Joseph Deniker

RACES AND PEOPLES OF EUROPE.

Problem of European ethnogeny—I. ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF EUROPE—Prehistoric races—Quaternary period—Glacial and interglacial periods—Quaternary skulls—Spy and Chancelade races or types—Races of the neolithic period—Races of the age of metals—Aryan question—Position of the problem—Migration of European peoples in the historic period—II. EUROPEAN RACES OF THE PRESENT DAY—Characteristics of the six principal races and the four secondary races—III. PRESENT PEOPLES OF EUROPE—A. Aryan peoples: Latins, Germans, Slavs, Letto-Lithuanians, Celts, Illyro-Hellenes—B. Anaryan peoples: Basques, Finns, etc.—C. Caucasian peoples: Lesgians, Georgians, etc.

Of all parts of the world Europe presents the most favourable conditions for the interblending of peoples. Easy of access, a mere peninsula of Asia, from which the Ural mountains and straits a few miles wide hardly separate it, Europe has a totally different configuration from the continental colossus, heavy and vague in outline, to which it is attached. Indented by numberless gulfs, bays, and creeks, provided with several secondary peninsulas, crossed by rivers having no cataracts, and for the most part navigable, it offers every facility for communication and change of place to ethnic groups. Thus from the dawn of history, and even from prehistoric times, a perpetual eddying has taken place there, a coming and going of peoples in search of fortune and better settlements.

These migrations, combined with innumerable wars and active commerce, have produced such a blending of races, such successive changes in the manners and customs and languages spoken, that it is very difficult to separate from this chaos the elements of European ethnogeny, and that in spite of the great number of historical and linguistic works published on the subject. We may, however, thanks to the progress in prehistoric, anthropological, and ethnographical studies, obtain a glimpse of the main outlines of this ethnogeny, in which history and linguistics give us often but vague, and in any case very slight information.

The better to understand the distribution of races at the present day, we must cast a glance at those which are extinct, going back to geological times removed from us by several hundreds or even thousands of centuries.

I.—ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF EUROPE.

Geological Times.—The portions of Europe emerging towards the end of the tertiary period of the geological history of our globe have been inhabited by man, probably from this very time, and assuredly from the quaternary period which succeeded it—the predecessor of the present geological period. The existence of tertiary man in Europe has not, however, been directly proved. The finds of artificially chipped flints in the miocene and pliocene beds in France (at Thenay, Puy-Courny, and Saint-Prest), in England (the uplands of Kent, Cromer), and in Portugal (Otta, near Lisbon); the discovery made in Italy (Monte Aperto) of bones with rude carvings on them, asserted to be the work of pliocene man, and so many other interesting facts, are now called in question by leading men of science, and have few supporters at the present day.[337] In every case in these finds we have to deal only with objects supposed to be worked by man, or by some hypothetical being, for no remains of human bones have been found up to the present time in the tertiary beds of Europe.[338]

It is only in quaternary beds that the presence of human bones has been ascertained beyond question. The quaternary age in Europe is characterised, as we know, by the succession of “glacial periods,” each of which comprises a greater or less extension of glaciers, followed by their withdrawal (“interglacial periods”), with accompanying changes of climate. The well-known geologist Geikie[339] claims, from the end of the pliocene age to proto-historic times, the existence in Europe of six glacial periods; but most other geologists (Penck, Boule) reduce this number to two or three, considering the movements of the glaciers of some of Geikie’s periods as purely local phenomena, having exercised no influence on the continent as a whole.

At the beginning of quaternary times the climate of Europe was not the same as that of the present day; hot and moist, it was favourable to the growth of a sub-tropical flora. Dense forests gave shelter to animals which no longer exist in our latitudes—the Elephas meridionalis, a survival of the pliocene age, the Rhinoceros Etruscus, etc.

But soon, from causes still imperfectly known, ice began to accumulate around certain elevated points of Northern Europe; a veritable “mer de glace” covered all Scandinavia, almost the whole of Great Britain, the emerged lands which were between these two countries, as well as the north of Germany and half of Russia.[340] This is the first glacial period, or the period of the great spread of glaciers (Map 1). Such an accumulation of ice, combined with a change of climate, which had become cold and moist, was not very favourable to the peopling of the country. Besides, if we consider that all the great mountain chains, the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Caucasian range, with their advanced peaks, were covered entirely with ice, and that the Aralo-Caspian depression was filled with water as far as the vicinity of Kazan on the north (Map 1), we shall easily understand that the habitable space thus available for man at this period in Europe was very restricted.

