aphorism _ex oriente lux_, drew a wonderful picture of the westward
advance of the Wiros from their eastern home. Others filled in, largely
from their own imaginations, the remaining details. And so we get the
mid-nineteenth century view of these Aryan super-men, with a language
containing potentialities of all that is fine in literature, with a
social organisation and morality which was to reform benighted Europe,
worshipping deities which were the products either of solar or chthonic
myths or of diseases of language, setting forth from the western slopes
of the Himalayan _massif_, urged on “by an irresistible impulse”
towards the setting sun, migrating westward and ever westward, carrying
their wives and families in the famous Aryan cart provided for them by
a distinguished anthropologist.[436] Such was the view unanimously held
by all Europe, and which figures still in too many text-books. One man
only was left crying in the wilderness, or at least in the steppe, and
he was an Englishman. As Hehn[437] wrote in 1874, “so it came to pass
that in England, the native land of fads, there chanced to enter into
the head of an eccentric individual the notion of placing the cradle of
the Aryan race in Europe.”
Those of us who live “in that land of fads” may well be proud of Dr.
Latham, who advanced these views in 1851, and subsequently enlarged
upon them.[438] In due course nearly all other philologists followed
suit, and Max-Müller alone was unrepentent, and as late as 1887 wrote
“I should still say, as I said forty years ago, ‘Somewhere in Asia,’
and no more.”[439] But by then the Asiatic cradle had gone to the limbo
of exploded hypotheses.
In 1868 Benfey, in a preface to Fick’s work,[440] acknowledged the
value of Latham’s protests, and, arguing for the first time from the
type of evidence known as linguistic palæontology, advocated a European
as distinguished from an Asiatic cradle, and suggested, as Latham had
done earlier, the region north of the Black Sea. He was followed in
1871 by Geiger,[441] who with national pride wished to prove that the
super-man had always lived in the plain of North Germany, to which,
some years later, Piètrement[442] retorted by suggesting that Geiger’s
arguments would apply equally well to the neighbourhood of Lake Balkash
and the Ala-tau mountains.
In the same year in which Geiger’s work appeared Cuno made a notable
contribution to the hypothesis.[443] He contended that the original
undivided Wiros were not a small clan, but must have been a numerous,
nomad pastoral people, inhabiting an extensive steppe region. For
the evolution of the parent tongue with its elaborate grammar a long
period, several thousands of years, must have been needed, and during
this time the Wiros must have moved freely over the area of the cradle,
having frequent intercourse with one another, but little or none with
outsiders. These conditions, he thought, could only be obtained on a
vast plain, undivided by lofty mountain barriers or impassable forests;
this cradle must have been in a temperate climate, tolerably uniform
in character, where there would have been ample room for the growth of
a numerous people. Such an area can only be found in the great plain
of Northern Europe, stretching from the north of France to the Ural
mountains.
Further investigation has shown that much of this plain was filled with
dense forests and impassable morasses, but that the open steppe begins
in Russia, and extends uninterruptedly to the slopes of the Hindu Kush,
with certain westward prolongations, especially the sandy heaths to the
north of the Carpathians, stretching from the Russian steppe, across
Galicia, to the neighbourhood of Breslau. North of this, too, is a belt
of parkland, opening on to the steppe, where nomad herdsmen could drive
their cattle when the grass of the steppe became burnt up. Here, it
would seem, was an area which would meet the needs of the linguistic
palæontologist, and it was in this region that the Aryan cradle was
placed by Dr. Schrader in 1883,[444] and here it has remained without
opposition until quite recently.
During the last few months there has appeared the first volume of the
Cambridge History of India, to which Dr. Peter Giles had contributed
a chapter on the Aryans.[445] In this, in which he has repeated his
suggestion that these people should in future be called Wiros, he has
put forward views which differ in material respects from those hitherto
held. His suggestion is, in fact, that the Aryan cradle is to be sought
for in the plain of Hungary.
