119: 15. Balkh. Balkh, in Afghanistan, was the capital of Bactria, the ancient name of the country between the range of the Hindu Kush and the Oxus, and is now for the most part a mass of ruins, situated on the right bank of the Balkh River. The antiquity and greatness of the place are recognized by the native populations who speak of it as the “Mother of Cities,” and it is certain that at a very early date it was the rival of Ecbatana, Nineveh, and Babylon.
Bactria was subjugated by Cyrus and from then on formed one of the satrapies of the Persian Empire. Zaborowski, 1, p. 43, says: “After the conquests of Alexander there was founded a Greco-Bactrian kingdom ... which embraced Sogdiana, Bactria and Afghanistan. The Greco-Bactrian kings struck a quantity of coins. They bore a double legend, the one Greek, the other still called Bactrian, which is not Zend, nor even the language really spoken in Bactria. It is a popular dialect derived from Sanskrit.” Again on p. 185: “Zend has been called, and is still called, Bactrian or Old Bactrian, it may be because Bactria has been conceived as the original country or an ancient place of sojourn of the Persians; it may be because Zoroaster, a Median Magus, had, according to a legend, fled to the Bactrians where he found protection under Prince Vishtaspa. Eulogy of this prince is often incorporated in the sayings of Zoroaster.”
Later a new race appeared, tribes called Scythians by the Greeks, amongst which the Tochari, identical with the Yuë-Chih of the Chinese, were the most important. According to Chinese sources, they entered Sogdiana in 159 B. C.; in 139 they conquered Bactria, and during the next generation they had made an end to the Greek rule in eastern Iran. In the middle of the first century B. C. the whole of eastern Iran and western India belonged to the great “Indo-Scythian” Empire. In the third century the Kushan dynasty began to decline; about 320 A. D. the Gupta Empire was founded in India. In the fifth the Ephtalites, or “White Huns,” subjugated Bactria; then the Turks, about A. D. 560, overran the country north of the Oxus. In 1220 Jenghis Khan sacked Balkh and levelled all buildings capable of defence, while Timur repeated this treatment in the fourteenth century. Notwithstanding this, Marco Polo could still, in the following century, describe it as “a noble city and a great.”
See also Raphael Pumpelly, Explorations in Turkestan, where 10,000 years is said to be the age of the remains of early civilization. More modern authorities, however, do not accept these ancient dates.
119: 21. Osborn, 1, p. 479.
120: 1 seq. Osborn, 1, pp. 493–495; Ripley, pp. 486–487, and also S. Reinach, 3, and G. Sergi, 2, pp. 199–220.
120: 28 seq. Oman, England before the Norman Conquest, pp. 642 seq., says: “The position which he [Harold] chose is that where the road from London to Hastings emerges from the forest, on the ground named Senlac, where the village of Rattle now stands.... This hill formed the battleground.... On reaching the lower slopes of the English position the archers began to let fly their shafts, and not without effect, for as long as the shooting was at long range, there was little reply, since Harold had but few bowmen in his ranks, (the Fyrd, it is said, came to the fight with no defensive weapons but the shield, and were ill-equipped, with javelins and instruments of husbandry turned to warlike uses), and the abattis, whatever its length or height, would not give complete protection to the English. But when the advance reached closer quarters, it was met with a furious hail of missiles of all sorts—darts, lances, casting axes, and stone clubs such as William of Poictiers describes, and the Bayeux Tapestry portrays—rude weapons, more appropriate to the neolithic age.... Many a moral has been drawn from this great fight.... Neither desperate courage, nor numbers that must have been at least equal to those of the invader, could save from defeat an army which was composed in too great a proportion of untrained troops, and which was behind the times in its organization.... But the English stood by the customs of their ancestors, and, a few years before, Earl Ralph’s attempt to make the thegnhood learn cavalry tactics (see the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), had been met by sullen resistance and had no effect.”
121 : 4. See the note top. 128 : 2.
121 : 15. F. Keller, The Lake-Dwellings of Switzerland and Other Parts of Europe; Schenck, La Suisse préhistorique, pp. 533–549; G. and A. de Mortillet, Le Préhistorique, part 3, and Munro, The Lake Dwellings of Europe. The lake-dwelling, known as Pont de la Thièle, between the lakes of Bienne and Neuchâtel, according to Grilliéron’s calculations, is dated 5000 B. C. See Keller, p. 462; Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 29; Avebury, Prehistoric Times, p. 401; and De Mortillet, Le Préhistorique, p. 621.
121 : 17. Schenck, p. 190, says concerning Switzerland: “There were three [cultural] stages, stone, bronze, and iron.... On the other hand, from the anthropological point of view, this subdivision can also be made. In the first stage [Neolithic Lacustrian], we find only brachycephalic crania; in the second there are an almost equal number of brachycephalic and dolichocephalic; in the third there is a predominance of dolichocephalic” (that is, Schenck divides the Neolithic into three periods according to skulls, and the last runs into the age transitionary to bronze).