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.