Fig. 68.—Distribution of Basque, Celtic, and Belgic Peoples, at dawn of History.
The ancient population of Sardinia is stated by Pausanias to be of Libyan extraction, and to bear a strong resemblance to the Iberians in physique and in habits of life, while that of Corsica is described by Seneca as Ligurian and Iberian. The ancient Libyans are represented at the present day by the Berber and Kabyle tribes which are, if not identical with, at all events cognate with the Basques. We may therefore infer that these two islands were formerly occupied by this non-Aryan race, as well as the adjacent continents of Northern Africa and Southern Europe.
The Basque Population the Oldest.
The relative antiquity of these two races in Europe may be arrived at by this distribution. The Basques, Sikani or Ligurian, are the oldest inhabitants, in their respective districts, known to the historian; while the Celts appear as invaders, pressing southwards and westwards on the populations already in possession, flooding over the Alps and under Brennus sacking Rome, and by their union with the vanquished in Spain constituting the Celtiberi. We may therefore be tolerably certain that the Basques held France and Spain before the invasion of the Celts, and that the non-Aryan peoples were cut asunder, and certain parts of them left—Ligurians, Sikani, and in part Sardinians and Corsicans—as ethnological islands, marking, so to speak, an ancient Basque non-Aryan continent which had been submerged by the Celtic populations advancing steadily westwards.
At the time of the Roman conquest of Gaul, the Belgæ were pressing on the Celts, just as the latter pressed the Basques, the Seine and the Marne forming their southern boundary, and in their turn being pushed to the west by the advance of the Germans in the Rhine provinces. Thus we have the oldest population, or Basque, invaded by the Celts, the Celts by the Belgæ, and these again by the Germans; their relative positions stamping their relative antiquity in Europe.
The Population of Britain.
The Celtic and Belgic invasion of Gaul repeated itself, as might be expected, in Britain. Just as the Celts pushed back the Iberian population of Gaul as far south as Aquitania, and swept round it into Spain, so they crossed over the Channel and overran the greater portion of Britain, until the Silures, identified by Tacitus[144] with the Iberians, were left only in those fastnesses that formed subsequently a bulwark for the Brit-Welsh against the English invaders. And just as the Belgæ pressed on the rear of the Celts as far as the Seine, so they followed them into Britain, and took possession of the “Pars Maritima,”[145] or southern counties. The unsettled condition of the country at the time of Cæsar’s invasion was, probably, due to the struggle then going on between Celts and Belgæ.
The evidence offered by history as to the distribution of these races confirms that which has been arrived at by the examination of the caves and tumuli. In the one case the Basque peoples are merely known in a fragmentary condition in Britain, Gaul, and Sicily, while in the other those fragments are joined together in such a way as to show that, in the neolithic age, they extended uninterrupedly through Western Europe, from the Pillars of Hercules in the south to Scotland in the north, before they were dispossessed by their broad-headed enemies. It is impossible to define with precision their ethnological relation to the non-Aryan inhabitants of Italy and the coasts of the Mediterranean, such as the Etruscans and Tyrrhenians. I am, however, inclined to hold that they are all branches of the same race of “Melanochroi,” differing far less from each other than the Celtic from the Scandinavian branch of the Aryan family.[146]