Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

B. The North Mediterranean Branch.

Unlike the South Mediterranean Branch, whose languages present everywhere some degree of resemblance, sufficient to predicate for them a remote common origin, the North Mediterranean Branch includes several stocks fundamentally diverse. They are the Euskaric, the Aryac, and the Caucasic stocks. The second of these is by far the most extended and important; but, as I have previously observed, it does not bear the impress of the highest antiquity, nor yet is its location that where we should look for the most ancient members of this branch. Both these conditions are fulfilled by

1. The Euskaric Stock.

At present this contains but one group, the Basques, residing in the valleys of the Pyrenees, on both the Spanish and French frontiers. There is little doubt from the linguistic studies of Humboldt and from the researches of archæologists that the Basques once extended widely throughout the present area of Spain and Portugal; but I am not inclined to identify them with the Iberians of the classical geographers, for reasons given in my last lecture. There is a great deal of evidence that in proto-historic times they occupied central and southern France, portions of Italy, Corsica, Sardinia, perhaps Sicily, and some southern tracts of England. Many believe that the ancient Aquitanians and Ligurians, the Picts and Cantabrians, were of this stock, as well as the pre-Aryac tribes of Greece.[85]

I described in my last lecture the Basques as representatives of one of the dark types of the white race, with a peculiarly shaped skull, elongated posteriorly.[86] The face is oval, the chin pointed and weak. The general aspect indeed of a Basque cranium conveys the impression of a feeble character, and such the history of the people shows them to have been. They never contributed anything to the advance of the race, and from their earliest appearance in history have been retiring before the pressure of sturdier nationalities. At present they do not number over three hundred thousand, and in a few generations will be merged in the neighboring Spaniards and French.

The Basque language belongs to one of those primitive forms of human speech such as we find among the Negroes of Central Africa, or the savage tribes of Siberia. It is of that type called agglutinative and polysynthetic, and in some points has the incorporative tendency of American tongues. It is the speech of a people whose ideas remained confined to objective material relations. According to the latest students, it is absolutely without connection with any of the so-called Turanian (Ural-Altaic) languages, and is equally remote from the Hamitic group.[87]

I now turn to

2. The Aryac Stock

of peoples and languages. It is sometimes called the “Indo-European,” or “Indo-Germanic,” or “Celt-Indic”[88] stock, and embraces the principal historic nations of Europe, and in Asia the Armenians, Persians and Hindostanees.

Origin of the Aryans.—No ethnographic question of late years has led to keener discussion than the origin and affinities of these peoples. The theory derived from the Hebrew myth of the Deluge, that they migrated into Europe from Asia, was long accepted without question, and seemed to be strengthened by the discovery that Sanscrit, the classical language of India, and Zend, the ancient tongue of Persia, are related to Greek, Latin and German.

But reflection and extended observation led to other results. It was perceived that the majority of the Aryac peoples had lived in Europe from the remotest historic times, and only a small minority in Asia; that some of the Aryac tongues of Europe retain more ancient forms than either Sanscrit or Zend; that the oldest traditions point to migrations from Europe into Asia, and not the reverse; that these traditions are supported by the Indian Aryans, who distinctly claim that their ancestors migrated from the north into India, and by the Persians, whose sacred book, the Avesta, declares they were not the original owners of Iran, and finally by an examination of the arts of the pre-historic Europeans,[89] and an exhaustive analysis of the words common to all the dialects of Aryac speech, which indicate that the ancestral tribe must have lived in geographic surroundings not to be found in the Aryac districts of Asia, but answering in all points to the regions of central or western Europe.

I constantly see it stated in works on ethnology and linguistics that the scientist who first advanced this opinion was the Englishman, Dr. Robert G. Latham. Nothing is more erroneous. For a score of years before he introduced it to the English public, this view had been repeatedly and ably defended by the eminent Belgian naturalist, d’Omalius d’Halloy. He lost no opportunity of showing that the ancestors of the modern Europeans did not come from Asia, but belonged originally to the continent they now inhabit.[90]

Since his first promulgation of this theory in 1839, the evidence in its favor has been slowly but steadily accumulating, until now it numbers among its adherents practically all the ethnologists of the day who do not feel committed by their previous writings, or by their creeds, to the Asian hypothesis. Among the English writers who have recently treated the subject with marked ability and much more fullness than is possible for me at present, I mention Canon Isaac Taylor and Professor A. W. Sayce; in Germany, O. Schrader, Karl Penka, Theodor Pösche, L. Geiger, and in France, M. de Lapouge, etc.