In contradistinction to views previously advanced, he believes that the
original Wiros were settled agriculturists and not nomad herdsmen.[446]
He bases this conclusion, apparently, on the fact that they knew of
corn. A careful study of all the evidence on this subject collected by
Schrader[447] convinces me, however, that it is far from certain that
the undivided Wiros were acquainted with cultivated grain, for the
terms used, few if any of which run through all the languages, may well
apply to wild grain, and oats grow wild on the Russian steppe,[448]
and may well have been used as food for man and beast. Moreover it is
not an unknown thing for nomad people to grow scratch crops of grain.
Such crops of barley I have myself seen grown by nomad Bedawin in the
clay deserts behind Alexandria. The steppe-folk, too, like most nomads,
were probably in the habit of making occasional raids on the settled
lands on their margin, and we have actual evidence that this occurred.
We know also that settled cultivators were living both at Tripolje and
at Anau on the edge of the steppe. The original Wiro word for grain
might well be the name they used for this kind of booty, nor need we
exclude the possibility that when times were hard they acquired grain
by trade from their settled neighbours, as Abraham, a nomad steppe-man,
purchased corn from Egypt. The argument from the words for grain seems
indecisive, and the balance of the evidence cited by Schrader seems in
favour of a nomad existence.
Dr. Giles feels that “the close similarity between the various
languages spoken by them would lead us to infer that they must have
lived for long in a severely circumscribed area, so that their
peculiarities developed for many generations in common.”[449] This, as
we have seen, was Cuno’s idea, and is an eminently sound conclusion.
But Dr. Giles would see in this circumscribed area one surrounded with
a ring of mountains, while Cuno thought that it demanded an extensive
steppe. The difference between the two views seems to depend upon
whether the Wiros were nomad or settled, and I have already given
reasons for believing them to have been nomads.
Dr. Giles objects to the steppe-cradle. He gives as his reason that
this region has not on the whole the characteristics required by the
conclusions drawn from linguistic palæontology;[450] on the other hand
Schrader, who has studied this side of philology more exhaustively
than most inquirers, believes that the conditions are fulfilled.[451]
Neither argument is perhaps conclusive, and both deserve serious
attention; the decision must rest upon evidence drawn from those other
sciences which deal with the far past.
We have found reason for believing that in neolithic days the Russian
steppe east of the Dnieper was inhabited by a nomad steppe-folk, who
had domesticated horses and cattle, and perhaps sheep. As they lived on
a plain they had probably not met with the goat, which is a mountain
beast, and it is to be noted that the name for goat varies in nearly
all the Wiro languages.[452] These nomad steppe-folk, who buried their
dead in a contracted position covered with red ochre under kurgans or
barrows, were, we believe, Nordic or proto-Nordic in type, and some,
at least, of their skeletons remind us of the Brünn-Brux-Combe Capelle
type,[453] who hunted horses in late Aurignacian and Solutrean times.
The state of civilisation and the area of distribution of those nomad
steppe-folk exactly corresponds with the requirements of the early
Wiros as postulated by Schrader, though it differs in some respects
from those demanded by Giles. On the other hand, in Magdalenian and
Azilian times, and perhaps during the earlier phases of the neolithic
age, the ancestors of these people may well have lived in the Hungarian
plain, and we have seen how some of them survived in Switzerland, at
Chamblandes, well into neolithic times.[454]
It is possible, then, that the circumscribed area, though not the
settled agricultural condition, demanded by Dr. Giles, may have been
true in the later phases of the upper palæolithic age. This, however,
he will not agree to, for he is persuaded that the _hiatus_, assumed by
the earlier archæologists, still exists, and that the upper palæolithic
age, as well as the lower, preceded the last ice age and belongs to a
very remote past.
Some archæologists, it is true, still hold to these views, and this
inflated chronology has not yet been abandoned by all. During the last
few years, however, the shorter dating[455] has become more generally
accepted, and this brings the whole of the neanthropic period into
relatively recent times, and gives us a continuous history from the
Aurignacian period to the present day. If Dr. Giles could be persuaded
to accept these more modern views on palæolithic chronology, many
of his difficulties would be removed, and he might agree to place
the Hungarian cradle of the Wiros in the latter part of the upper
palæolithic age.
