| _European._ | _Asian._
+--------------------------------+--------------------+-----------------
| |Letto-Lithuanians. |
| Northern |Teutons. |
| Peoples |--------------------|-----------------
| (Blondes). |Slavonians. |_Phrygians._
Primitive | |_Thracians._ |_Cappadocians._
Aryans. +----------------+--------------------+Armenians.
(Western | |_Dacians._ |_Medes._
Europe.) | |Hellenes. |Iranians.
| Southern | |Indians.
| Peoples. +--------------------+-----------------
| (Brunettes). | _Illyrians._ |
| |Italians. |
| |Celts. |
+---------------+----------------+--------------------+-----------------
(The names in _italics_ are of extinct peoples.)
We must not suppose that the languages of these peoples developed
one out of the other. That is not the way languages grow. It was by
contact in various centres with various dialects and wholly different
linguistic stocks that the speech of these nomads was altered. They
did not journey always in one direction, but to and fro, now rapidly
advancing, now retreating, now long stationary, ever through war,
commerce and marriage adding new elements to their speech, each tribe
developing its dialect with independent material and on different
grammatical principles.
We are now prepared to study the historic and modern representatives of
this important stock.
_1. The Celtic Peoples._
The Celtic peoples of the present day form a decaying group, which in
a few generations will wholly disappear. Two thousand years ago they
were the most important Aryac stock in central and western Europe.
Their sole representatives now are the Highland Scotch, the Irish, the
Manx, the Welsh, and the natives of Brittany in France. In all these
localities the Celtic speech is losing ground before English or French.
In Ireland about 900,000 persons can speak Irish, but not more than
150,000 are ignorant of English.
These Celtic groups form two dialects, one spoken in Scotland, Ireland
and the Isle of Man, known as _Gaelic_, the other common to Wales,
Brittany, and in the last century to Cornwall, called _Armorican_ or
_Cymric_. The Irish possessed a sparse literature going back to the
eighth century, and the Welsh to the twelfth, while the oldest Scotch
or Breton songs date at the furthest from the fourteenth century, in
spite of assertions to the contrary.
To this day the Celtic peoples present the same contrast of physical
type that they did to the Romans. Some of the Scotch clans, many of the
Irish, most of the Welsh and Bretons, are of moderate stature, dark
eyes and hair, and brunette complexion, while the remainder are tall,
raw-boned, red-haired, with florid, freckled skins and tawny beards.
Their mental traits are quite as conspicuous; turbulent, boastful,
alert, courageous, but deficient in caution, persistence and
self-control, they never have succeeded in forming an independent
state, and are a dangerous element in the body politic of a free
country. In religion they are fanatic and bigoted, ready to swear
in the words of their master, rather than to exercise independent
judgment. France is three-fifths of Celtic descent, and this explains
much in its history and the character of its inhabitants.
_2. The Italic Peoples._
The principal Aryac tribes who possessed themselves of the Italian
peninsula were the Umbrians in the north, and the Samnites (or Oscans)
and Latins in the south. They conquered in time the Etruscans,
Ligurians, Volscians and others of non-Aryac lineage, and laid the
foundation for the mighty Aryac Empire of Rome, destined to command
the world, and to introduce the Latin tongue as the dominant speech of
Southern Europe.
From the Latin speaking Roman colonies have sprung the _Romance
languages_ of modern times and the existing “Latin peoples.” These
include the modern Italian, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese,
the Roumanian, the Wallachian, and the Ladinish in Switzerland, besides
a number of dialects. Through the conquests of the European Romance
nations, their tongues have gained the ascendency over the whole
continent of America south of the United States, over a large part of
Canada and North Africa, and over many islands. To-day, the speech of
imperial Rome, more or less modified, prevails over an area five times
as great as that of the empire in the zenith of its glory.
Like the language, the physical type of the ancient Italic peoples
indicated their near relationship to the dark Celts. The Latin and
Umbrian skulls were short or rounded (brachycephalic), the stature
medium, the hair dark and curly, the eyes brown or black, the nose
aquiline, the complexion brunette. In later generations this type was
modified by mixture with the blonde or long-skulled Etruscans, and the
numerous foreigners who came to live in Rome; but to this day it is
that which prevails throughout the peninsula.