I shall not enter into a recital of these arguments, for I believe the debate is so nearly terminated that the conclusion may be accepted that the Aryac peoples originated in Western Europe and migrated easterly. This you will observe is in accord with the general theory of the origin and distribution of the white race which I laid before you, and is a potent argument in its support.

The Aryac Physical Type.—When we endeavor to fix more precisely the home of that tribe which was the lineal Aryac progenitor, several considerations must be carefully weighed. The physical types of the Aryac people differ markedly, as I stated in my last lecture, and some writers (Penka, Lapouge, etc.) have claimed that the Teutonic, the tall blonde type, is peculiar to the Aryans, and must have been the original character. But it is found with just as great purity among the Libyans of Africa, so that the assumption is vain.

It is an undeniable fact that at the earliest period, both in Europe and Asia, the majority of Aryan-speaking peoples were brunettes, and it is also a fact that in the population of Europe to-day there is a tendency to revert to that type. When a blonde and a brunette intermarry, ten per cent. more children will take after the brunette.[91] There is a probability, therefore, that the original Aryac tribe was a mixture of blondes and brunettes, with a majority of the latter, and also that the form of its skulls was variable, some long, some broad.[92]

This would indicate a mixed descent, and such, no doubt, it owned. It is absurd to suppose the contrary. The type of the proto-Aryac language is one which originates not early, but late in the history of human speech. The process of grammatical inflection is the highest stage of linguistic evolution. It is the result of a slow growth, in which the material elements of language are transformed into formal elements, and the “grammatical categories,” or parts of speech, gradually assume logical distinctness and independent expression. We can watch this growth in its imperfect form in the Nahuatl of Mexico and the Berber of Morocco; and when we see it completed, as in the Arabic or Latin, we may be sure it is a comparatively late fruit of the human intellect. The expressions common to all Aryac languages reveal a primitive social condition to correspond with this. It was above that of savagery. These common ancestors had domesticated dogs, cattle, and perhaps sheep; nomadic at times, they at some seasons tilled the soil; they were acquainted with copper, and brewed mead from honey; they had probably even invented a wagon, and milked their cows, and they certainly lived on or near the seashore, and used boats.

The conclusion is that the original inflected Aryac tongue arose from the coalescing of two or more uninflected agglutinative or semi-incorporative tongues, the mingling of the speeches being accompanied, as always, by a mingling of blood and of physical traits. This explains the fact that has puzzled so many ethnologists, that there is no fixed Aryac type.

Where should we look for this intermingling to have taken place? From the arguments already advanced you would naturally say, somewhere on the western coast of Europe.

This is supported by an unexpected piece of evidence of a strong character. The system of consonants is undoubtedly the most persistent part of a language, and there is no question but that the Celtic and Lithuanian, of all the Aryac tongues, have kept most closely to the primitive system of consonants once common to them all.[93] The Lithuanian is spoken by a limited community on the coast of the Baltic sea, while the Celtic, in proto-historic times, occupied the whole of Great Britain and northern Belgium, France and Spain. In the two latter areas it was from immemorial time in close connection with the Euskaric (Basque), and perhaps the Libyan (Berber) groups, and it is possible that in comparatively late (neolithic) times the Aryac with its inflections might have been developed from these partly agglutinative languages.

This suggestion is not so hazardous as it may seem. William von Humboldt, one of the ablest linguists of this century, suggested that the Basques and the Celts, the Ligurians and the Gauls, in spite of the contrasted structure of their languages, may have sprung from the same ethnic trunk, and derived their languages from a common source.[94]

Other scholars of eminence, such as Delitzsch, Ascoli, Raumer, Schultze and Abel, have pointed out numerous affinities between the Hamito-Semitic, Libyan, old Coptic and Assyrian tongues, and the oldest Aryac forms, and have argued for the existence of a fundamental “proto-Ayro-Semitic” speech which existed before the separation of the white race into its northern and southern branches.[95] There is evidence that this very ancient tongue was of the “isolating” character, with a tendency to agglutination by suffixes.

