Chapter XII
THE PRE-DRAVIDIANS: JUNGLE TRIBES OF THE DECCAN, VEDDA, SAKAI, AUSTRALIANS
The Pre-Dravidians--The Kadir--The Paniyan--The Irula--The Kurumba--The Vedda--The Sakai--The Toala--Australia: Physical Conditions--Physical Type--Australian Origins--Evidence from Language and Culture--Four Successive Immigrations--Earlier Views--Material Culture--Sociology--Initiation Ceremonies-- Totemism--The Family--Kinship--Property and Trade--Magic and Religion.
CONSPECTUS.
#Present Range.# Jungle Tribes, Deccan; Vedda, Ceylon; Sakai, Malay Peninsula and East Sumatra; Australians, unsettled parts of Australia and reservations.
#Hair#, wavy to curly, long, usually black.
#Colour#, dark brown. #Skull#, typically dolichocephalic. Vedda skull dolichocephalic (70.5) and very small, Sakai mesaticephalic (78), Toala (mixed) low brachycephalic (82). #Jaws#, orthognathous. Australians, generally prognathous. #Nose#, usually platyrrhine. #Stature#, low. Vedda 1.53 m. (5 ft. 0-1/2 in.) to Australian 1.575 m. (5 ft. 2 in.)
#Speech#, Jungle tribes, usually borrowed from neighbours. Australian languages agglutinative, not uniform throughout the continent and unconnected with any other group.
#Culture#, lowest hunting stage, simple agriculture has been adopted by a few tribes from their neighbours.
* * * * *
The term Pre-Dravidian, the first use of which seems to be due to Lapicque, is now employed to include certain jungle tribes of South India, the Vedda of Ceylon, the Sakai of the southern Malay Peninsula, the basal element in certain tribes in the East India Archipelago and the main element in the Australians. Pre-Dravidian characters are coarse hair, more or less wavy or curly, a narrow head, a very broad nose, dark brown skin and short stature.
The following may be taken as examples of the Pre-Dravidian jungle tribes of Southern India[961]. The Kadir of the Anaimalai Hills and the mountain ranges south into Travancore, are of short stature (1.577 m. 5 ft. 2 in.), with a dark skin, dolichocephalic and platyrrhine. They chip their incisor teeth, as do the Mala-Vadan, and dilate the lobes of their ears, but do not tattoo. They wear bamboo combs similar to those of the Sakai. They speak a Tamil patois. "The Kadirs," according to Thurston, "afford a typical example of happiness without culture"; they are nomad hunters and collectors of jungle products, with scarcely any tillage; they do not possess land but have the right to collect all minor forest produce and sell it to the Government. They deal most extensively in wax and honey. They are polygynous. Their dead are buried in the jungle, the head is entirely covered with leaves and placed towards the east; there are no monuments. Their religion is a crude polytheism with a vague worship of stone images or invisible gods; it is "an ejaculatory religion."
The Paniyan, who live in Malabar, the Wynad and the Nilgiris, have thick and sometimes everted lips and the hair is in some a mass of short curls, in others long wavy curls. They are dark skinned, dolichocephalic (index 74), platyrrhine and of short stature (1.574 m. 5 ft. 2 in.). They sometimes tattoo, and the lobes of the ears are dilated. Fire is made by the sawing method. They are agriculturalists and were practically serfs; they are bold and reckless and were formerly often employed as thieves. They speak a debased Malayalam patois. Their dead are buried; they practise monogamy and have beliefs in various spirits.
The Irula are the darkest of the Nilgiri tribes. They are dolichocephalic (index 75.8), platyrrhine and of low stature (1.598 m. nearly 5 ft. 3 in.). No tattooing is recorded, but they dilate the lobes of their ears. Their language is a corrupt form of Tamil. They are agriculturalists and eat all kinds of meat except that of buffaloes and cattle. They are as a rule monogamous. Their dead are buried in a sitting posture and the grave is marked by a stone. Professedly they are worshippers of Vishnu.
The jungle Kurumba of the Nilgiris appear to be remnants of a great and widely spread people who erected dolmens. They have slightly broader heads (index 77) than allied tribes, but resemble them in their broad nose, dark skin and low stature (1.575 m. 5 ft. 2 in.). They cultivate the ground a little, but are essentially woodcutters, hunters, and collectors of jungle produce. There is said to be no marriage rite, and several brothers share a wife. Some bury their dead. After a death a long waterworn stone is usually placed in one of the old dolmens which are scattered over the Nilgiri plateau, but occasionally a small dolmen is raised to mark the burial. They have a great reputation for magical powers. Some worship Siva, others worship Kuribattraya (Lord of many sheep), and the wife of Siva. They also worship a rough stone, setting it up in a cave or in a circle of stones to which they make puja and offer cooked rice at the sowing time. The Kadu Kurumba of Mysore bury children but cremate adults; there is a separate house in each village for unmarried girls and another at the end of the village for unmarried males.