None of the Romance nations can boast of much purity of descent.
After the fall of the Western Empire (476 A. D.), hordes of Germans
poured into Italy; they also overran France and Spain, while Arabs
and Berbers occupied for generations nearly the whole of the Iberian
peninsula, the island of Sicily, and portions of France. The Roumanians
are partly Slavonic, and the Portuguese have Celtic and Basque blood.
Tn spite of these admixtures, the Romance peoples have retained many
of the mental features of the old Romans. In government they display
the same acknowledgment of authority, love of system and bureaucratic
forms of administration, which made the Roman municipium the wonder of
the world; in religion, they cultivate the same respect for external
show and material rites rather than for the ideal aspects of faith;
and in literature, it is only in later days that they have declared
independence from the models of classicism, which too long fettered
their best minds.
The ancient Romans had little idealism. They achieved nothing in
poetry, philosophy or the plastic arts. It was owing to the Hellenic
and Semitic influence that, under the Empire, Rome became the centre of
artistic, as of all other training. These acquired qualities have been
transmitted to the Romance nations, and it is to them we owe nearly all
that is best in art down to the beginning of the present century. The
sentiment of symmetry is native to them, and one has but to compare
either the scientific works or the public buildings of France with
those of Germany during the last five-and-twenty years to be convinced
how the sense of form is present in the former and defective in the
latter.
_3. The Illyric Peoples._
The ancient Illyrians were the ancestors of the modern Albanians, a
people numbering in all nearly two million souls, occupying a portion
of western Turkey, bordering on the Adriatic Sea, about 40° north
latitude. They are scarcely more than semi-civilized, and neither
in ancient nor modern times have they taken any prominent part in
the history of Europe. Their language undoubtedly belongs to the
Aryac stock, and has various affinities with Greek and Latin, but
is a long-separated and almost isolated fragment of Aryac speech.
The national name they give themselves is Skypetars, which means
mountaineers. They are also known as Arnauts.
The physical type of the Albanians is mixed, those to the south being
chiefly blondes, to the north brunettes; their skulls are generally
long, their stature tall, their bodies muscular. Some of them are
Mohammedans, others Roman Catholics, while others belong to the Greek
church. In disposition they are turbulent and warlike, caring little
for the amenities of civilization.
The nearest related groups to the Illyrians are believed to have been
the Thracians, who were a blonde people, the Dacians, who were largely
Celtic, and the Macedonians. Some recent writers have argued that the
ancient Japyges were Illyrians, and had occupied most of the peninsula
of Italy previous to the arrival of the Latins;[97] but this question
remains obscure.
_4. The Hellenic Peoples._
It is acknowledged even by those who maintain the Asiatic origin of the
Aryans that the Greeks entered the peninsula and the adjacent isles
of the Ionian and Egean seas from a northwesterly direction.[98] It
has been also argued “from the unmixed character of their language”
that they found the region uninhabited,[99] but there are reasons for
believing that it was sparsely populated by a non-Aryac people of the
Euscaric physical type.[100]
The separation of the Greeks from the southern Aryac stream took place
somewhere in the valley of the Danube, whence a portion of the original
Hellenes moved down the Adriatic into the Morea, and other bands known
as Carians, Leleges, Phrygians, etc., passed into Asia Minor.[101]
Even the island of Cyprus, close to the Syrian shore, appears to have
supported a Greek population previous to its occupancy by the Egyptians
and Semitic peoples.[102]
The Greek language has strong affinities to the ancient Persian and
Sanscrit, showing conclusively that the Aryac tribes whose descendants
developed these tongues dwelt in eastern Europe between the Slavonic
peoples on the north and the proto-Hellenes on the south. At a later
date, that is, about 1500 B. C., numerous Phenician colonists occupied
the shores of Greece, constructing the so-called “Cyclopean” walls, and
leaving a lasting impression, both on the language and culture of the
Aryac population.[103] Greek civilization undoubtedly derived its early
inspiration from Semitic and Hamitic sources, and nearly thirty per
cent. of the Greek roots are non-Aryac, proving a large admixture of
foreign thought and blood at some remote epoch.