It is now recognized that inflection did not exist in the primitive Aryac dialects, but was gradually developed by means of such suffixes added to the stem, by different processes in the different dialects, many of which are in activity to-day.[96] These inflective processes bear closer resemblance to the Libyan, which has suffixes, and the old Egyptian, than to pure Semitic tongues, which leads to the suggestion, again, that the separation of the race was in the west rather than the east.

Proto-Aryac Migrations.—Leaving these speculations as to the origin of the Aryac stock, let us sketch its probable migrations, as indicated by linguistic research. It appears to have divided early into two main streams, the one occupying central and southern Europe, the other moving eastward on a northerly route, the two meeting as they neared the Bosphorus.

The central stream was of Celtic affinities. Its tribes having possessed themselves of the coast line from Cape Finisterre to the mouth of the Rhine and the islands of Great Britain, passed up the valleys of the Rhine and its affluents into southern Germany, the valleys of Switzerland and the Tyrol, quite to the Danube. Its easternmost tribes were probably the Dacians.

The Aryac Italic peoples, the Umbrians, the Oscans, the Latins, were the first offshoot of this southern migration; not that they were directly descended from the Celts, but that they sprang from the same division of the primitive Aryac stock. This is still so clear that I remember Matthew Arnold in his lectures on poetry quotes sentences from ancient Irish which are also intelligible Latin.

A second offshoot was the Illyrians, who peopled the northern and eastern shores of the Adriatic, the ancestors of the modern Albanians.

A third was the Hellenic people, organized later than the Latins, and imbued with elements quite foreign to these.

The northern stream was the Letto-Slavic, whose primitive home was on the shores of the German Ocean north of the mouth of the Rhine, and in the region which extends thence to the Gulf of Finland. Its members presented the physical traits of the Libyo-Teutonic type, contrasting in this to the traits of the central and southern stream, who were of the dark type of the race. The Cymric type seems to have been a mingling of the two, and was found at or near the boundaries between them.

At a comparatively late period—certainly after the beginning of the bronze age, as we know from their languages—the Teutonic tribes separated from the Letto-Slavs, and moved into Central and South Germany, where they remained. Numerous Slavonic hordes, however, pushed eastward, some passing to the north of the Black and Caspian Seas, where they formed the ancient Sarmatians, others approaching the Hellespont, where they mingled with Celtic and other elements to make the Thracian and other peoples.

Passing into Asia across the Hellespont and Bosphorus, or along the coast in their vessels, or pursuing the shores of the Caspian, numerous Aryac colonies from the vanguard of the eastern emigrants wandered into Asia. The Indo-Eranians that is, the ancient Persians and Sanscrit speaking tribes, entered first and progressed farthest, settling in Iran, and occupying the land between the Caspian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Later came the Phrygians and Armenians, who had formerly lived in Thrace, crossing the Bosphorus and establishing themselves in Asia Minor.

The dates of these occurrences can be fixed only approximately. The Armenian migration was later than 700 B. C., as previous to that date the Vans, a people of non-Aryac speech, occupied the region later known as Armenia. The Brahmans crossed the Hindu-Kusch into India, about 1500-2000 B. C., and the Persians possessed themselves of Iran at least a thousand years earlier.

Scheme of Aryac Migration.

		European.	Asian.
Primitive Aryans. (Western Europe.)	Northern Peoples (Blondes).	Letto-Lithuanians.
		Teutons.
			Phrygians.
		Slavonians.	Cappadocians.
		Thracians.	Armenians.
	Southern Peoples. (Brunettes).	Dacians.	Medes.
		Hellenes.	Iranians.
			Indians.
		Illyrians.
		Italians.
		Celts.

We must not suppose that the languages of these peoples developed one out of the other. That is not the way languages grow. It was by contact in various centres with various dialects and wholly different linguistic stocks that the speech of these nomads was altered. They did not journey always in one direction, but to and fro, now rapidly advancing, now retreating, now long stationary, ever through war, commerce and marriage adding new elements to their speech, each tribe developing its dialect with independent material and on different grammatical principles.

We are now prepared to study the historic and modern representatives of this important stock.

1. The Celtic Peoples.

The Celtic peoples of the present day form a decaying group, which in a few generations will wholly disappear. Two thousand years ago they were the most important Aryac stock in central and western Europe. Their sole representatives now are the Highland Scotch, the Irish, the Manx, the Welsh, and the natives of Brittany in France. In all these localities the Celtic speech is losing ground before English or French. In Ireland about 900,000 persons can speak Irish, but not more than 150,000 are ignorant of English.