Chellean Flint Implement

FIG. 84.—Chellean flint implement,
Saint-Acheul (Somme); half natural size.
(After G. and A. de Mortillet.)

France with Belgium, the south of England, the three southern peninsulas (Iberian, Appenine, and Balkan), the south of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the plains of Southern Russia as far as the Volga, and the basin of the Kama, communicating on the south of the Ural by a narrow isthmus with the Siberian steppes—these were the only countries which quaternary man could occupy. These conditions only changed at the time that the glaciers began to withdraw (first interglacial period). The climate became milder again, and the Arctic flora gave place to the flora of the forests of the Temperate Zone. It is to this period that the most undoubtedly ancient vestiges of mankind in Europe are to be attributed.

Europe, First Glacial Period

MAP 1.—Europe in the first glacial period. Light grey, glaciers;
medium grey, sea; dark grey, land; white points, floating ice.
(After De Geer.)

The men of that period have handed down to us implements of a very rude type: fragments of flint of pointed form, the sinuous edges of which are scarcely trimmed by the removal of some flakes.[341] These implements are called “knuckle-dusters” (G. de Mortillet), or “Chellean axes” (Fig. 84), from the Chelles bed in the valley of the Seine; but such implements are found in sitÛ in numerous places—in France (especially in the valley of the Somme), in England (valleys of the Ouse and the Thames), in Spain, Portugal, Austria, Belgium, etc.[342]

The first interglacial period, characterised, as we have just seen, by a mild and moist climate, was followed by a new glacier invasion (second glacial period). This time the sea of ice did not extend as far as in the first period: it covered Ireland, Scotland, the north of England (as far as Yorkshire), Scandinavia, Finland, and stopped in Germany and Russia at a line passing nearly through the present site of Hamburg, Berlin, Warsaw, Vilna, Novgorod, Lake Onega, Archangel.

To this period succeeded, after the withdrawal of the glaciers, a period called “post-glacial” (or second interglacial period), characterised at first by a continental climate, dry, with a very cold winter, and a short but hot summer, and by flora of the Tundras and steppes. At the end of this epoch, the climate becoming milder, there appeared the flora of the meadows and forests, which has remained to the present day.[343] The harsh climate of the beginning of this period could only be favourable to the preservation and growth of thick-furred animals: the mammoth or elephant with curved tusks (Elephas primigenius), the rhinoceros with divided nostrils (R. tichorinus), the reindeer (Cervus tarandus), the saiga, the lemming, etc.

The man who inhabited Europe during the two overflows of the glaciers and the two interglacial periods is known to us chiefly by the stone implements which are found in the strata of these periods, along with the bones of animals which are now extinct or which have migrated into other regions. It must not be inferred from this that palÆolithic man used no other but stone tools or weapons. The finds of objects made out of bone, horn, stag’s horn, shell, and wood belonging to these periods are there to bear witness to the contrary. Only these finds are much more rare, on account of the ease with which bone, horn, and especially wood, decompose after a more or less prolonged stay in the ground. Basing their conclusions on the variety of the forms of the stone implements and partly on the frequent occurrence of bone objects, palÆethnologists have divided the two interglacial periods which form their stone age or palÆolithic period into two or three periods, according to country. It would have been better, in my opinion, to have replaced in the present instance the word “period” by the term “state of civilisation,” for these periods are far from being synchronous throughout the whole of Europe; the Vogules and the Samoyeds were in the “stone age” hardly a century ago.

Nevertheless, for certain defined regions, we may consider it settled that the first so-called Chellean “period,” characterised by the “knuckle-duster,” belongs, as we have seen (p. 302), to the first interglacial period, and that the others coincide with the second (Boule). In a general way, we may distinguish in the latter a more ancient period, characterised by the abundance of mammoth bones and by smaller and more varied implements than the Chellean tool; and a more recent period characterised by the presence of the reindeer in Central and Western Europe, by the frequent occurrence of bone tools, and by the appearance of the graphic arts, at least in certain regions.

