of the Garonne. The prehistoric Teutons again, who had advanced beyond the Rhine at an early period (Caesar says _antiquitus_) into the present Belgium, were mainly confined to the northern provinces. Even the historic Teutons (chiefly Franks and Burgundians) penetrated little beyond the Seine in the north and the present Burgundy in the east, while the Vandals, Visigoths and a few others pa.s.sed rapidly through to Iberia beyond the Pyrenees.

Thus the greater part of the land, say from the Seine-Marne basin to the Mediterranean, continued to be held by the Romanised ma.s.s of Alpine type throughout all the central and most of the southern provinces, and elsewhere in the south by the Romanised long-headed Mediterranean type.

This great preponderance of the Romanised Alpine ma.s.ses explains the rapid absorption of the Teutonic intruders, who were all, except the Fleming section of the Belgae, completely a.s.similated to the Gallo-Romans before the close of the tenth century. It also explains the perhaps still more remarkable fact that the Nors.e.m.e.n who settled (912) under Rollo in Normandy were all practically Frenchmen when a few generations later they followed their Duke William to the conquest of Saxon England. Thus the only intractable groups have proved to be the Basques[1269] and the Bretons, both of whom to this day retain their speech in isolated corners of the country. With these exceptions the whole of France, save the debateable area of Alsace-Lorraine, presents in its speech a certain h.o.m.ogeneous character, the standard language (_langue d'oil_[1270]) being current throughout all the northern and central provinces, while it is steadily gaining upon the southern form (_langue d'oc_[1270]) still surviving in the rural districts of Limousin and Provence.

But pending a more thorough fusion of such tenacious elements as Basques, Bretons, Auvergnats, and Savoyards, we can scarcely yet speak of a common French type, but only of a common nationality. Tall stature, long skulls, fair or light brown colour, grey or blue eyes, still prevail, as might be expected, in the north, these being traits common alike to the prehistoric Belgae, the Franks of the Merovingian and Carlovingian empires, and Rollo's Nors.e.m.e.n. With these contrast the southern peoples of short stature, olive-brown skin, round heads, dark brown or black eyes and hair. The tendency towards uniformity has proceeded far more rapidly in the urban than in the rural districts.

Hence the citizens of Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, Ma.r.s.eilles and other large towns, present fewer and less striking contrasts than the natives of the old historical provinces, where are still distinguished the loquacious and mendacious Gascon, the pliant and versatile Basque, the slow and wary Norman, the dreamy and fanatical Breton, the quick and enterprising Burgundian, and the bright, intelligent, more even-tempered native of Touraine, a typical Frenchman occupying the heart of the land, and holding, as it were, the balance between all the surrounding elements.

In Spain and Portugal we have again the same ethnological elements, but also again in different proportions and differently distributed, with others superadded--proto-Phoenicians and later Phoenicians (Carthaginians), Romans, Visigoths, Vandals, and still later Berbers and Arabs. Here the Celtic-speaking mixed peoples mingled in prehistoric times with the long-headed Mediterraneans, an ethnical fusion known to the ancients, who labelled it "Keltiberian[1271]." But, as in Britain, the other intruders were mostly long-heads, with the striking result that the Peninsula presents to-day exactly the same uniform cranial type as the British Isles. Even the range (76 to 79) and the mean (78) of the cephalic index are the same, rising in Spain to 80 only in the Basque corner. As Ripley states, "the average cephalic index of 78 occurs nowhere else so uniformly distributed in Europe" except in Norway, and this uniformity "is the concomitant and index of two relatively pure, albeit widely different, ethnic types--Mediterranean in Spain, Teutonic in Norway[1272]."