These Celtic groups form two dialects, one spoken in Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man, known as Gaelic, the other common to Wales, Brittany, and in the last century to Cornwall, called Armorican or Cymric. The Irish possessed a sparse literature going back to the eighth century, and the Welsh to the twelfth, while the oldest Scotch or Breton songs date at the furthest from the fourteenth century, in spite of assertions to the contrary.

To this day the Celtic peoples present the same contrast of physical type that they did to the Romans. Some of the Scotch clans, many of the Irish, most of the Welsh and Bretons, are of moderate stature, dark eyes and hair, and brunette complexion, while the remainder are tall, raw-boned, red-haired, with florid, freckled skins and tawny beards.

Their mental traits are quite as conspicuous; turbulent, boastful, alert, courageous, but deficient in caution, persistence and self-control, they never have succeeded in forming an independent state, and are a dangerous element in the body politic of a free country. In religion they are fanatic and bigoted, ready to swear in the words of their master, rather than to exercise independent judgment. France is three-fifths of Celtic descent, and this explains much in its history and the character of its inhabitants.

2. The Italic Peoples.

The principal Aryac tribes who possessed themselves of the Italian peninsula were the Umbrians in the north, and the Samnites (or Oscans) and Latins in the south. They conquered in time the Etruscans, Ligurians, Volscians and others of non-Aryac lineage, and laid the foundation for the mighty Aryac Empire of Rome, destined to command the world, and to introduce the Latin tongue as the dominant speech of Southern Europe.

From the Latin speaking Roman colonies have sprung the Romance languages of modern times and the existing “Latin peoples.” These include the modern Italian, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Roumanian, the Wallachian, and the Ladinish in Switzerland, besides a number of dialects. Through the conquests of the European Romance nations, their tongues have gained the ascendency over the whole continent of America south of the United States, over a large part of Canada and North Africa, and over many islands. To-day, the speech of imperial Rome, more or less modified, prevails over an area five times as great as that of the empire in the zenith of its glory.

Like the language, the physical type of the ancient Italic peoples indicated their near relationship to the dark Celts. The Latin and Umbrian skulls were short or rounded (brachycephalic), the stature medium, the hair dark and curly, the eyes brown or black, the nose aquiline, the complexion brunette. In later generations this type was modified by mixture with the blonde or long-skulled Etruscans, and the numerous foreigners who came to live in Rome; but to this day it is that which prevails throughout the peninsula.

None of the Romance nations can boast of much purity of descent. After the fall of the Western Empire (476 A. D.), hordes of Germans poured into Italy; they also overran France and Spain, while Arabs and Berbers occupied for generations nearly the whole of the Iberian peninsula, the island of Sicily, and portions of France. The Roumanians are partly Slavonic, and the Portuguese have Celtic and Basque blood.

Tn spite of these admixtures, the Romance peoples have retained many of the mental features of the old Romans. In government they display the same acknowledgment of authority, love of system and bureaucratic forms of administration, which made the Roman municipium the wonder of the world; in religion, they cultivate the same respect for external show and material rites rather than for the ideal aspects of faith; and in literature, it is only in later days that they have declared independence from the models of classicism, which too long fettered their best minds.

The ancient Romans had little idealism. They achieved nothing in poetry, philosophy or the plastic arts. It was owing to the Hellenic and Semitic influence that, under the Empire, Rome became the centre of artistic, as of all other training. These acquired qualities have been transmitted to the Romance nations, and it is to them we owe nearly all that is best in art down to the beginning of the present century. The sentiment of symmetry is native to them, and one has but to compare either the scientific works or the public buildings of France with those of Germany during the last five-and-twenty years to be convinced how the sense of form is present in the former and defective in the latter.

3. The Illyric Peoples.

The ancient Illyrians were the ancestors of the modern Albanians, a people numbering in all nearly two million souls, occupying a portion of western Turkey, bordering on the Adriatic Sea, about 40° north latitude. They are scarcely more than semi-civilized, and neither in ancient nor modern times have they taken any prominent part in the history of Europe. Their language undoubtedly belongs to the Aryac stock, and has various affinities with Greek and Latin, but is a long-separated and almost isolated fragment of Aryac speech. The national name they give themselves is Skypetars, which means mountaineers. They are also known as Arnauts.