The first of these “periods” is known as the Mousterian; it is well represented in France, Belgium, southern Germany, Bohemia, and England.[344]

Quaternary Art (Magdalenian Period)

FIG. 85.—Quaternary art (Magdalenian period):
B, dagger of reindeer horn with sculptured haft,
Laugerie-Haute (Dordogne); A, “Baton of
command” with carving (La Madeleine, Dord.);
two-thirds natural size.
(After G. and A. de Mortillet.)

Instead of a single flint implement, the “knuckle-duster,” which was used variously in the Chellean period, with or without a handle, as an axe, hammer, and dagger, a variety of implements make their appearance in the Mousterian period, and, among others, tools needed in the manufacture of garments, blades to open and skin animals, scrapers to make their hides supple, sharp-edged awls for cutting the skin and when necessary making cords or straps from it, for piercing it and making button-holes.[345] On the other hand, the use of the bow does not seem to have been known, for in the Mousterian deposits there have not been found any arrow-heads either in flint or bone. These arrow-heads appear only in the next period, generally called the reindeer age; in France styled, according to the classification of G. de Mortillet, the Magdalenian period.[346] The man of this period was still in the hunting stage, but had more perfect hunting weapons than in the Mousterian period; he was also occasionally a fisher, and probably reared the reindeer. But his especial characteristic in certain regions, as in the south-west of France, is that he was a consummate artist. He has left us admirable carvings (Fig. 85, B), and engravings on bone most expressive in design (Fig. 85, A).[347]

After the second glacial period, the era of great overflows and withdrawals of the glaciers came to a definite close for Central Europe; but it continued in the north, in Scotland, and especially around the Baltic, even as it is still prolonged to our own day in Greenland and Iceland.

According to Geikie and De Geer, the glaciers advanced and withdrew thrice again in Scandinavia and Scotland after continental Europe was almost entirely rid of them (Geikie’s fourth to sixth glacial periods).[348]

A slow sinking of the land, which submerged beneath the ocean all the countries to the north and north-east of Europe, marks the end of the quaternary period, and the beginning of the present era in the geological sense of the word. This era is characterised, from the archÆological point of view, by the substitution for the “earlier stone age” (palÆolithic period) of another “age,” or, better, of another stage of civilisation, that of the later stone age (neolithic).

However, this “age” did not come in abruptly, after a lapse of time, the hiatus of ancient palÆethnologists, during which man retired, it was supposed, from Central Europe and emigrated towards the north after the reindeer.[349] There must have been a transitional or mesolithic period.[350] Nor was neolithic civilisation established everywhere at the same time. Thus the Scandinavian peninsula, from which the glaciers have not yet altogether withdrawn, was in course of formation during this period.[351] The “neolithic folk,” settling at first in Denmark, then in Gothland, have left us in the kitchen-middens (kitchen refuse, accumulations of shells) certain chipped stone implements, a sort of hatchet of a special form, contemporaneous with the neolithic tools of the rest of Europe.

These tools are associated in the geological beds and prehistoric stations with other objects which denote among the Europeans of this period a fairly advanced civilisation: knowledge of agriculture, pottery, the weaving of stuffs, the rearing of cattle.

The “neolithic people” constructed pile-dwellings near lakesides, in Switzerland, France, Italy, Ireland; they buried their dead under dolmens, and raised other megalithic monuments (upright stones, the rows at Carnac, etc.), of which the meaning has not yet been cleared up.

