Man, Past and Present

by A. H. Keane

The Sarmatians.

Owing to these early crossings André Lefèvre goes so far as to say that "there is no Slav race[1295]," but only nations of divers more or less pure types, more or less crossed, speaking dialects of the same language, who later received the name of Slavs, borne by a prehistoric tribe of Sarmatians, and meaning "renowned," "illustrious[1296]." Both their language and mythologies, continues Lefèvre, point to the vast region near Irania as the primeval home of the Slav, as of the Celtic and Germanic populations. The Sauromatae or Sarmatae of Herodotus[1297], who had given their name to the mass of Slav or Slavonised peoples, still dwelt north of the Caucasus and south of the Budini between the Caspian, the Don and Sea of Azov; "after crossing the Tanais (Don) we are no longer in Scythia; we begin to enter the lands of the Sauromatae, who, starting from the angle of the Palus Moeotis (Sea of Azov), occupy a space of 15 days' march, where are neither trees, fruit-trees, nor savages. Above the tract fallen to them the Budini occupy another district, which is overgrown with all kinds of trees[1298]." Then Herodotus seems to identify these Sarmatians with the Scythians, whence all the subsequent doubts and confusion. Both spoke the same language, of which seven distinct dialects are mentioned, yet a number of personal names preserved by the Greeks have a certain Iranic look, so that these Scythian tongues seem to have been really Aryan, forming a transition between the Asiatic and the European branches of the family.

The probable explanation is that the Scythians[1299] were a horde which came down from Upper Asia, conquered an Iranian-speaking people, and in time adopted the speech of its subjects. E. H. Minns[1300] suggests that the settled Scythians represent the remains of the Iranian population, and the nomads the conquering peoples. These were displaced later by the Sarmatians, and Scythia becomes merely a geographical term. Skulls dug up in Scythic graves throw no light on racial affinities, some being long, and some short, but in customs there is a close analogy with the Mongols, though, as Minns points out, "the natural conditions of steppe-ranging dictated the greater part of them."

Both Slav and Germanic tribes had probably in remote times penetrated up the Danube and the Volga, while some of the former under the name of Wends (Venedi[1301]), appear to have reached the Carpathians and the Baltic shores down the Vistula. The movement was continued far into medieval times, when great overlappings took place, and when numerous Slav tribes, some still known as Wends, others as Sorbs, Croats, or Chekhs, ranged over Central Europe to Pomerania and beyond the Upper Elbe to Suabia. Most of these have long been Teutonised, but a few of the Polabs[1302] survive as Wends in Prussian and Saxon Lausatz, while the Chekhs and Slovaks still hold their ground in Bohemia and Moravia, as the Poles do in Posen and the Vistula valley, and the Rusniaks or Ruthenes with the closely allied "Little Russians," in the Carpathians, Galicia, and Ukrania.

The Southern Slavs.

It was from the Carpathian[1303] lands that came those Yugo-Slavs ("Southern Slavs") who, under the collective name of Sorbs (Serbs, Servians), moved southwards beyond the Danube, and overran a great part of the Balkan peninsula and nearly the whole of Greece in the 6th and 7th centuries. They were the Khorvats[1304] or Khrobats[1304] from the upland valleys of the Oder and Vistula, whom, after his Persian wars, Heraclius invited to settle in the wasted provinces south of the Danube, hoping, as Nadir Shah did later with the Kurds in Khorasan, to make them a northern bulwark of the empire against the incursions of the Avars and other Mongolo-Turki hordes. Thus was formed the first permanent settlement of the Yugo-Slavs in Croatia, Istria, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and the Nerenta valley in 680, under the five brothers Klukas, Lobol, Kosentses, Múkl, and Khrobat, with their sisters Tuga and Buga. These were followed by the kindred Srp (Sorb) tribes from the Elbe, who left their homes in Misnia and Lusatia, and received as their patrimony the whole region between Macedonia and Epirus, Dardania, Upper Moesia, the Dacia of Aurelian, and Illyria, i.e. Bosnia and Servia. The lower Danube was at the same time occupied by the Severenses, "Seven Nations," also Slavs, who reached to the foot of the Hemus beyond the present Varna. Nothing could stem this great Slav inundation, which soon overflowed into Macedonia (Rumelia), Thessaly, and Peloponnesus, so that for a time nearly the whole of the Balkan lands, from the Danube to the Mediterranean, became a Slav domain—parts of Illyria and Epirus (Albania) with the Greek districts about Constantinople alone excepted.

The Albanians.

Hellas, as above seen, has recovered itself, and the Albanians[1305], direct descendants of the ancient Illyrians, still hold their ground and keep alive the last echoes of the old Illyrian language, which was almost certainly a proto-Aryan form of speech probably intermediate, as above-mentioned, between the Italic and Hellenic branches. They even retain the old tribal system, so that there are not only two main sections, the northern Ghegs and the southern Toshks, but each section is divided into a number of minor groups[1306], such as the Malliesors (Klementi, Pulati, Hoti, etc.) and Mirdites (Dibri, Fandi, Matia, etc.) in the north, and the Toxides (whence Toshk) and the Yapides (Lapides) in the south. The southerners are mainly Orthodox Greeks, and in other respects half-Hellenised Epirotes, the northerners partly Moslem and partly Roman Catholics of the Latin rite. From this section came chiefly those Albanians who, after the death (1467) of their valiant champion, George Castriota (Scanderbeg, "Alexander the Great"), fled from Turkish oppression and formed numerous settlements, especially in Calabria and Sicily, and still retain their national traditions.

The Russians.

In their original homes, located by some between the Bug and the Dnieper, the Slavs have not only recovered from the fierce Mongolo-Turki and Finn tornadoes, by which the eastern steppes were repeatedly swept for over 1500 years after the building of the Great Wall, but have in recent historic times displayed a prodigious power of expansion second only to that of the British peoples. The Russians (Great, Little, and White Russians), whose political empire now stretches continuously from the Baltic to the Pacific, have already absorbed nearly all the Mongol elements in East Europe, have founded compact settlements in Caucasia and West Siberia, and have thrown off numerous pioneer groups of colonists along all the highways of trade and migration, and down the great fluvial arteries between the Ob and the Amur estuary. They number collectively over 100 millions, with a domain of some nine million square miles. The majority belong to Deniker's Eastern race[1307] (a variety of the Alpine type), being blond, sub-brachycephalic and short, 1.64 m. (5 ft. 4½ ins.). The Little Russians in the South on the Black Mould belt are more brachycephalic and have darker colouring and taller stature. The White Russians in the West between Poland and Lithuania are the fairest of all.