In other respects the social, one might almost say the national, groups are both more numerous and perhaps even more sharply discriminated in the Peninsula than in France. Besides the Basques and Portuguese, the latter with a considerable strain of negro blood[1273], we have such very distinct populations as the haughty and punctilious Castilians, who under an outward show of pride and honour, are capable of much meanness; the sprightly and vainglorious Andalusians, who have been called the Gascons of Spain, yet of graceful address and seductive manners; the morose and impa.s.sive Murcians, indolent because fatalists; the gay Valencians given to much dancing and revelry, but also to sudden fits of murderous rage, holding life so cheap that they will hire themselves out as a.s.sa.s.sins, and cut their bread with the blood-stained knife of their last victim; the dull and superst.i.tious Aragonese, also given to bloodshed, and so obdurate that they are said to "drive nails in with their heads"; lastly the Catalans, noisy and quarrelsome, but brave, industrious, and enterprising, on the whole the best element in this motley aggregate of unbalanced temperaments. The various aspects of Spanish temperament are regarded by Havelock Ellis[1274] as manifestations of an aboriginally primitive race, which, under the stress of a peculiarly stimulating and yet hardening environment, has retained through every stage of development an unusual degree of the endowment of fresh youth, of elemental savagery, with which it started.

This explains the fine qualities of Spain and her defects, the splendid initiative, and lack of sustained ability to carry it out, the importance of the point of honour and the glorification of the primitive virtue of valour.

In Italy the past and present relations, as elucidated especially by Livi and Sergi, may be thus briefly stated. After the first Stone Age, of which there are fewer indications than might be expected[1275], the whole land was thickly settled by dark long-headed Mediterranean peoples in neolithic times. These were later joined by Pelasgians of like type from Greece, and by Illyrians of doubtful affinity from the Balkan Peninsula. Indeed C. Penka[1276], who has so many paradoxical theories, makes the Illyrians the first inhabitants of Italy, as shown by the striking resemblance of the _terramara_ culture of Aemilia with that of the Venetian and Laibach pile-dwellings. The recent finds in Bosnia also[1277], besides the historically proved (?) migration of the Siculi from Upper Italy to Sicily, and their Illyrian origin, all point in the same direction. But the facts are differently interpreted by Sergi[1278], who holds that the whole land was occupied by the Mediterraneans, because we find even in Switzerland pile-dwellers of the same type[1279].

Then came the peoples of Aryan speech, Celtic-speaking Alpines from the north-west and Slavs from the north-east, who raised the cephalic index in the north, where the brachy element, as already seen, still greatly predominates but diminishes steadily southwards[1280]. They occupied the whole of Umbria, which at first stretched across the peninsula from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean, but was later encroached upon by the intruding Etruscans on the west side. Then also some of these Umbrians, migrating southwards to Latium beyond the Tiber, intermingled, says Sergi, with the Italic (Ligurian) aborigines, and became the founders of the Roman state[1281]. With the spread of the Roman arms the Latin language, which Sergi claims to be a kind of Aryanised Ligurian, but must be regarded as a true member of the Aryan family, was diffused throughout the whole of the peninsula and islands, sweeping away all traces not only of the original Ligurian and other Mediterranean tongues, but also of Etruscan and its own sister languages, such as Umbrian, Oscan, and Sabellian.

At the fall of the empire the land was overrun by Ostrogoths, Heruli, and other Teutons, none of whom formed permanent settlements except the Longobards, who gave their name to the present Lombardy, but were themselves rapidly a.s.similated in speech and general culture to the surrounding populations, whom we may now call Italians in the modern sense of the term.

When it is remembered that the Aegean culture had spread to Italy at an early date, that it was continued under h.e.l.lenic influences by Etruscans and Umbrians, that Greek arts and letters were planted on Italian soil (_Magna Graecia_) before the foundation of Rome, that all these civilisations converged in Rome itself and were thence diffused throughout the West, that the traditions of previous cultural epochs never died out, acquired new life with the Renascence and were thus perpetuated to the present day, it may be claimed for the gifted Italian people that they have been for a longer period than any others under the unbroken sway of general humanising influences.

