225 : 11. Phrygians. Bury, History of Greece, pp. 46–48, says: “But about this very time (1287 B. C.) the Hittite power was declining and northwestern Asia Minor as far as the valley of the Sangarius, was wrested from their rule by swarms of new invaders from Europe. These were the Phrygians to whose race the Dardanians belonged and who were so closely akin to the Thracians that we may speak of the Phrygo-Thracian division of the Indo-European family.” On p. 44 we read: “The dynasty from which the Homeric kings, Agamemnon and Menelaus sprang, was founded according to Greek tradition, early in the 13th century (B. C.) by Pelops, a Phrygian. Agamemnon and Menelaus represent the Achæan stock.... The meaning of this Phrygian relationship is not clear.” But if we follow the extent of the Achæan invasions and the relation of the art and language of archaic Phrygia to archaic Greece, the difficulty seems solved. See Hall, Ancient History of the Near East, p. 475. The Encyclopædia Britannica (Phrygia) says: “According to unvarying Greek tradition the Phrygians were most closely akin to certain tribes of Macedonia and Thrace; and their near relationship to the Hellenic stock is proved by all that is known of their language and art, and is accepted by almost every modern authority.... The inference has been generally drawn that the Phrygians belonged to a stock widespread in the countries which lie around the Ægean Sea. There is, however, no conclusive evidence whether this stock came from the east, over Armenia, or was European in origin and crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor; but modern opinion inclines decidedly to the latter view”; and we may add that the recently demonstrated linguistic affiliations strengthen this assumption. See also Ridgeway, 1, pp. 396 and elsewhere; Peake, 2, p. 172; Feist, 5, p. 407; Félix Sartiaux, Troie, la guerre de Troie; and O. Schrader, Jevons translation, p. 430.
225 : 15. Cimmerians. See the note to p. 173 : 11.
225 : 17. Gauls and Galatians. See the note to p. 158 : 1.
225 : 19. Von Luschan, p. 243, says: “All western Asia was originally inhabited by a homogeneous, melanochroic race, with extreme hypsi-brachycephaly and with a ‘Hittite’ nose. About 4000 B. C. began a Semitic invasion from the southeast, probably from Arabia, by people looking like modern Bedawy. 2000 years later commenced a second invasion, this time from the northwest by xanthochrous and long-headed tribes like the modern Kurds, and perhaps connected with the historic Harri, Amorites, Tamahu and Galatians.
“The modern ‘Turks,’ Greeks and Jews are all three equally composed of these three elements, the Hititte, the Semitic, and the xanthochrous Nordic. Not so the Armenians and Persians. They, and still more, the Druses, Maronites, and the smaller sectarian groups of Syria and Asia Minor, represent the old Hittite element, and are little, or not at all, influenced by the somatic characters of alien invaders.”
Von Luschan means by Persians, the round-headed Medic element, which has always been in the majority and which has, at the present day, practically submerged the once powerful, dominant Nordic class, which he says is still seen not rarely in some old noble families.
225 : 20. Until rather recently nothing much was known about the wild Kurdish tribes living in southeast Anatolia, and what reports there were, were frequently conflicting. There are two kinds of Kurds, dark and light. More data has gradually accumulated, however, and it seems that the true Kurds are tall, blond people, who resemble very much the inhabitants of northern Europe.
Ratzel, History of Mankind, says, quoting Polak: “The Kurds are, in color of skin, hair and eyes, so little different to the northern, especially the Teutonic breed, that they might easily be taken for Germans. There is nothing to contradict this racial affinity in the reputation for honor and courage, which in spite of their rapacious tendencies, the Kurds enjoy wherever it has been found possible to compel them to labor or to the trade of arms. In Persia the Shah entrusts the security of his person to Kurdish officers rather than to any others. Their loyalty to their hereditary Wali, which neither Turks nor Persians have been able to shake, is also noted with praise. The Kurd prefers to wander with his herds and in the winter lives in caves like Xenophon’s Carduchi.... The Kurds are a highly mixed race of a type chiefly Iranian, which has been compared with the Afghan but is not homogeneous. The eastern Kurds must have received a larger infusion of Turkish blood than the western. ‘Husbandmen by necessity, fighters by inclination.’ says Moltke, ‘the Arab is more of a thief, the Kurd more of a warrior.’ They are a vigorous, violent race, running wild in tribal feuds and vendettas.... Their women hold a freer position than those of the Turks and Persians.” The quotation is from vol. III, p. 537.
Von Luschan, op. cit., p. 229, describes them thus: “[They] have long heads and generally blue eyes and fair hair. They are probably descended from the Kardouchoi and Gordyæans of old historians. They live southeast of the Armenian mountains. The western Kurds are dolichocephalic and more than half of them are fair. The eastern Kurds are little known but are apparently darker and more round-headed.”
Soane, in To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in Disguise, gives a very full description of them, confirming the above. There are so many tribes differing from one another, that only the briefest summary may be given. It is found on pp. 398 seq. “Judged as specimens of the human form, there is probably no higher standard extant that that of the Kurds. The northerner is a tall, thin man (obesity is absolutely unknown among the Kurds). The nose is long, thin and often a little hooked, the mouth small, the face oval and long. The men usually grow a long moustache, and invariably shave the beard. The eyes are piercing and fierce. Among them are many of yellow hair and bright blue eyes; and the Kurdish infant of this type, were he placed among a crowd of English children, would be indistinguishable from them, for he has a white skin. In the south the face is a little broader sometimes, and the frame heavier. Of forty men of the southern tribes taken at random, there were nine under six feet, though among some tribes the average height is five feet nine. The stride is long and slow, and the endurance of hardship great. They hold themselves as only mountain men can do, proudly and erect.... Many and many a man have I seen among them who might have stood for the picture of a Norseman. Yellow, flowing hair, a long drooping moustache, blue eyes, and a fair skin—one of the most convincing proofs, if physiognomy be a criterion (were their language not a further proof), that the Anglo-Saxon and Kurd are one and the same stock.” For a list of Kurdish tribes and their numbers and affiliations see Mark Sykes, vol. XXXVIII of the Jour. of the Roy. Anth. Soc. of Great Britain and Ireland, and Von Luschan, op. cit.