The physical type of the Albanians is mixed, those to the south being chiefly blondes, to the north brunettes; their skulls are generally long, their stature tall, their bodies muscular. Some of them are Mohammedans, others Roman Catholics, while others belong to the Greek church. In disposition they are turbulent and warlike, caring little for the amenities of civilization.

The nearest related groups to the Illyrians are believed to have been the Thracians, who were a blonde people, the Dacians, who were largely Celtic, and the Macedonians. Some recent writers have argued that the ancient Japyges were Illyrians, and had occupied most of the peninsula of Italy previous to the arrival of the Latins;[97] but this question remains obscure.

4. The Hellenic Peoples.

It is acknowledged even by those who maintain the Asiatic origin of the Aryans that the Greeks entered the peninsula and the adjacent isles of the Ionian and Egean seas from a northwesterly direction.[98] It has been also argued “from the unmixed character of their language” that they found the region uninhabited,[99] but there are reasons for believing that it was sparsely populated by a non-Aryac people of the Euscaric physical type.[100]

The separation of the Greeks from the southern Aryac stream took place somewhere in the valley of the Danube, whence a portion of the original Hellenes moved down the Adriatic into the Morea, and other bands known as Carians, Leleges, Phrygians, etc., passed into Asia Minor.[101] Even the island of Cyprus, close to the Syrian shore, appears to have supported a Greek population previous to its occupancy by the Egyptians and Semitic peoples.[102]

The Greek language has strong affinities to the ancient Persian and Sanscrit, showing conclusively that the Aryac tribes whose descendants developed these tongues dwelt in eastern Europe between the Slavonic peoples on the north and the proto-Hellenes on the south. At a later date, that is, about 1500 B. C., numerous Phenician colonists occupied the shores of Greece, constructing the so-called “Cyclopean” walls, and leaving a lasting impression, both on the language and culture of the Aryac population.[103] Greek civilization undoubtedly derived its early inspiration from Semitic and Hamitic sources, and nearly thirty per cent. of the Greek roots are non-Aryac, proving a large admixture of foreign thought and blood at some remote epoch.

The ancient Greek physical type was rather Slavonic than Celtic. The skull was long (about 76), the forehead high, the nose narrow and straight (the “Grecian nose”), the face oval and orthognathic, the complexion fair, the hair blonde or chestnut, and the eyes blue or grey.[104] The highest bodily symmetry of the human species was reached among them, and its proportions were perpetuated for all time in the noble products of Greek plastic art.

The modern Greeks have undergone extensive commingling with Slavonians, Turks, Bulgarians, etc., so that the ancient type is no longer common, and the population is generally darker in complexion, and the skull more globular than in classic ages.

At a very remote epoch the Hellenic peoples occupied southern Italy (Magna Grecia), Sicily, portions of southern France and the regions on both shores of the Hellespont, their easternmost colonies extending quite into Syria. During the middle ages the establishment of the capital of the eastern empire at Constantinople, gave to Greek a position in the east equal to that of Latin in the west. Crushed out, first by the Romans and next by Mongolian hordes, within this century the Hellenic peoples are rapidly regaining a prominent position. Their settlements in Asia Minor are displacing the Turks, and in all the cities of the Levant they form one of the most active elements of the population.

In certain mental endowments, the Hellenic peoples won a position far ahead of all others. The sense of artistic form was possessed by them in a superlative degree; for the highest philosophic thought they showed an aptitude unparalleled in the annals of the race; in mathematics and mechanics, in poetry and the drama, in architecture and in literature, they created models of such perfection that the later generations of other nations have been content to do little more than imitate them. To this day that culture which is properly called the highest, must be based on a long and loving study of Greek art and thought.

5. The Lettic Peoples.

The Letts and Lithuanians, dwelling on the shores of the Baltic Sea, partly in Prussia and partly in Russia, are unimportant peoples politically, and indeed every way but ethnographically. In this respect, however, they deserve particular attention, because in the opinion of a number of modern writers they “have the best claim to represent the primitive Aryac race.”[105] This claim is based on the structure of their language, which seems to preserve characteristics of an exceedingly primitive type, such for instance as a dual number, numerous oblique cases, an archaic phonology;[106] and also on their physical appearance, being tall blondes, with blue eyes, and moderately long skulls (about 78°). Both in appearance and language they are a connecting link between the Slavonic and Teutonic peoples. The westernmost dialect of the group, the “old Prussian,” now extinct, was spoken west of the Vistula, and perhaps extended to the coast of the German Ocean. Their total number at present is not over 2,000,000.

