The physical type of the inhabitants of Europe during the bronze age varies according to country. In England they were sub-brachycephals (ceph. ind. 81), of whom the remains found in the “round barrows” have been described by Thurnam and Beddoe. In Sweden and Denmark they were dolichocephals or mesocephals, tall and fair-haired, as far as one can gather from the remains of hair found in the burial-places (Montelius and S. Hansen). In the valley of the Rhine and Southern Germany they were typical dolichocephals, above the medium stature (type of the “Reihengräber” or row-graves, established by Holder and studied by Ranke, Lehmann-Nietsche, and others). In Switzerland, in the pile-dwellings, the neolithic brachycephals, of whom we have spoken, were succeeded in the bronze age by dolichocephals similar to those of Germany. During the Hallstattian period of the “iron age,” we notice the persistence of the dolichocephalic and tall type in the row-graves of the Rhine and Mein valleys; while during the following period of the same age (that of La Tène or the Marnian), we find in the forms of the skulls exhumed from the burial-places a diversity almost as great as that which is seen in the populations of the present day.
The ages of bronze and iron, as we have seen, overlapped, in certain regions, the historic period, the period of the Phœnician voyages, the development of Egypt, the origin of Greek civilisation; and yet it is very difficult to say to what peoples known to history must be attributed the characteristic civilisations of each of the periods of the age of metals, and what were the languages spoken by these peoples. Most historians believed until quite recently that the Euscarians, and perhaps the Ligurians or Lygians of Western Europe, as well as the Iberians, the Pelasgian Tursans or Turses[362] of the three southern peninsulas of our continent, were the “autochthones,” or rather the oldest European peoples known to history. These would then be the probable descendants of the palæolithic Europeans, the races of Neanderthal, Spy, and Chancelade. Further, according to the philologists and historians, these peoples spoke non-Aryan languages, and at a certain period, which D’Arbois de Jubainville[363] places vaguely at twenty or twenty-five centuries B.C., Europe was invaded by the Aryans, coming from Asia, who imposed their languages on the autochthones. The Basque language of the present day, derived from the Euscarian, is the only dialect surviving this transformation. The central point for the ethnographic history of Europe is, according to the philologists, the arrival of the Aryans.
But who were these Aryans? Nobody quite knows. It is no part of my plan to write the history of the Aryan controversy.[364] It is enough to say that men of acknowledged authority in science (Pott, Grimm, Max Müller) have maintained for a long time, without any solid proof, the existence not only of a primitive Aryan language, which gave birth to the dialects of nearly every people of Europe, but also of an “Aryan race,” supposed to have sprung up “somewhere” in Asia, one part migrating towards India and Persia, while the remainder made its way by slow stages to Europe. Generations of scientific men have accepted this hypothesis, which, after all, had no other foundation than such aphorisms as “ex oriente lux” put forward by Pott, or “the irresistible impulse towards the west” invented by Grimm. It must, however, be mentioned that objections against this hypothesis by recognised authorities were raised as soon as it was promulgated; they came from philologists like Latham (1855), ethnographers like d’Omalius d’Halloy, anthropologists like Broca (1864); but it was only about 1880 that a somewhat lively reaction took place against the current ideas, and it originated in the camp of the philologists themselves. De Saussure, Sayce, and others, returning to the ideas expressed long before by Benfey, rightly observed that the assumed close relationship between Sanscrit and Zend and the primitive Aryan language rests solely on the fact of the archaic forms of these two dialects being preserved to the present time in written monuments, while the Aryan languages of Europe do not possess documents so ancient. They said further, that the European languages of the present day, such as Lithuanian, for example, are much nearer the primitive Aryan forms than the Asiatic dialects, Hindu for example. As to the Asiatic origin of the Aryans, a somewhat rude blow was struck at this second hypothesis by Poesche and Penka, who, taking up the ideas of Linné and d’Omalius d’Halloy on the exclusive existence in Europe of fair-haired populations, identified these populations, without any proof, it is true, with the Aryans.[365] In reality, the hypothesis of the fair-haired “Aryan race,” tall and dolichocephalic (Fig. [88]), indigenous to Europe, does not rest on a firmer foundation than that of the “Aryan race” coming from Asia.
Anthropology is powerless to say if the ancient owners of the dolichocephalic skulls in Southern Europe spoke an Aryan language or not. Moreover, the works of modern philologists, with Oscar Schrader[366] at their head, show that we can no longer speak to-day of an “Aryan race,” but solely of a family of Aryan languages, and perhaps of a primitive Aryan civilisation which had preceded the separation of the different Aryan dialects from their common stock.
FIG. 88.—Islander of Lewis (Hebrides), Northern Race.
(Phot. Beddoe.)
This civilisation, as reconstituted by O. Schrader, differs much from that which Pictet had sketched out in his essay on “Linguistic Palæontology.” This was something analogous to the neolithic civilisation; metals were unknown in it (with the exception, perhaps, of copper), but agriculture and the breeding of cattle had already reached a fair stage of development. However, there is nothing to prove that peoples speaking non-Aryan languages had not been in possession of the same civilisation, which with them would be developed in an independent manner. Hence we see the uselessness of looking for a centre from which this Aryan culture might have proceeded. The only question which we may still ask ourselves is, what was the point from which diffusion of the Aryan languages in Europe began. This point no one at the present time seeks any longer in Asia. It is in Europe, and what we have to do is to define it (S. Reinach). Latham and d’Omalius d’Halloy located the habitat of the primitive Aryans in the south or south-east of Russia. Penka had placed it in Scandinavia. Other learned authorities have selected intermediate points between these extremes.[367]
On the whole, the Aryan question to-day has no longer the importance which was formerly given to it. All that we can legitimately suppose is that, in the period touching the neolithic age, the inhabitants of Europe were Aryanised from the point of view of language, without any notable change in the constitution of their physical type, or, probably, of their civilisation.
Migrations of European Peoples during the Historic Period.—It would require volumes to relate even succinctly all the movements and dislocations of European peoples. We can only recall here the more salient facts.