As may have been seen from this brief account, it is almost perfectly well known what were the stages of civilisation of the Europeans in the quaternary and neolithic periods. It is different with regard to the physical type of these Europeans. In fact, of interglacial man, contemporary of the Elephas antiquus, the maker of those flint implements exhumed from the lowest beds of the oldest quaternary alluvia, we have no remains, except perhaps two molar teeth, found by Nehring in the Taubach station (near Weimar), and some other disputed fragments (Neanderthal, Brux, and Tilbury skulls). This statement, made for the first time by Boule in 1888, is now admitted by many palÆethnologists.[352] As far as man contemporary with the mammoth (Elephas primigenius) and the reindeer is concerned, we possess a certain number of skulls and bones from the river drifts and caves. But a doubt exists as to the beds in which many of these specimens were found, and consequently as to their date. Eliminating all those of unknown or uncertain age, we have at the most, for the whole of Europe, but a dozen skulls or fragments of skulls and a score of other bones genuinely quaternary.[353] Evidently that is insufficient for the forming of an opinion on the physical type of quaternary Europeans. However, one significant fact is elicited from an examination of this small series, and it is this: that all the skulls composing it are very long, very dolichocephalic. The exceptions put forward, like the skulls of upper Grenelle (Seine), Furfooz (Belgium), La TruchÈre (SaÔne-et-Loire), Valle do Areciro (Portugal), do not conflict with this assertion; there are reasons for believing that certain of these skulls belong to the neolithic period, and that others date from the mesolithic period, or, at the very outside, from the end of the quaternary period. These then, even admitting the authenticity of their date, would only be isolated precursors of the neolithic brachycephals with whom we shall deal further on.

Let us return to our palÆolithic dolichocephals. These appear to belong to two distinct types, the so-called Neanderthal or Spy type, referred to the Mousterian period, very well represented by the skulls and bones found at Spy, near Namur in Belgium; then the type of the Magdalenian period, represented by the skulls exhumed at Laugerie-Basse and Chancelade (Dordogne). The first of these types is characterised by marked dolichocephaly (ceph. ind. from 70 to 75.3), by the exceedingly low and retreating forehead, by the prominent brow ridges (Fig. 86), and probably by a low stature (about 1 m. 59). Several pithecoid characters are observable on the skull and bones of this type, the presence of which has been noted, from England (skull from Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk), Belgium (Spy skull, La Naulette jaw), and perhaps the Rhenish province (Neanderthal skull), to the Pyrenees (jaw found at Malarnau, AriÈge), Bohemia, Moravia (Predmost and Podbaba skulls), and Italy (Olmo skull). Like all the other prehistoric races, that of Neanderthal or Spy has not entirely disappeared; Neanderthaloid skulls are found, few in number it is true, in several prehistoric or historic burial-places (at Furfooz in Belgium, in the dolmens of France, England, Ireland, etc.). Scattered here and there, some rare individuals may still be observed in the populations of the present day showing the characters of this race, according to the statements of Roujoux, Quatrefages, Virchow, Kollmann, and other anthropologists.[354] The second so-called Laugerie-Chancelade race (HervÉ) is represented at the present day by only three or four skulls and some other bones found at Laugerie-Basse, Chancelade (Dordogne), and Sordes (Landes). It is characterised by a dolichocephaly almost equal to that of the preceding race, but it differs from it in the high and broad forehead, the capacious skull, the absence of the brow ridges, the high orbits, and especially the face with projecting cheek-bones, high and broad at the same time (Fig. 87). Its stature is rather low. This is the type to which approximates the race of the Baumes-Chaudes of HervÉ or the true race of Cro-Magnon, which appeared quite at the end of the Magdalenian, if not at the transitional or mesolithic period. The latter race differs from the former in its very pronounced dolichocephaly (ceph. ind. from 63 to 74.8), its lower face and orbits, its very lofty stature (from 1 m. 71 to 1 m. 80), and many other characters.[355] We see then, at the beginning of the neolithic period, the second quaternary dolichocephalic race still existing slightly modified, but we also see the earliest brachycephals appearing along with it.

FIG. 86.—Spy skull, first quaternary race.
(After Fraipont and Jacques.)

Several hundred skulls, found in neolithic burial-places in France, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, exhibit an intermixture of brachycephals and dolichocephals. According to the more or less frequent occurrence of the former in relation to the latter in each burial, we may, with HervÉ,[356] trace the route followed by these brachycephals of Central Europe, from the plains of Hungary, by the valley of the Danube, into Belgium and Switzerland; from these last-named countries they flung themselves on the dolichocephalic populations of France and modified the primitive type, especially in the plains of the north-east and in the Alpine region.