The Vedda of Ceylon have long black coarse wavy or slightly curly hair. The cephalic index is 70.5, the nose is depressed at the root, almost platyrrhine; the broad face is remarkably orthognathous and the forehead is slightly retreating with prominent brow arches; the lips are thin, and the skin is dark brown. The stature is extremely low, only 1.533 m. (5 ft. 0-1/2 in.). The Coast and less pure Vedda average 43 mm. (1-3/4 in.) taller and have broader heads. The true Vedda are a grave but happy people, quiet, upright, hospitable with a strong love of liberty. Lying and theft are unknown. They are timid and have a great fear of strangers. The bow and arrow are their only weapons and the arrow tipped with iron obtained from the Sinhalese forms a universal tool. They speak a modified Sinhali, but employ only one numeral and count with sticks. They live under rock shelters or in simple huts made of boughs. They are strictly monogamous and live in isolated families with no chiefs and have no regular clan meetings. Each section of the Vedda had in earlier days its own hunting grounds where fish, game, honey, and yams constituted their sole food. The wild Vedda simply leave their dead in a cave, which is then deserted. The three things that loom largest in the native mind are hunting, honey, and the cult of the dead. The last constitutes almost the whole of the religious life and magical practices of the people; it is the motif of almost every dance and may have been the source of all. After a death they perform certain dances and rites through a shaman in connection with the recently departed ghost, yaka. They also propitiate powerful yaku, male and female, by sacrifices and ceremonial dances[962].
The Sakai or Senoi are jungle folk, some of whom have mixed with Semang and other peoples. Their skin is of a medium brown colour. Their hair is long, mainly wavy or loosely curly, and black with a reddish tinge. The average stature may be taken to be from 1.5 m. to 1.55 m. (59 to 61 inches), the head index varies from about 77 to 81. The face is fairly broad, with prominent cheek-bones and brow ridges; the low broad nose has spreading alae and short concave ridge; the lips are thick but not everted. They are largely nomadic, and their agriculture is of the most primitive description, their usual implement being the digging stick. Their houses are built on the ground and as a rule are rectangular in plan though occasionally conical, and huts are sometimes built in trees as refuges from wild beasts. A scanty garment of bark cloth was formerly worn, and, like the Semang, they make fringed girdles from a black thread-like fungus. Their distinctive weapon is the blow-pipe which they have brought to great perfection, and their food consists in jungle produce, including many poisonous roots and tubers which they have learnt how to treat, so as to render them innocuous. They do not make canoes and rarely use rafts. In the marriage ceremony the man has to chase the girl round a mound of earth and catch her before she has encircled it a third time. The marriage tie is strictly observed. Each village has a petty chief, whose influence is purely personal. Individual property does not exist, only family property. Cultivation is also communal. The inhabitants of the upper heaven consist of Tuhan or Peng, the "god" of the Sakai and a giantess named "Granny Long-breasts" who washes sin-blackened human souls in hot water; the good souls ultimately go to a cloud-land. There are numerous demons and whenever the Sakai have done wrong Tuhan gives the demons leave to attack them, and there is no contending against his decree. He is not prayed to, as his will is unalterable[963].
The Toala of the south-west peninsula of the Celebes are at base, according to the Sarasins[964], a Pre-Dravidian people, though some mixture with other races has taken place. The hair is very wavy and even curly, the skin darkish brown, the head low brachycephalic (index 82) and the stature 1.575 m. (5 ft. 2 in.). The face is somewhat short with very broad nose and thick lips. Possibly the Ulu Ayar of west Borneo who are related to the Land Dayaks may be partly of Pre-Dravidian origin and other traces of this race will probably be found in the East India Archipelago[965].
Australia resembles South Africa in the arid conditions characterising the interior, the eastern range of mountains precipitating the warm moisture-laden winds from the Pacific. As a result of the restricted rainfall there is no river system of importance except that of the Murray and its tributary the Darling. In the north and north-east, owing to heavier rainfall, there are numerous water-courses, but they do not open up the interior of the country. The lack of uniformity in the water supply has a far-reaching effect on all living beings. The arid conditions, the irregularity and short duration of the rainfall oblige the natives to be continually migrating, and prevent these unsettled bands from ever attaining any size, indeed they are sometimes hard pressed to obtain enough food to keep alive.
