Another attempt to solve the Pelasgian problem is that of E. Meyer[1098]. After enumerating the various areas said to have been occupied by the Pelasgians "ein grosses Urvolk" who ranged from Asia Minor to Italy, he pricks the bubble by saying that in reality there were no Pelasgians save in Thessaly, in the fruitful plain of Peneus, hence called "Pelasgic Argos[1099]," and later Pelasgiotis. They, like the Dorians, invaded Crete from Thessaly and at the beginning of the first millennium were defeated and enslaved by the incoming Thessalians. These are the only true Pelasgians. The other so-called Pelasgians are the descendants of an eponymous Pelasgos who in genealogical poetry becomes the ancestor of mankind. Since the Arcadians were regarded as the earliest of the indigenous peoples, Pelasgos was made the ancestor of the Arcadians. The name "Pelasgic Argos" was transferred from Thessaly to the Peloponnesian city. Attic Pelasgians were derived from a mistake of Hecataeus[1100]. So the legend grew. The only real Pelasgian problem, concludes Meyer, is whether the Thessalian Pelasgians were a Greek or pre-Greek people, and he is inclined to favour the latter view. The identity of "the most mysterious people of antiquity" is further obscured by philology, for, as P. Giles points out, their name appears merely to mean "the people of the sea," so that "they do not seem to be in all cases the same stock[1101]."
Whether we call them Pelasgians or no, there would seem to be little doubt that the splendours of Aegean civilisation which have been and still are being gradually revealed by the researches of British, Italian, American and German archaeologists are to be attributed to an indigenous people of Mediterranean type, occupying an area of which Crete was the centre, from the Stone Age, right through the Bronze Age, down to the Northern invasions of the second millennium and the introduction of iron. In range this culture included Greece with its islands, Cyprus, and Western Anatolia, and its influence extended westwards to Sicily, Italy, Sardinia and Spain, and eastwards to Syria and Egypt. Its chief characteristics are (1) an indigenous script both pictographic and linear, with possible affinities in Hittite, Cypriote and South-west Anatolian scripts, but hitherto indecipherable; (2) a characteristic art attempting "to express an ideal in forms more and more closely approaching to realities[1102]," exhibited in frescoes, pottery, reliefs, sculptures, jewelry etc.; (3) a distinctive architectural style, and (4) type of tomb, which have no parallels elsewhere. Excavations at Cnossos go far towards establishing a chronology for the Aegean area. At the base is an immensely thick neolithic deposit, above which come pottery and other objects of Minoan Period I. 1, which are correlated by Petrie with objects found at Abydos, referred by him to the 1st Dynasty (4000 B.C.). Minoan Period II. 2 corresponds with the Egyptian XII Dynasty (2500 B.C.), characteristic Cretan pottery of this period being found in the Fayum. Minoan Period III. 1 and 2 synchronises with Dynasty XVIII (1600 to 1400 B.C.). Iron begins to be used for weapons after Period III. 3, and is commonly attributed to incursions from the north, the Dorian invasion of the Greek authors, about 1000 B.C. which led to the destruction of the palace of Cnossos and the substitution of "Geometric" for "Mykenaean" art.
Range of the Hamites in Africa.
Turning to the African branch of the Mediterranean type, we find it forming not merely the substratum, but the great bulk of the inhabitants throughout all recorded time from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, and from the Mediterranean to Sudan, although since Muhammadan times largely intermingled with the kindred Semitic stock (mainly Arabs) in the north and west, and in the east (Abyssinia) with the same stock since prehistoric times. All are comprised by Sergi[1103] in two main divisions:—
1. Eastern Hamites, answering to the Ethiopic Branch of some writers, of somewhat variable type, comprising the Old and Modern Egyptians now mixed with Semitic (Arab) elements; the Nubians, the Bejas, the Abyssinians, collective name of all the peoples between Khor Barka and Shoa (with, in some places, a considerable infusion of Himyaritic or early Semitic blood from South Arabia); the Gallas (Gallas proper, Somals, and Afars or Danákils); the Masai and Ba-Hima.
2. Northern Hamites, the Libyan Race or Berber (Western) Branch of some writers, comprising the Mediterranean Berbers of Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli; the Atlantic Berbers (Shluhs and others) of Morocco; the West Saharan Berbers commonly called Tuaregs; the Tibus of the East Sahara; the Fulahs, dispersed amongst the Sudanese Negroes; the Guanches of the Canary Islands.
The Eastern Hamites.
Of the Eastern Hamites he remarks generally that they do not form a homogeneous division, but rather a number of different peoples either crowded together in separate areas, or dispersed in the territories of other peoples. They agree more in their inner than in their outer characters, without constituting a single ethnical type. The cranial forms are variable, though converging, and evidently to be regarded as very old varieties of an original stock. The features are also variable, converging and characteristic, with straight or arched (aquiloid) nose quite different from the Negro; lips rather thick, but never everted as in the Negro; hair usually frizzled, not wavy; beard thin; skin very variable, brown, red-brown, black-brown, ruddy black, chocolate and coffee-brown, reddish or yellowish, these variations being due to crossings and the outward physical conditions.
The Western "Moors."
In this assumption Sergi is supported by the analogous case of the western Berbers between the Senegal and Morocco, to whom Collignon and Deniker[1104] restrict the term "Moor," as an ethnical name. The chief groups, which range from the Atlantic coast east to the camping grounds of the true Tuaregs[1105], are the Trarsas and Braknas of the Senegal river, and farther north the Dwaïsh (Idoesh), Uled-Bella, Uled-Embark, and Uled-en-Nasúr. From a study of four of these Moors, who visited Paris in 1895, it appears that they are not an Arabo-Berber cross, as commonly supposed, but true Hamites, with a distinct Negro strain, shown especially in their frizzly hair, bronze colour, short broad nose, and thickish lips, their general appearance showing an astonishing likeness to the Bejas, Afars, Somals, Abyssinians, and other Eastern Hamites. This is not due to direct descent, and it is more reasonable to suppose "that at the two extremities of the continent the same causes have produced the same effects, and that from the infusion of a certain proportion of black blood in the Egyptian [eastern] and Berber branches of the Hamites, there have sprung closely analogous mixed groups[1106]." From the true Negro they are also distinguished by their grave and dignified bearing, and still more by their far greater intelligence.