The ancient Greek physical type was rather Slavonic than Celtic.
The skull was long (about 76), the forehead high, the nose narrow
and straight (the “Grecian nose”), the face oval and orthognathic,
the complexion fair, the hair blonde or chestnut, and the eyes blue
or grey.[104] The highest bodily symmetry of the human species was
reached among them, and its proportions were perpetuated for all time
in the noble products of Greek plastic art.
The modern Greeks have undergone extensive commingling with Slavonians,
Turks, Bulgarians, etc., so that the ancient type is no longer common,
and the population is generally darker in complexion, and the skull
more globular than in classic ages.
At a very remote epoch the Hellenic peoples occupied southern Italy
(Magna Grecia), Sicily, portions of southern France and the regions on
both shores of the Hellespont, their easternmost colonies extending
quite into Syria. During the middle ages the establishment of the
capital of the eastern empire at Constantinople, gave to Greek a
position in the east equal to that of Latin in the west. Crushed out,
first by the Romans and next by Mongolian hordes, within this century
the Hellenic peoples are rapidly regaining a prominent position. Their
settlements in Asia Minor are displacing the Turks, and in all the
cities of the Levant they form one of the most active elements of the
population.
In certain mental endowments, the Hellenic peoples won a position
far ahead of all others. The sense of artistic form was possessed by
them in a superlative degree; for the highest philosophic thought
they showed an aptitude unparalleled in the annals of the race; in
mathematics and mechanics, in poetry and the drama, in architecture and
in literature, they created models of such perfection that the later
generations of other nations have been content to do little more than
imitate them. To this day that culture which is properly called the
highest, must be based on a long and loving study of Greek art and
thought.
_5. The Lettic Peoples._
The Letts and Lithuanians, dwelling on the shores of the Baltic Sea,
partly in Prussia and partly in Russia, are unimportant peoples
politically, and indeed every way but ethnographically. In this
respect, however, they deserve particular attention, because in the
opinion of a number of modern writers they “have the best claim to
represent the primitive Aryac race.”[105] This claim is based on the
structure of their language, which seems to preserve characteristics
of an exceedingly primitive type, such for instance as a dual number,
numerous oblique cases, an archaic phonology;[106] and also on their
physical appearance, being tall blondes, with blue eyes, and moderately
long skulls (about 78°). Both in appearance and language they are
a connecting link between the Slavonic and Teutonic peoples. The
westernmost dialect of the group, the “old Prussian,” now extinct, was
spoken west of the Vistula, and perhaps extended to the coast of the
German Ocean. Their total number at present is not over 2,000,000.
_6. The Teutonic Peoples_
Separated from the Letto-Slavonians about the beginning of the Age of
Bronze (see above p. 152), and extended themselves toward central and
southern Germany, north into Scandinavia, and west along the shores of
the North Sea. Their most celebrated ancient tribes were the Goths and
Vandals, the Angles and Saxons, the Danes and Norsemen, the Franks and
Alemanni, the Lombards and the Burgundians. The modern nations which
with more or less justice are classed as of Teutonic descent, are the
German speaking population of the German and Austrian empires, the
States of Sweden and Norway, Denmark, Holland, western Switzerland and
England. It is needless to say that there is little purity of descent
in most of these lands; the highest is believed to be in Scandinavia.
There we find still in the ascendant the tall and muscular frame,
the fair hair and complexion, the blue eyes and full blonde beards
which the Greek and Roman writers agree in attributing to the dreaded
northern barbarians. The skull is long, the temperament lymphatic, and
the complete growth attained later than in the Celtic stock.[107]
The mental character of the Teuton is somewhat sluggish and material,
but is directed by clear insight and unconquerable pertinacity. His
conquests, whether on the field of battle or in the arena of the
intellect, have been attained by deliberate calculation and dogged
obstinacy. His clear judgment refuses to be controlled by the mere
dicta of authority. In the fourth century the Goths attached themselves
to the great Arian heresy, and a thousand years later their descendants
were the first to throw off the yoke of the Roman church. The
profoundest metaphysician of modern times, Emmanuel Kant, was a Teuton;
but his avowed purpose was to prove the futility of all metaphysical
speculation. The poets and dramatists of the Teutonic nations,
Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, were the first to break definitely with
the classical models, and vindicate the freedom of the artist.