Dr. Giles raises objections also to the continuity of the
Russio-Turkestan steppe, and maintains that a connection between
South Russia and the east, north of the Black Sea, would have been
impossible.[456] He is, therefore, disposed to take the Wiros to Persia
and India by way of Asia Minor.
The great objection which he cites to the northern passage is the
existence of the barren Ust Urt desert. Also the fact that the Caspian
has steadily been becoming more shallow and contracting in area. These
two points, if true, to some extent contradict one another. It is true,
doubtless, that at one time the Caspian had covered a greatly extended
area, but it is not so clear that its contraction has been a steady
progress. We have already seen, from the evidence cited by Ellsworth
Huntington,[457] that this contraction and expansion has probably
been intermittent. In any case, the contraction has been due to light
rainfall, and it is this light rainfall which has produced the desert
condition of the Ust Urt. When the Caspian expanded, it was because of
increased precipitation, when such parts of the Ust Urt as were not
inundated would have been a grassy steppe.
Dr. Giles suggests that at one time the Caspian and Aral seas were one
great inland sea, and that such was at one time the case is implied
by extracts from the writings of Herodotus.[458] But though this was
almost certainly the case during periods of relatively heavy rainfall,
the level would have to have risen well above the 200 metre contour to
have obstructed the passage between the Russian and Turkestan steppes.
Such a rise is quite unthinkable during the last 6000 years, for had
the surface been raised 220 feet above the present sea level the
Caspio-Aral Sea would have been connected with the Euxine.[459] Even
had the impossible occurred and the 200 metre contour been reached it
would have been quite easy to pass from one steppe area to another, by
crossing the southern slopes of the Urals, which are raised very little
above the plain and would form no obstacle to nomad tribes.
The Anatolian passage was by no means an easy route to the east, for
had the Wiros kept to the north they would have found difficulty in
crossing the Armenian mountains; further south they would have come
into contact with the peoples of Mesopotamia, and we should have found
evidence of their presence. That some of them passed this way about
2200 /B.C./ we have already seen, but others had passed eastwards
earlier, apparently by a different route, for otherwise it is difficult
to account for the presence of the Kassites on the Iranian plateau
in the time of Hammurabi. The complete absence of any evidence of a
movement eastward from the Hungarian plain in neolithic days, and the
fact that any such movement would have been compelled to cross the area
occupied by the settled Tripolje-folk, seem to be fatal to the literal
acceptance of this hypothesis.
Taking all factors, anthropological and archæological, geographical
and linguistic, into consideration, and in spite of the difference
in opinion expressed by Dr. Giles, whose authority to pronounce on
the linguistic data all must acknowledge, I am venturing to identify
the nomad steppe-folk with the primitive Wiros, while admitting the
possibility that the beginnings of their language may date back
to Magdalenian and Azilian times, when they may have been living
surrounded by the Carpathian ring.
/Chapter XIII/
P’S AND Q’S
We have seen that with one notable exception, little attempt has been
made to explain the early history of the Wiros since 1889, and the
position of the Aryan hypothesis has remained stationary.[460] It is
true that fresh evidences of such languages have been discovered in the
uplands of Asia, and a new group, known as Tocharian,[461] have been
identified. Certain affinities to the group have also been noted in the
Hittite language, which has been claimed by some writers to be a true
Wiro tongue.[462] But this view has not received general acceptance.
Little use, however, has been made of this fresh evidence towards
solving the problem of the Aryan cradle.
But early in 1891 an important communication was made to the
Philological Society by Professor, afterwards Sir, John Rhys.[463] This
paper raised a storm of hostile criticism, especially in Germany,[464]
and its conclusions have not found favour in philological circles. As,
however, some of Sir John’s conclusions coincide in certain particulars
with the reconstruction offered in the previous pages, based on other
evidence, the thesis demands reconsideration.
