Man, Past and Present

by A. H. Keane

"Aryan" Migrations.

With trade communications thus stretching across Europe from south to north, and from east to extreme west, it would seem not improbable that movements of peoples were equally unrestricted, and this would account for the appearance on the threshold of history of various peoples formerly grouped together on account of their language, as "Aryan." J. L. Myres, however, is inclined to attribute "the coming of the North" to the same type of climatic impulse which induced the Semitic swarms described above (p. 489). After referring to the earliest occurrence of Indo-European names[1195], he continues "Before the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt there had been a very extensive raid of Indo-European-speaking folk by way of the Persian plateau, as far as the Syrian coastland and the interior of Asia Minor." These raids coincide with a new cultural feature of great significance. "It is of the first importance to find that it is in the dark period which immediately precedes the Eighteenth Dynasty revival—when Egypt was prostrate under mysterious 'Shepherd Kings,' and Babylon under Kassite invaders equally mysterious—that the civilized world first became acquainted with one of the greatest blessings of civilisation, the domesticated horse. The period of Arabian drought, which drove forth the 'Canaanite' emigrants, may have had its counterpart on the northern steppe, to provoke the migration of these horsemen." He adds, however, "our knowledge both of the extent of these droughts and of the chronology of both these migrations, is too vague for this to be taken as more than a provisional basis for more exact enquiry[1196]."

Indo-European Cradle.

The attempt has often been made to locate the original home of the Indo-European people by an appeal to philology, and idyllic pictures have been drawn up of the "Aryan family" consisting of the father the protector, the mother the producer, and the children "whose name implied that they kept everything clean and neat[1197]." They were regarded as originally pastoral and later agricultural, ranging over a wide area with Bactria for its centre. With advancing knowledge of what is primitive in Indo-European this circumstantial picture crumbled to pieces, and Feist[1198] reduces all inferences deducible from linguistic palaeontology to the sole "argumentum ex silencio" (which he regards as distinctly untrustworthy in itself), that the "Urheimat" was a country in which in the middle of the third millennium B.C. such southern animals as lion, elephant, and tiger, were unknown. It was commonly assumed that the "Aryan cradle" was in Asia, and the suggestion of R. G. Latham in 1851 that the original home was in Europe was scouted by one of the most eminent writers on the subject—Victor Hehn—as lunacy possible only to one who lived in a country of cranks[1197]. But since this date, there has been a shifting of the "Urheimat" further and further west. O. Schrader[1199] places it in South Russia, G. Kossinna[1200] and H. Hirt[1201] support the claims of Germany, while K. Penka and many others go still further north, deriving both language and tall fair dolichocephalic speakers (proto-Teutons) from Scandinavia[1202].

F. Kauffmann[1203], noting the contrast between the cultures associated with pre-neolithic and with neolithic kitchen-middens, is prepared to attribute the former to aboriginal inhabitants, Ligurians, and, further north, Kvaens (Finns, Lapps), and the neolithic civilisation of Europe to Indo-Europeans. "Thus the neolithic Indo-Europeans would already have advanced as far as South Sweden in the Litorina period of the Baltic, during the oak-period."

On the other hand the discovery of Tocharish has inclined E. Meyer[1204] to reconsider an Asiatic origin, but the information as to this language is too fragmentary to be conclusive on this point. After reviewing the various theories Giles[1205] concludes "in the great plain which extends across Europe north of the Alps and Carpathians and across Asia north of the Hindu Kush there are few geographical obstacles to prevent the rapid spread of peoples from any part of its area to any other, and, as we have seen, the Celts and the Hungarians etc. have in the historical period demonstrated the rapidity with which such migrations could be made. Such migrations may possibly account for the appearance of a people using a centum language so far east as Turkestan[1206]."

Indo-European Type.

More acrimonious than the discussion of the original home is the dispute as to the original physical type of the Indo-European-speaking people. It was almost a matter of faith with Germans that the language was introduced by tall fair dolichocephals of Nordic type. On the other hand the Gallic school sought to identify the Alpine race as the only and original Aryans. The futility of the whole discussion is ably demonstrated by W. Z. Ripley in his protest against the confusion of language and race[1207]. Feist[1208] summarises our information as follows. All that we can say about the physical type of the "Urvolk" is that since the Indo-Europeans came from a northerly region[1209] (not yet identified) it is surmised that they belonged to the light-skinned people. The observation that mountain folk of Indo-Germanic speech in southern areas, such as the Ossets of the Caucasus, the Kurds of the uplands of Armenia and Irania, and the Tajiks of the western Pamirs not infrequently exhibit fair hair or blue eyes supports this view. Nevertheless, as he points out, brachycephals are not hereby excluded. His own conclusion, which naturally results from a review of the whole evidence, is that the "Urvolk" was not a pure race, but a mixture of different types. Already in neolithic times races in Europe were no longer pure, and in France "formed an almost inextricable medley" and Feist assumes with E. de Michelis[1210] that the Indo-Europeans were a conglomerate of peoples of different origins who in prehistoric times were welded together into an ethnic unity, as the present English have been formed from pre-Indo-European Caledonians (Picts and Scots), Celts, Roman traders and soldiers and later Teutonic settlers[1211].

Date of Indo-European expansion.

The evidence that Indo-Europeans were already in existence in Mesopotamia, Syria and Irania about the middle of the second millennium B.C. has already been mentioned. About the same time the Vedic hymns bear witness to the appearance of the Aryans of Western India. The formation of an Aryan group with a common language, religion and culture is a process necessarily requiring considerable length of time, so that their swarming off from the Indo-European parent group must be pushed back to far into the third millennium. At this period there are indications of the settling of the Greeks in the southern promontories of the Balkan peninsula at latest about 2000 B.C., while Thracian and Illyrian peoples may have filled the mainland, though the Dorians occupied Epirus, Macedonia, and perhaps Southern Illyria. Indo-European stocks were already in occupation of Central Italy. It would appear therefore that the period of the Indo-European community, before the migrations, must be placed at the end of the Stone Ages, at the time when copper was first introduced. Thus it seems legitimate to infer that the expansion of the Indo-Europeans began about 2500 B.C. and the furthest advanced branches entered into the regions of the older populations and cultures at latest after the beginning of the second millennium[1212]. About 1000 B.C. we find three areas occupied by Indo-European-speaking peoples, all widely separated from each other and apparently independent. These are (1) the Aryan groups in Asia; (2) the Balkan peninsula together with Central and Lower Italy, and the Mysians and Phrygians of Asia Minor (possibly the Thracians had already advanced across the Danube); and (3) Teutons, Celts and Letto-Slavs over the greater part of Germany and Scandinavia, perhaps also already in Eastern France and in Poland. The following centuries saw the advance of Iranians to South Russia and further west, the pressing of the Phrygians into Armenia, and lastly the Celtic migrations in Western Europe.