Within the last century, the extension of this group over the globe
has left all others far behind. The German, the Englishman and the
Anglo-American now control the politics of the world, and their
contributions to every department of literature, science and the arts
have been the main stimuli of the marvellous progress of the nineteenth
century.
_7. The Slavonic Peoples._
In the early historic period there stretched a line of kindred
agricultural and nomadic tribes from the Baltic to the Black and
Caspian seas, forming the northern outposts of the Aryac stock, in
immediate contiguity with the Mongolian race. They were the Scythians,
Sarmatians, Massagetes, etc. Their languages belonged to what is called
the Slavonic group, and had a marked family likeness; but the physical
traits of the various tribes were then, as now, very various, and the
most that can be said is that the majority were blondes, with flaxen
hair, full beards and a tendency to dolichocephaly.[108]
These tribes were the ancestors of the numerous Slavonic peoples of the
present day, the Russians, Ruthenians, Poles, the Wends in Prussia,
the Czechs of Bohemia, the Bulgarians and Servians, the Montenegrins,
Dalmatians and Croatians. All these, and some smaller communities,
speak to-day Slavic dialects, though they are by no means all of
pure Slavic descent. There has been a constant intermingling with
the Mongolians, easily recognizable in physical traits and mental
character. Though early brought into contact with civilization, the
Slavonic peoples have been the last of all the Aryans to appreciate its
greatest benefits. Within a century, however, their progress has been
phenomenal, and, except the English people, no other nation within that
period has extended so widely the domain of enlightened governmental
control over half-savage tribes. The conquests of the Russians in
northern and central Asia have always been attended with beneficent
results for the conquered people, and nothing but the selfish jealousy
of other European governments has prevented these conquests from being
far more extensive and far more fruitful of good to mankind.
The Russian is laborious, submissive, dreamy, unpractical. The
individual is lost in the community, the _mir_, a communistic village
association of great antiquity. His religion is the merest formality,
relieved by outbreaks of fanaticism. Russian literature, which has
lately become the vogue in other nations, is introspective and
unhealthful, oriental in its spirit, occidental in its cravings.
The ancient Slavonic tribes had close relations with the Eranic
peoples, the Medes and Persians. The connecting link seems to have been
the Sigyni and Agathyrsi tribes, who dwelt south of the Carpathians,
in what is now Transylvania. Both of these claimed relationship to the
Medes, and when they were conquered by the Celtic Dacians, many of
them followed their cousin in Asia. They were not without culture, and
Herodotus speaks of them as loving luxury, and decorating themselves
with gold. Ornaments of this metal, worked with creditable skill,
are found in their graves, along with polished stone, implements and
fragments of pottery.[109]
_8. The Indo-Eranic Peoples._
The colony of the Aryans which pushed its way furthest to the east
was the Indo-Eranic. Its various dialects prove conclusively that its
ancestral tribe, when on European soil, occupied a position between
the Slavonic and Hellenic peoples, probably between the Danube and the
Egean Sea. Its latest contingent, the Armenian people, was a branch
of the Thracian Briges, and occupied their territory in Asia Minor
about 700 B. C. The main migration preceded them at least two thousand
years, and divided into two branches, one establishing its chief power
between the Caspian Sea and the Indian Ocean, the other crossing
the Hindu-Kusch range and gradually obtaining the chief control of
Hindostan. The former includes the Eranic, the latter the Indic groups
of the Aryac stock.
The ancient representatives of the Eranic peoples were the old
Bastrians and Persians. In the language of the former, sometimes called
_Zend_, their sacred book, the _Zend-avesta_, was written probably
about 500 B. C., and in the latter many cuneiform inscriptions are
preserved, dating somewhat later.
Their modern descendants are the Persians and Parsees, the tribes of
Afghanistan, Beluchistan, Kurdistan, and Luristan, and the Ossetes,
who dwell in the vales of the central Caucasus.[110] Most of these are
Mohammedans in religion, and in a backward condition of civilization.