To summarise briefly, Rhys pointed out that the Celtic languages, now
confined to the north-western fringe of Europe, fell naturally into
two well-defined groups. One of these, the Gaelic, or as he preferred
to call it the Goidelic, was spoken in Ireland, North-West Scotland
and the Isle of Man. The other, formerly called Cymric, but by Rhys
styled Brythonic, was spoken in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. There are
several marked differences between these two groups of languages, the
most important being that the C in the Goidelic, which represents an
earlier Q or Qu, is replaced in Brythonic by a P or perhaps a B. Thus
the Celtic languages fall into two well-defined groups which may be
called the Q and P dialects.
Rhys pointed out, too, that in the Italian peninsula the same
phenomenon appeared. In Latin, and the dialects most closely allied to
it, Q or Qu was found, while in the Umbrian forms of speech, used over
the greater part of the peninsula this sound was replaced by P. Thus
there were Q and P dialects in Italy also.
He further pointed out that the Greek language, with certain
exceptions, was a true P dialect, for the Latin _equus_ corresponded to
the Greek ἱππὁς. He suggested, however, that the Ionic dialect used by
Herodotus and Hippocrates, which frequently had a κ where the standard
Greek had a π,[465] was a descendant of a form of Q speech, but that
the Qu had degenerated into κ, as it had into C in Goidelic.
Further, he pointed out that the Q dialects, Goidelic, Latin and Ionic
Greek, formed so to speak an outer ring, while Brythonic, Umbrian and
standard Greek lay within them. He argued from this that these tongues
had spread in two waves from a common centre, which he fixed in the
mountain zone of Central Europe, and thence the Q tongues had spread by
invasion, to be followed some few centuries later by a second invasion
of P people, who had driven the Q people further from the original home.
He suggested that the change of Q into P had been effected by a
conquering group of aliens, who had adopted the Wiro tongue from their
subjects, but retained some details of the phonological laws of their
original language, which accounted for this labialisation. He further
suggested that these alien invaders were the Alpine inhabitants of the
Swiss lake-dwellings.[466]
This paper was received with hostile criticism and derision, especially
by some German students of Celtic tongues.[467] It had little better
reception in France, and the British and Irish Celtic scholars, with a
few exceptions, treated the idea with contempt. The theory has never
received the consideration and fair criticism which a paper from so
eminent an authority on Celtic languages deserved.
The main facts as to the Celtic and Italic dialects are not in dispute.
There can be no question that in both of those areas both Q and P
groups are or were in existence, and that the Q are in the outer and
the P in the inner ring. With regard to Greek however, the case is
different, and it is generally considered that the dialect of Herodotus
and Hippocrates is purely local and not necessarily primitive, and
it has been pointed out that had the original Ionic dialect been a Q
tongue, signs of this would have been apparent in Homer. It is also
becoming more common to consider Greek as having closer affinities
with Persian than with Italic or Celtic, though one wonders whether
this connection is not being exaggerated as the pendulum swings from
the over-estimated resemblance formerly recognised between the two
languages of the Classical world.
We must, however, agree that the Greek part of Rhys’ hypothesis will
not stand, at least without considerable emendation, nor have we
found from our archæological investigations any reasons for believing
that the Alpine inhabitants of the Swiss lake-dwellings over-ran as
conquerors the surrounding regions. The evidence, in fact, points
in an opposite direction. The deletion of these two points is not
fatal to the hypothesis, and we may still consider that there is, on
philological evidence, a _prima-facie_ reason for believing that from
somewhere in Central Europe, from the area which we have termed the
Celtic cradle, two waves of invaders, of Wiro speech if not of Wiro
race, set out in various directions, that the Q was the earlier and the
P the later, and that both entered Italy and the Celtic lands.
We may further admit the possibility or even the probability, that an
alien element, not necessarily non-Wiro, had entered the Celtic cradle
before the departure of the second wave, and that it was to this alien
element that the labialisation was due. Lastly, we may admit that,
though evidence of the Q wave into Greece is non-proven, there is no
doubt of the arrival of the P people, but these P people spoke a tongue
showing greater affinities with Iranian speech, especially in their
names for weapons and other warlike paraphernalia,[468] than is to be
recognised in the other P tongues.