6. The Teutonic Peoples

Separated from the Letto-Slavonians about the beginning of the Age of Bronze (see above p. 152), and extended themselves toward central and southern Germany, north into Scandinavia, and west along the shores of the North Sea. Their most celebrated ancient tribes were the Goths and Vandals, the Angles and Saxons, the Danes and Norsemen, the Franks and Alemanni, the Lombards and the Burgundians. The modern nations which with more or less justice are classed as of Teutonic descent, are the German speaking population of the German and Austrian empires, the States of Sweden and Norway, Denmark, Holland, western Switzerland and England. It is needless to say that there is little purity of descent in most of these lands; the highest is believed to be in Scandinavia. There we find still in the ascendant the tall and muscular frame, the fair hair and complexion, the blue eyes and full blonde beards which the Greek and Roman writers agree in attributing to the dreaded northern barbarians. The skull is long, the temperament lymphatic, and the complete growth attained later than in the Celtic stock.[107]

The mental character of the Teuton is somewhat sluggish and material, but is directed by clear insight and unconquerable pertinacity. His conquests, whether on the field of battle or in the arena of the intellect, have been attained by deliberate calculation and dogged obstinacy. His clear judgment refuses to be controlled by the mere dicta of authority. In the fourth century the Goths attached themselves to the great Arian heresy, and a thousand years later their descendants were the first to throw off the yoke of the Roman church. The profoundest metaphysician of modern times, Emmanuel Kant, was a Teuton; but his avowed purpose was to prove the futility of all metaphysical speculation. The poets and dramatists of the Teutonic nations, Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, were the first to break definitely with the classical models, and vindicate the freedom of the artist.

Within the last century, the extension of this group over the globe has left all others far behind. The German, the Englishman and the Anglo-American now control the politics of the world, and their contributions to every department of literature, science and the arts have been the main stimuli of the marvellous progress of the nineteenth century.

7. The Slavonic Peoples.

In the early historic period there stretched a line of kindred agricultural and nomadic tribes from the Baltic to the Black and Caspian seas, forming the northern outposts of the Aryac stock, in immediate contiguity with the Mongolian race. They were the Scythians, Sarmatians, Massagetes, etc. Their languages belonged to what is called the Slavonic group, and had a marked family likeness; but the physical traits of the various tribes were then, as now, very various, and the most that can be said is that the majority were blondes, with flaxen hair, full beards and a tendency to dolichocephaly.[108]

These tribes were the ancestors of the numerous Slavonic peoples of the present day, the Russians, Ruthenians, Poles, the Wends in Prussia, the Czechs of Bohemia, the Bulgarians and Servians, the Montenegrins, Dalmatians and Croatians. All these, and some smaller communities, speak to-day Slavic dialects, though they are by no means all of pure Slavic descent. There has been a constant intermingling with the Mongolians, easily recognizable in physical traits and mental character. Though early brought into contact with civilization, the Slavonic peoples have been the last of all the Aryans to appreciate its greatest benefits. Within a century, however, their progress has been phenomenal, and, except the English people, no other nation within that period has extended so widely the domain of enlightened governmental control over half-savage tribes. The conquests of the Russians in northern and central Asia have always been attended with beneficent results for the conquered people, and nothing but the selfish jealousy of other European governments has prevented these conquests from being far more extensive and far more fruitful of good to mankind.

The Russian is laborious, submissive, dreamy, unpractical. The individual is lost in the community, the mir, a communistic village association of great antiquity. His religion is the merest formality, relieved by outbreaks of fanaticism. Russian literature, which has lately become the vogue in other nations, is introspective and unhealthful, oriental in its spirit, occidental in its cravings.