Their physical appearance speaks of frequent intermixtures with
Mongolic and Semitic elements.
The ordinary rural population of Persia are called the Tadchiks.
They are diligent agriculturists, and devoted likewise to commercial
pursuits. In the latter capacity they are often met from Constantinople
to China. Their language is usually the modern Persian, an Aryac
dialect which has departed from the original inflectional standard
almost as much as the modern English. Those who live in Kaschgar,
however, speak Turkish, while retaining the physical traits of their
Aryac ancestry.
Modern Persian has developed an interesting literature, consisting
chiefly of poetry and works of imagination.
The Afghans and Beluchis are the nearest related to the Indian stock.
Their dialects are derived from the Sanscrit, and in appearance they
resemble the Indo-Aryans rather than the Persian. The assertion of some
ethnographers that they are of Semitic affinities has been disproved.
They are, however, mixed with Semitic and Dravidian blood. Although
historically established about their present locality since the days of
Alexander the Great, they retain faint traditions that their ancestors
came from the west, which has led some to suppose them of Syrian
extraction.[111] In religion they are generally fanatical Mohammedans,
and their nationality is a loose federation of independent clans.
The Indic branch of this colony entered Hindostan as late as 2000-1500
B. C. Its language was then as closely akin to the Bactrian as, say,
Italian and French are to-day. Its members were roving herdsmen, and
first occupied the valleys of the Punjaub, driving before them the
Dravidas, a non-Aryac folk, who had occupied the land. The priestly
class of these colonists were called Brahmans, their dialect Sanscrit,
and in this we have preserved from that remote epoch many religious
chants called the Rig Veda, committed to writing probably about 500 B.
C. The original tongue soon split up into many dialects, as the Pali,
the Prakrit and the modern Hindoostantee.
The population of the Indian peninsula to-day, who speak these dialects
and are more or less of Aryac blood, numbers nearly a hundred million.
They include the Rajpoots, the Djats, the Hindoos, the Hunzas, and
numerous other tribes and castes. The ubiquitous gipsies or Romany are
a wandering branch of these who left India as late as the twelfth or
thirteenth century, and have been roving over Europe ever since.
The earliest Indo-Aryans had undoubtedly retained many pure Aryac
traits. They were of medium height, oval faces, handsome regular
features, symmetrical in body, the skull dolichocephalic (about 77),
the complexion brunette but not brown, the eyes hazel, the hair wavy.
This is the type of the highest Brahmans to-day, and throughout all
their history they have exercised the utmost care to preserve it
intact. The institution of castes was undoubtedly established with
this object in view, the word for “caste,” _varna_, in Sanscrit meaning
“color.”
The mental aptitudes of the Indic immigrants are seen to advantage in
their rapid conquest of Hindostan, in the civilization they developed,
and in the vast literature which they created.[112] While in art and
philosophy inferior to the Greeks, they succeeded in one point far
beyond any other Aryac people, that is, in the formation of two of the
most successful religions of the world, Brahmanism and Buddhism. The
former, a pure pantheism, has been established nearly 4000 years, and
still can claim votaries; the latter, theoretically an atheism, to-day
has more believers than any other cult.
III. THE CAUCASIC STOCK.
The defiles and fastnesses of the Caucasus have been time out of mind
harbors of refuge for the defeated tribes of the neighboring regions.
Isolated in their secluded homes, in ceaseless warfare with their
neighbors, an astonishing diversity of type and language arose. When
the Romans undertook to explore these mountains, they had to call in
the aid of seventy interpreters! It is not surprising, therefore, that
we find communities there to-day, tribes apparently of Aryac lineage,
speaking agglutinative languages, and others, of Mongolic appearance,
quite unconnected with any Mongolic tongue. Divided as far as possible
by linguistic resemblances, the Caucasian peoples may be placed under
four groups:
1. The Lesghic, which includes the Avars, and people of Daghestan.
2. The Circassic, in which fall the Circasians proper, and others.
3. The Kistic, and
4. The Georgic, the principal members of which are the Georgians and
Mingrelians.