Now we have seen from the study of archæological evidence that the men
of the leaf-shaped sword passed at one time into Italy, where they
settled near Lake Fucino, and a little later some entered the Celtic
lands of the west, while earlier a few adventurers reached Greek lands.
Later some refugees from the mountain zone reached many parts of France
and the British Isles. All these seem to have come from the same
Celtic cradle and to have been of the same racial type or, to speak
more accurately, types. Later still, we have seen that the Koban folk,
who had learned the use of iron in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus,
returned to the Danube valley, after which some of them entered Greece
as Dorians, while others entered Italy with the Villa-nova culture
and a third group pursued their predecessors over all parts of France
except the Seine valley. It seems possible, if not probable, that
these two waves of invasions may have been those which brought Q and
P speech respectively into these different parts of Europe. If this
equation be accepted, the main features of Sir John Rhys’ hypothesis
have been proved. But it will not be wise to jump too hastily to a
conclusion, for the fact that there were two waves of invaders and two
of Wiro dialects may be only a coincidence. We must attempt to apply a
confirmatory test.
In Greece we have seen that Casson has shown good cause why we should
believe that the advance of the men with the iron sword should be
equated with the Dorian invasion. The Dorians spoke a P dialect and
may well have been the first to introduce such a tongue into Greece.
We have seen how Rhys’ view that Q dialects survive in the writings of
Herodotus and Hippocrates is open to question, but we have also noted
that Wace had equally questioned the “Achæan” invasion proposed by
Ridgeway. I have already put forward an amended scheme for the latter,
and suggested the arrival of only a few Nordic adventurers. Had these
been Wiros of Q speech, they could not, owing to the paucity of their
numbers, have imposed their tongue upon their subjects. If, therefore,
we accept the equation for Greek lands, we need not expect to find
evidence of the survival of Q speech in Greece in the fifth century.
But I have suggested that these “Achæan” adventurers were stragglers
from the band of Nordics who were responsible for the Phrygian invasion
of Asia Minor. If the equation, which we are endeavouring to prove,
were true, we should expect that the Phrygian language was of the Q
form. Unfortunately we know little of the Phrygian tongue even in the
palmy days of Athens, still less of its form in the thirteenth century.
All philologists are agreed that with the language of Thrace it formed
the Thraco-Phrygian group, from which, according to some philologists,
modern Albanian is derived. Dacian is also believed to have belonged
to the same group. Some years ago Dr. Tomaschek collected together,
from Greek and Latin sources, all the words which might be considered
as belonging to this group, but most of these are place-names or
names of plants. This is not very satisfactory material for our
purpose, for place-names may have been inherited from the previous
inhabitants, while names of plants may be loan words. Further than
this most of the words have been preserved by Greek writers, and there
is no Q in the Greek language. Still I have thought it well to search
through the lists compiled by Tomaschek, and though the result is,
perhaps, not very convincing, the presence of such words as
καναρος, κενθος, Quimedava or κουιμε-δαβα, Coila or
Cuila, κερκινη, and several others certainly hints that the
Thraco-Phrygian tongues may have been Q dialects.[469]
The arguments from the east, while they do not in any way contradict
our equation, and may even be said to give it some support, are not
quite decisive; at any rate something more conclusive is desirable.
It is useless to look for this in the west, in Celtic lands, for our
documentary evidence scarcely antedates the time of Julius Cæsar, or,
at any rate, such earlier evidence as we possess is both meagre and
uncertain. Finally all the evidence has been the subject of dispute, on
almost every item differences of opinion have been expressed, and we
have no sure or unquestioned data on which to depend. The controversy
has also, unhappily, become associated with other differences of
opinion.
It will be well, then, to leave for a time the consideration of
the Celtic evidence, and to endeavour to test our equation without
reference to the linguistic data of the west. There remains, then,
only one other area in which to search for our confirmatory test, the
Italian peninsula.