At what time, then, did it take place? For two areas the question is answered at once; for European Turkey and for Asia Minor it has certainly taken place within the historical period. With these two exceptions, I believe, that, at the beginning of the historical period, the great Turk area was much the same as at present; less, perhaps, by a degree or two, on this frontier or that; but still essentially the same in kind. By in kind I mean ethnographically, i. e. that (subject to the aforesaid exceptions) the Turk tribes were conterminous with the same non-Turk tribes as at present. Let us apply this view in detail.
Siberian Frontier.—From Kasan to the Lake Baikal, the frontier is Finnish, Yeniseian, and Samöeid. I admit that the southern limits of all these families are likely to have been curtailed;—indeed I would argue that such has been the case. This, however, is a mere difference of degree.
There is no proof of any nations other than those belonging to the Finn, Yeniseian, and Samöeid divisions having ever been in contact with the Northern Turks, and vice versâ.
Mongolian and Tibetan frontier.—There is not the shadow of historical evidence, nor even a tradition, which should induce us to believe that these two nations were ever less conterminous with each other, and with the Turk, than they are at present.
Persian frontier.—Reasons for supposing that tribes other than those of the Turk division ravaged Persia as early as the time of Cyrus, would lie in the incompatibility of any accounts of such invaders with the known facts concerning the Turks. I am not aware, however, that any such incompatibility exists. The names are different. No Sakæ or Massagetæ are known, under such denominations, as Turk tribes. Yet this scarcely constitutes even the shadow of an objection; since native names, and names by which tribes are known to nations other than their own, oftener differ than coincide.
The Caucasian frontier—the frontier of the Don.—Here the reasoning becomes more difficult. An invasion of Persia along the frontier from Bokhara to the Caspian, is an invasion which no existing nation could claim, except the Turk; since it is a rule in ethnological reasoning to consider every nation as indigenous to the country where it is first found, unless reason be shown to the contrary.
For the parts, however, between the Volga, Caucasus, and the Don (or even Dnieper), there is no such present unity of nation as between the Caspian and Bokhara; and an invasion that burst upon Persia from the north-west, or upon Greece from the north-east, might well be claimed for no less than four great ethnological sections.—1. The Turk. 2. The Slavonic. 3. The Circassian. 4. The Hungarian.
I will apply general principles to get at the different probabilities here involved.
1. The nation that invades both Persia and Europe is most probably the nation most intermediate to the two. This is in favour of the Cimmerians having come from the present country of the Nogays, rather than from the Ukraine, or from the Bashkir country, i.e., in favour of their being Turk rather than Slavonic or Hungarian.