But if the “neolithic” people of France and Central Europe belonged to at least two distinct races, the same has not been the case with the other countries of our continent. In the British Isles we find ourselves, on the contrary, as regards this period, in presence of a remarkable homogeneity of type; it is without exception dolichocephalic (cephal. ind. from 65 to 75 for the men), with elongated faces, such as are found in the long-barrows. Did they come from the Continent in neolithic times, or are they the descendants of the palÆolithic men of Great Britain, the physical type of which is unknown to us? This is a question which still awaits solution. In Russia also, we only meet with dolichocephals during the later stone age (certain “Kourganes” and the neolithic station of Lake Ladoga).[357] In Spain, in Portugal, in Sweden, dolichocephalic skulls are found in conjunction with some brachycephalic ones, the latter somewhat rare however.[358]

It is impossible for us to enter into details while treating of the period which followed the neolithic, that is to say the “age” of metals (copper, bronze, and iron). The metal which first took the place of stone was probably copper. In fact, the copper weapons are hammered or cast after the pattern of the stone axes and daggers, and in certain stations in Spain have been found ornaments in bronze (precious metal rarely) by the side of tools and arms in copper (ordinary metal). The existence of a “copper age” is, however, admitted to-day by almost all authorities, who regard it as an experimental period; it supplies one of the arguments in favour of the theory that the bronze industry did not come from the East (from the shores of the Euxine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, or Indo-China, according to different authors), as was thought until recent times, but sprang up locally in Europe itself.

The complete absence of oriental objects, for instance Assyrian cylinders or Egyptian sculptured scarabÆi in the finds of the bronze age in Europe, is an argument in favour of the new theory, maintained chiefly by Salomon Reinach in France and Much in Austria. The Scandinavian authors, Sophus MÜller and Montelius, admit the local development of the industry in metallic objects, but with materials supplied by the merchants of the Archipelago and Cyprus. The great trade-route for amber, and perhaps tin, between Denmark and the Archipelago is well known at the present day; it passes through the valley of the Elbe, the Moldau, and the Danube. The commercial relations between the north and south explain the similarities which archÆologists find between Scandinavian bronze objects and those of the Ægean district (Schliemann’s excavations at MycenÆ, Troy, Tiryns, etc.).[359]

It is generally admitted that the ancient bronze age corresponds with the “Ægean civilisation” which flourished among the peoples inhabiting, between the thirtieth and twentieth centuries B.C., Switzerland, the north of Italy, the basin of the Danube, the Balkan peninsula, a part of Anatolia, and, lastly, Cyprus. It gave rise (between 1700 and 1100 B.C.) to the “Mycenian” civilisation, of which the favourite ornamental design is the spiral.[360]

In Sweden the bronze age began later, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century B.C., but it continued longer there than in Southern Europe.

So also, according to Montelius, the introduction of iron dates only from the fifth or third century B.C. in Sweden, while Italy was acquainted with this metal as far back as the twelfth century B.C. The civilisation of the “iron age” distributed over two periods, according to the excavations made in the stations of Hallstatt (Austria) and La TÈne (Switzerland), must have been imported from Central Europe into Greece through Illyria. This importation corresponds perhaps with the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus. The so-called “Hallstattian” period lasted in Central Europe, France, and Northern Italy from the tenth or ninth to the sixth century B.C. The Hallstattian civilisation flourished chiefly in Carinthia, Southern Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia, Silesia, Bosnia, the south-east of France, and Southern Italy (the pre-Etruscan iron age of Montelius). The period which followed, called the second or iron age, or the La TÈne period,[361] was prolonged until the first century B.C. in France, Bohemia, and England. In Scandinavian countries the first iron age lasted till the sixth century, and the second iron age till the tenth century A.D.

The physical type of the inhabitants of Europe during the bronze age varies according to country. In England they were sub-brachycephals (ceph. ind. 81), of whom the remains found in the “round barrows” have been described by Thurnam and Beddoe. In Sweden and Denmark they were dolichocephals or mesocephals, tall and fair-haired, as far as one can gather from the remains of hair found in the burial-places (Montelius and S. Hansen). In the valley of the Rhine and Southern Germany they were typical dolichocephals, above the medium stature (type of the “ReihengrÄber” or row-graves, established by Holder and studied by Ranke, Lehmann-Nietsche, and others). In Switzerland, in the pile-dwellings, the neolithic brachycephals, of whom we have spoken, were succeeded in the bronze age by dolichocephals similar to those of Germany. During the Hallstattian period of the “iron age,” we notice the persistence of the dolichocephalic and tall type in the row-graves of the Rhine and Mein valleys; while during the following period of the same age (that of La TÈne or the Marnian), we find in the forms of the skulls exhumed from the burial-places a diversity almost as great as that which is seen in the populations of the present day.