These "Latin Peoples," as they are called because they all speak languages of the Latin stock, are not confined to the West. To the Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, with the less known and ruder Walloon of Belgium and Romansch of Switzerland, Tyrol, and Friuli, must be a.s.sociated the _Rumanian_ current amongst some nine millions of so-called "Daco-Rumanians" in Moldavia and Wallachia, _i.e._ the modern kingdom of Rumania. The same Neo-Latin tongue is also spoken by the _Tsintsars_ or _Kutzo-Vlacks_[1282] of the Mount Pindus districts in the Balkan Peninsula, and by numerous Rumanians who have in later times migrated into Hungary. They form a compact and vigorous nationality, who claim direct descent from the Roman military colonists settled north of the Lower Danube by Trajan after his conquest of the Dacians (107 A.D.).

But great difficulties attach to this theory, which is rejected by many ethnologists, especially on the ground that, after Trajan's time, Dacia was repeatedly swept clean by the Huns, the Finns, the Avars, Magyars and other rude Mongolo-Turki hordes, besides many almost ruder Slavic peoples during the many centuries when the eastern populations were in a state of continual flux after the withdrawal of the Roman legionaries from the Lower Danube. Besides, it is shown by Roesler[1283] and others that under Aurelian (257 A.D.) Trajan's colonists withdrew bodily southwards to and beyond the Hemus to the territory of the old Bessi (Thracians), _i.e._ the district still occupied by the Macedo-Rumanians.

But in the 13th century, during the break-up of the Byzantine empire, most of these fugitives were again driven north to their former seats beyond the Danube, where they have ever since held their ground, and const.i.tuted themselves a distinct and far from feeble branch of the Neo-Latin community. The Pindus, therefore, rather than the Carpathians, is to be taken as the last area of dispersion of these valiant and intelligent descendants of the Daco-Romans. This seems the most rational solution of what A. D. Xenopol calls "an historic enigma," although he himself rejects Roesler's conclusions in favour of the old view so dear to the national pride of the present Rumanian people[1284]. The composite character of the Rumanian language--fundamentally Neo-Latin or rather early Italian, with strong Illyrian (Albanian) and Slav affinities--would almost imply that Dacia had never been Romanised under the empire, and that in fact this region was _for the first time_ occupied by its present Romance speaking inhabitants in the 13th century[1285]. The nomadic life of the Rumanians is in itself, as Peisker points out[1286], a refutation of their descent from settled Roman colonists, and indicates a Central Asiatic origin. The mounted nomads grazed during the summer "on most of the mountains of the Balkan peninsula, and took up their winter quarters on the sea-coasts among a peasant population speaking a different language. Thence they gradually spread, unnoticed by the chroniclers, along all the mountain ranges, over all the Carpathians of Transylvania, North Hungary, and South Galicia, to Moravia; towards the north-west from Montenegro onwards over Herzegovina, Bosnia, Istria, as far as South Styria; towards the south over Albania far into Greece.... And like the peasantry among which they wintered (and winter) long enough, they became (and become) after a transitory bilingualism, Greeks, Albanians, Servians, Bulgarians, Ruthenians, Poles, Slovaks, Chekhs, Slovenes, Croatians ... a mobile nomad stratum among a strange-tongued and more numerous peasant element, and not till later did they gradually take to agriculture and themselves become settled."

The Pelasgians and Minoan civilisation have been briefly discussed above (Ch. XIII.). Later problems in Greek ethnology are still under dispute.

Sergi, who regards the proto-Aryans as round-headed barbarians of Celtic, Slav, and Teutonic speech, makes no exception in favour of the h.e.l.lenes. These also enter Greece not as civilisers, but rather as destroyers of the flourishing Mykenaean culture developed here, as in Italy, by the Mediterranean aborigines. But in course of time the intruders become absorbed in the Pelasgic or eastern branch of the Mediterraneans, and what we call h.e.l.lenism is really Pelasgianism revived, and to some extent modified by the Aryan (h.e.l.lenic) element.