The ancient Slavonic tribes had close relations with the Eranic peoples, the Medes and Persians. The connecting link seems to have been the Sigyni and Agathyrsi tribes, who dwelt south of the Carpathians, in what is now Transylvania. Both of these claimed relationship to the Medes, and when they were conquered by the Celtic Dacians, many of them followed their cousin in Asia. They were not without culture, and Herodotus speaks of them as loving luxury, and decorating themselves with gold. Ornaments of this metal, worked with creditable skill, are found in their graves, along with polished stone, implements and fragments of pottery.[109]

8. The Indo-Eranic Peoples.

The colony of the Aryans which pushed its way furthest to the east was the Indo-Eranic. Its various dialects prove conclusively that its ancestral tribe, when on European soil, occupied a position between the Slavonic and Hellenic peoples, probably between the Danube and the Egean Sea. Its latest contingent, the Armenian people, was a branch of the Thracian Briges, and occupied their territory in Asia Minor about 700 B. C. The main migration preceded them at least two thousand years, and divided into two branches, one establishing its chief power between the Caspian Sea and the Indian Ocean, the other crossing the Hindu-Kusch range and gradually obtaining the chief control of Hindostan. The former includes the Eranic, the latter the Indic groups of the Aryac stock.

The ancient representatives of the Eranic peoples were the old Bastrians and Persians. In the language of the former, sometimes called Zend, their sacred book, the Zend-avesta, was written probably about 500 B. C., and in the latter many cuneiform inscriptions are preserved, dating somewhat later.

Their modern descendants are the Persians and Parsees, the tribes of Afghanistan, Beluchistan, Kurdistan, and Luristan, and the Ossetes, who dwell in the vales of the central Caucasus.[110] Most of these are Mohammedans in religion, and in a backward condition of civilization. Their physical appearance speaks of frequent intermixtures with Mongolic and Semitic elements.

The ordinary rural population of Persia are called the Tadchiks. They are diligent agriculturists, and devoted likewise to commercial pursuits. In the latter capacity they are often met from Constantinople to China. Their language is usually the modern Persian, an Aryac dialect which has departed from the original inflectional standard almost as much as the modern English. Those who live in Kaschgar, however, speak Turkish, while retaining the physical traits of their Aryac ancestry.

Modern Persian has developed an interesting literature, consisting chiefly of poetry and works of imagination.

The Afghans and Beluchis are the nearest related to the Indian stock. Their dialects are derived from the Sanscrit, and in appearance they resemble the Indo-Aryans rather than the Persian. The assertion of some ethnographers that they are of Semitic affinities has been disproved. They are, however, mixed with Semitic and Dravidian blood. Although historically established about their present locality since the days of Alexander the Great, they retain faint traditions that their ancestors came from the west, which has led some to suppose them of Syrian extraction.[111] In religion they are generally fanatical Mohammedans, and their nationality is a loose federation of independent clans.

The Indic branch of this colony entered Hindostan as late as 2000-1500 B. C. Its language was then as closely akin to the Bactrian as, say, Italian and French are to-day. Its members were roving herdsmen, and first occupied the valleys of the Punjaub, driving before them the Dravidas, a non-Aryac folk, who had occupied the land. The priestly class of these colonists were called Brahmans, their dialect Sanscrit, and in this we have preserved from that remote epoch many religious chants called the Rig Veda, committed to writing probably about 500 B. C. The original tongue soon split up into many dialects, as the Pali, the Prakrit and the modern Hindoostantee.

The population of the Indian peninsula to-day, who speak these dialects and are more or less of Aryac blood, numbers nearly a hundred million. They include the Rajpoots, the Djats, the Hindoos, the Hunzas, and numerous other tribes and castes. The ubiquitous gipsies or Romany are a wandering branch of these who left India as late as the twelfth or thirteenth century, and have been roving over Europe ever since.

The earliest Indo-Aryans had undoubtedly retained many pure Aryac traits. They were of medium height, oval faces, handsome regular features, symmetrical in body, the skull dolichocephalic (about 77), the complexion brunette but not brown, the eyes hazel, the hair wavy. This is the type of the highest Brahmans to-day, and throughout all their history they have exercised the utmost care to preserve it intact. The institution of castes was undoubtedly established with this object in view, the word for “caste,” varna, in Sanscrit meaning “color.”

The mental aptitudes of the Indic immigrants are seen to advantage in their rapid conquest of Hindostan, in the civilization they developed, and in the vast literature which they created.[112] While in art and philosophy inferior to the Greeks, they succeeded in one point far beyond any other Aryac people, that is, in the formation of two of the most successful religions of the world, Brahmanism and Buddhism. The former, a pure pantheism, has been established nearly 4000 years, and still can claim votaries; the latter, theoretically an atheism, to-day has more believers than any other cult.