The ages of bronze and iron, as we have seen, overlapped, in certain regions, the historic period, the period of the Phoenician voyages, the development of Egypt, the origin of Greek civilisation; and yet it is very difficult to say to what peoples known to history must be attributed the characteristic civilisations of each of the periods of the age of metals, and what were the languages spoken by these peoples. Most historians believed until quite recently that the Euscarians, and perhaps the Ligurians or Lygians of Western Europe, as well as the Iberians, the Pelasgian Tursans or Turses[362] of the three southern peninsulas of our continent, were the “autochthones,” or rather the oldest European peoples known to history. These would then be the probable descendants of the palÆolithic Europeans, the races of Neanderthal, Spy, and Chancelade. Further, according to the philologists and historians, these peoples spoke non-Aryan languages, and at a certain period, which D’Arbois de Jubainville[363] places vaguely at twenty or twenty-five centuries B.C., Europe was invaded by the Aryans, coming from Asia, who imposed their languages on the autochthones. The Basque language of the present day, derived from the Euscarian, is the only dialect surviving this transformation. The central point for the ethnographic history of Europe is, according to the philologists, the arrival of the Aryans.

But who were these Aryans? Nobody quite knows. It is no part of my plan to write the history of the Aryan controversy.[364] It is enough to say that men of acknowledged authority in science (Pott, Grimm, Max MÜller) have maintained for a long time, without any solid proof, the existence not only of a primitive Aryan language, which gave birth to the dialects of nearly every people of Europe, but also of an “Aryan race,” supposed to have sprung up “somewhere” in Asia, one part migrating towards India and Persia, while the remainder made its way by slow stages to Europe. Generations of scientific men have accepted this hypothesis, which, after all, had no other foundation than such aphorisms as “ex oriente lux” put forward by Pott, or “the irresistible impulse towards the west” invented by Grimm. It must, however, be mentioned that objections against this hypothesis by recognised authorities were raised as soon as it was promulgated; they came from philologists like Latham (1855), ethnographers like d’Omalius d’Halloy, anthropologists like Broca (1864); but it was only about 1880 that a somewhat lively reaction took place against the current ideas, and it originated in the camp of the philologists themselves. De Saussure, Sayce, and others, returning to the ideas expressed long before by Benfey, rightly observed that the assumed close relationship between Sanscrit and Zend and the primitive Aryan language rests solely on the fact of the archaic forms of these two dialects being preserved to the present time in written monuments, while the Aryan languages of Europe do not possess documents so ancient. They said further, that the European languages of the present day, such as Lithuanian, for example, are much nearer the primitive Aryan forms than the Asiatic dialects, Hindu for example. As to the Asiatic origin of the Aryans, a somewhat rude blow was struck at this second hypothesis by Poesche and Penka, who, taking up the ideas of LinnÉ and d’Omalius d’Halloy on the exclusive existence in Europe of fair-haired populations, identified these populations, without any proof, it is true, with the Aryans.[365] In reality, the hypothesis of the fair-haired “Aryan race,” tall and dolichocephalic (Fig. 88), indigenous to Europe, does not rest on a firmer foundation than that of the “Aryan race” coming from Asia.

Anthropology is powerless to say if the ancient owners of the dolichocephalic skulls in Southern Europe spoke an Aryan language or not. Moreover, the works of modern philologists, with Oscar Schrader[366] at their head, show that we can no longer speak to-day of an “Aryan race,” but solely of a family of Aryan languages, and perhaps of a primitive Aryan civilisation which had preceded the separation of the different Aryan dialects from their common stock.