If it may be allowed that at their advent the h.e.l.lenes were less civilised than the native Aegeans on whom they imposed their Aryan speech, whence and when came they? By Penka[1287], for whom the Baltic lands would be the original home not merely of the Germanic branch but of all the Aryans, the h.e.l.lenic cradle is located in the Oder basin between the Elbe and the Vistula. As the Doric, doubtless the last Greek irruption into h.e.l.las, is chronologically fixed at 1149 B.C., the beginning of the h.e.l.lenic migrations may be dated back to the 13th century. When the h.e.l.lenes migrated from Central Europe to Greece, the period of the general ethnic dispersion was already closed, and the migratory period which next followed began with the h.e.l.lenes, and was continued by the Itali, Gauls, Germans, etc. The difficulties created by this view are insurmountable. Thus we should have to suppose that from this relatively contracted Aryan cradle countless tribes swarmed over Europe since the 13th century B.C., speaking profoundly different languages (Greek, Celtic, Latin, etc.), all differentiated since that time on the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic. The proto-Aryans with their already specialised tongues had reached the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean long before that time and, according to Maspero[1288], were known to the Egyptians of the 5th dynasty (3990-3804 B.C.) if not earlier. Allowing that these may have rather been pre-h.e.l.lenes (Pelasgians), we still know that the Achaeans had traditionally arrived about 1250 B.C. and they were already speaking the language of Homer.

"The indications of archaeology and of legend agree marvellously well with those of the Egyptian records," says H. R. Hall[1289], "in making the Third Late Minoan period one of incessant disturbance.... The whole basin of the Eastern Mediterranean seems to have been a seething turmoil of migrations, expulsions, wars and piracies, started first by the Mycenaean (Achaian) conquest of Crete, and then intensified by the constant impulse of the Northern iron-users into Greece." Herodotus speaks of the great invasion of the Thesprotian tribes from beyond Pindus, which took place probably in the 13th century B.C.[1290] As a result "an overwhelming Aryan and iron-using population was first brought into Greece. The earlier Achaian (?) tribes of Aryans in Thessaly, who had perhaps lived there from time immemorial, and had probably already infiltrated southwards to form the mixed Ionian population about the Isthmus, were scattered, only a small portion of the nation remaining in its original home, while of the rest part conquered the South and another part emigrated across the sea to the Phrygian coast. Of this emigration to Asia the first event must have been the war of Troy.... The Boeotian and Achaian invasion of the South scattered the Minyae, Pelasgians, and Ionians. The remnant of the Minyae emigrated to Lemnos, the Pelasgi and Ionians were concentrated in Attica and another body of Ionians in the later Achaia, while the Southern Achaeans pressed forward into the Peloponnese[1291]."

It is evident from the national traditions that the proto-Greeks did not arrive _en bloc_, but rather at intervals in separate and often hostile bands bearing different names. But all these groups--Achaeans, Danai, Argians, Dolopes, Myrmidons, Leleges and many others, some of which were also found in Asia Minor--retained a strong sense of their common origin. The sentiment, which may be called racial rather than national, received ultimate expression when to all of them was extended the collective name of h.e.l.lenes (Sellenes originally), that is, descendants of Deucalion's son h.e.l.len, whose two sons Aeolus and Dorus, and grandson Ion, were supposed to be the progenitors of the Aeolians, Dorians, and Ionians. But such traditions are merely reminiscences of times when the tribal groupings still prevailed, and it may be taken for granted that the three main branches of the h.e.l.lenic stock did not spring from a particular family that rose to power in comparatively recent times in the Thessalian district of Phthiotis. Whatever truth may lie behind the h.e.l.lenic legend, it is highly probable that, at the time when h.e.l.len is said to have flourished (about 1500 B.C.), the Aeolic-speaking communities of Thessaly, Arcadia, Boeotia, the closely-allied Dorians[1292] of Phocaea, Argos, and Laconia, and the Ionians of Attica, had already been clearly specialised, had in fact formed special groups before entering Greece. Later their dialects, after acquiring a certain polish and leaving some imperishable records of the many-sided Greek genius, were gradually merged in the literary Neo-Ionic or Attic, which thus became the [Greek: koine dialektos], or current speech of the Greek world.