This civilisation, as reconstituted by O. Schrader, differs much from that which Pictet had sketched out in his essay on “Linguistic PalÆontology.” This was something analogous to the neolithic civilisation; metals were unknown in it (with the exception, perhaps, of copper), but agriculture and the breeding of cattle had already reached a fair stage of development. However, there is nothing to prove that peoples speaking non-Aryan languages had not been in possession of the same civilisation, which with them would be developed in an independent manner. Hence we see the uselessness of looking for a centre from which this Aryan culture might have proceeded. The only question which we may still ask ourselves is, what was the point from which diffusion of the Aryan languages in Europe began. This point no one at the present time seeks any longer in Asia. It is in Europe, and what we have to do is to define it (S. Reinach). Latham and d’Omalius d’Halloy located the habitat of the primitive Aryans in the south or south-east of Russia. Penka had placed it in Scandinavia. Other learned authorities have selected intermediate points between these extremes.[367]

On the whole, the Aryan question to-day has no longer the importance which was formerly given to it. All that we can legitimately suppose is that, in the period touching the neolithic age, the inhabitants of Europe were Aryanised from the point of view of language, without any notable change in the constitution of their physical type, or, probably, of their civilisation.

Migrations of European Peoples during the Historic Period.—It would require volumes to relate even succinctly all the movements and dislocations of European peoples. We can only recall here the more salient facts.

The confirmation afforded by history respecting European populations does not go farther back than the eighth or ninth century B.C. for the Mediterranean district, and than the second or third century B.C. for the rest of Europe. But proto-historic archÆology makes us acquainted with a movement of peoples between the tenth and the eleventh century B.C. The Dorians and the inhabitants of Thessaly penetrated at this date into Greece and forced a portion of the inhabitants of this country (the AchÆans, the Eolians) to seek refuge on the nearest coast of Asia Minor. About the same period the Tyrrhenians or Turses (a small section of the Pelasgians) moved into Central Italy, taking with them the Mycenian civilisation, somewhat debased, and founding there the Etruscan “nation.” This nation drove back the Ombro-Latins or Italiotes, who, in their turn, expelled the Sicules (a branch of the Ligurians, according to D’Arbois de Jubainville) in Sicily.

The Venetes and the Illyrians made their appearance at nearly the same period on the coasts of the Adriatic, and the Thracians in present Bosnia.

Central Europe was occupied, probably from this period, by Celtic populations who, from their primitive country between the upper Danube and the Rhine, spread into the valley of the Po (bronze age of the “terramare,” sites or foundations of prehistoric huts), in the middle valley of the Danube (Hallstatt), and later (seventh century B.C.?) into the north of Gaul, whence they reached the British Isles (“ancient Celts” of the English archÆologists, “Gaelic Celts” of the philologists).[368] It was also about the tenth century B.C. that the Scythians, established in Southern Russia some time before, spread themselves towards the mid-Danube.

About the fifth century B.C. there evidently occurred another movement of peoples. The Trans-Alpine Celts or Galatians invaded, under the name of Celto-BelgÆ, Jutland, Northern Germany, the Low Countries, England (the “new Celts” or Britons of English authors). They also spread over a large part of Gaul, and into Spain (Celtiberians), and then in 392 B.C.,[369] they penetrated into Italy, where they found their kinsmen, who had been settled there for three centuries, and were under the subjugation of the Etruscans; these they overturned, and only halted after having taken Rome (390). A little later (about 300), other waves of Celts, the Galatians, occupied the valley of the Danube, whence they chased the Illyrians and the Thracians. The more audacious of them continued their course across Thrace and penetrated into Asia Minor, where they established themselves in the country, since known as Galatia (279).

During this period (from the fifth to the third century), which may be called Celtic, by analogy with that which followed, styled the Roman period, history mentions the Germans as a people similar to the Celts, and dwelling to the north-east of the latter.

The Roman conquest of transalpine Europe, effected in the first centuries B.C. and A.D., imposed the language of Latium on the majority of Celts, Iberians, and Italo-Celts, and maintained the populations within almost the same bounds during three centuries.

The period extending from the second to the sixth century of the Christian era comprises the great historic epoch of the “migrations of peoples.” In this period we see the Slavs spreading in all directions: towards the Baltic, beyond the Elbe, into the basin of the Danube and beyond, into the Balkan peninsula; this movement determined that of the Germans, who invaded the south-east of England (Angles, Saxons, Jutes), Belgium, the north-east of France (Franks), Switzerland, and Alsace (Alemanni), the south of Germany (Bavarians), and spread even beyond the Alps (Longobards). The Celts in their turn pushed the Iberians farther and farther into the south-west of France and Spain, while the Italo-Celts absorbed little by little the rest of the Etruscans and Ligurians. Towards the end of this period a final wave of invasion, that of the Huns (fifth century), the Avars (sixth), and other allied tribes, once more threw Europe into a state of perturbation; they spread out into the plains of Champagne, then drew back, severed the Slavs into two groups (northern and southern), and subsided in the plains of Hungary, already partly occupied for several centuries by the Dacians. Almost at the same time the Bulgarians removed from the banks of the Volga to both sides of the Danube. After the sixth century other ethnic movements, less general, but not less important, occurred in every part of Europe. In the eighth or ninth century the invasion of the Varecks (Scandinavians or Letts?) took place in the north-west of Russia. In the ninth century the Hungarians, pushed by the tribes of the Pechenecks and the Polovtsis who invaded the south of Russia, crossed the Carpathians and settled in the valley of the Tissa. From the ninth or tenth century, the Normans or Northmen (Danes, Scandinavians) established themselves in the north and east of the British Isles as well as the north of France, a part of which still bears their name. Almost at the same time (tenth to eleventh century) the Arabs made themselves masters of the Iberian peninsula, of Southern Italy and Sicily; they maintained their position to the south of the Guadalquivir until the fifteenth century. In the twelfth century the Germans drove back the western Slavs to the banks of the Vistula, which led to the expansion of the eastern Slavs towards the north-east at the expense of the Finnish tribes. In the thirteenth century came the Mongols, or rather the Turco-Mongolian hordes; they occupied the whole of Russia (as far as Novgorod in the north), and penetrated into Europe as far as Liegnitz in Silesia. They soon withdrew from Western Europe, but remained until the fifteenth century in the east of Russia, and even until the eighteenth century in the Crimea and the steppes of southern Russia. Finally, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed the invasion of the Osmanli Turks into the Balkan peninsula, Hungary, and even into lower Austria, as well as the migrations of the Little Russians into the upper basin of the Dnieper. About the sixteenth century began the definite movement of the Little Russians towards the steppes of Southern Russia, and the slow but sure march of the Great Russians beyond the Volga, the Ural mountains, and farther, into Siberia—a movement which continues in our own time. We can only mention other migrations or colonisations of a more limited range, that of the Illyrians and Albanians into Southern Italy, that of the Germans in Hungary and Russia, etc., as well as the arrival of non-European peoples, Gypsies and Jews, who are scattered at the present day among all the nations of our continent.

II.—EUROPEAN RACES OF THE PRESENT DAY.

Setting out from the fact that the peoples or nations of Europe, like those of the rest of the earth for the matter of that, are formed of the intermixture in varying proportions of different races or varieties (see the Introduction), I have endeavoured, by grouping the exact characters, carefully abstracted from many million individuals, relating to stature, form of head, pigmentation, and other somatic particulars, to determine the constituent elements of these intermixtures. I have thus succeeded in distinguishing the existence of six principal and of four secondary races, the combinations of which, in various proportions, constitute the different “European peoples” properly so called, distinct from the peoples of other races, Lapp, Ugrian, Turkish, Mongolian, etc., which are likewise met with in Europe.[370]

Here, in short, are the characters and geographical distribution of those races which, in order to avoid every interpretation drawn from linguistic, historical, or nationalist considerations, I describe according to their principal physical characters, or for the sake of brevity, according to the geographical names of the regions in which these races are best represented or least crossed.

We have in Europe, to begin with, two fair-haired races, one dolichocephalic, of very tall stature (Northern race), and another, sub-brachycephalic, comparatively short (Eastern race). Then four dark-haired races: two of short stature, one of which (Ibero-insular) is dolichocephalic, the other (Cevenole or Western) brachycephalic; and two of high stature, of which one is sub-dolichocephalic (Littoral), the other brachycephalic (Adriatic). Among the four secondary races two have a relation to the fair-haired race, while the two others may be considered as intermediate between the fair and dark-haired races (see Map 2). I now give a few details respecting these races.