It may be assumed that the backwardness of the culture of the Australians is due partly to the low state of culture of their ancestors when they arrived in the country, and partly to the peculiar character of the country as well as of its flora and fauna, since Australia has never been stocked with wild animals dangerous to human life, or with any suitable for domestication. The relative isolation from other peoples has had a retarding effect and the Australian has developed largely along his own lines without the impetus given by competition with other peoples. Records of simple migration are rare. There have been no waves of aggression, and intertribal feuds are not very serious affairs. The Australians have never influenced any other peoples and they are doomed gradually to disappear.
Baldwin Spencer says "In the matter of personal appearance while conforming generally to what is known as the Australian type, there is considerable variation. The man varies from, approximately, a maximum of 6 ft. 3 in. to a minimum of 5 ft. 2 in.... As a general rule, few of them are taller than 5 ft. 8 in. The women vary between 5 ft. 9 in. and 4 ft. 9 in. Their average height is not more than 5 ft. 2 in. The brow ridges are strongly marked, especially in the man, and the forehead slopes back. The nose is broad with the root deep set. In colour the native is dark chocolate brown, not black. The hair ... may be almost straight, decidedly wavy--its usual feature--or almost, but never really, frizzly.... The beard also may be well developed or almost absent[966]." The skull is dolichocephalic with an average cranial index of 72, prognathous and platyrrhine.
There has been much speculation with regard to the origin of the present Australian race. According to Baldwin Spencer "There can be no doubt but that in past times the whole of the continent, including Tasmania, was occupied by one race. This original, and probably Negritto[967] population, at an early period; was widely spread over Malayasia and Australia including Tasmania, which at that time was not shut off by Bass Strait. The Tasmanians had no boats capable of crossing the latter and [it is assumed that their ancestors] must have gone over on land[968]."
Subsequently when the land sank a remnant of the old ulotrichous population "was thus left stranded in Tasmania, where Homo tasmanianus survived until he came in contact with Europeans and was exterminated." He had frizzly hair. "His weapons and implements were of the most primitive kind; long pointed unbarbed spears, no spear thrower, no boomerang, simple throwing stick and only the crudest form of chipped stone axes, knives and scrapers that were never hafted. Unfortunately of his organisation, customs, and beliefs we know but little in detail[969]."
It is now generally held that at a later date an immigration of a people in a somewhat higher stage of culture took place; these are regarded by some as belonging to the Dravidian, and by others, and with more probability, to the Pre-Dravidian race. J. Mathew[970] suggests that "the two races are represented by the two primary classes, or phratries, of Australian society, which were generally designated by names indicating a contrast of colour, such as eaglehawk and crow. The crow, black cockatoo, etc., would represent the Tasmanian element; the eaglehawk, white cockatoo, etc., the so-called Dravidian." Baldwin Spencer does not think that the moiety names lend any serious support to the theory of the mixture of two races differing in colour. He goes on to say "Mr Mathew also postulates a comparatively recent slight infusion of Malay blood in the northern half of Australia. There is, however, practically no evidence of Malay infusion. One of the most striking features of the Malay is his long, lank hair, and yet it is just in these north parts that the most frizzly hair is met with[971]."
As concerns linguistics S. H. Ray says "There is no evidence of an African, Andaman, Papuan, or Malay connection with the Australian languages. There are reasons for regarding the Australian as in a similar morphological stage to the Dravidian, but there is no genealogical relationship proved[972]." No connection has yet been proved between the Australian languages and the Austronesian or Oceanic branch of the Austric family of languages, first systematically described by W. Schmidt[973]. The study of Australian languages is particularly difficult owing to the very few serviceable grammars and dictionaries, and the large number of very incomplete vocabularies scattered about in inaccessible works and journals. The main conclusion to which Schmidt has arrived[974] is that the Australian languages are not, as had been supposed, a mainly uniform group. Though over the greater part of Australia languages possess strong common elements, North Australia has languages showing no similarities in vocabulary and very few in grammar with that larger group or with each other. The area of the North Australian languages is included in a line from south of Roebuck Bay in the west to Cape Flattery in the east, with a southward bend to include Arunta (Aranda), interrupted by a branch of southern languages running up north down Flinders and Leichhardt rivers[975]. The area contains two or three linguistic groups, best distinguished by their terminations which consist respectively of vowels and consonants, the oldest group; vowels alone, the latest group; and vowels and liquids, probably representing a transition between the two.
In South Australia, though differences occur, the languages possess common features both in grammar and vocabulary, having similar personal pronouns, and certain words for parts of the body in common. Linguistic differences are associated with differences in social grouping, the area of purely vowel endings coinciding with the area of the 2-class system and matrilinear descent, while the area of liquid endings is partly coterminous with the 4-class system and (often) patrilinear succession.
Schmidt endeavours to trace the connection between the distribution of languages with that of types of social groupings, more particularly in connection with the culture zones which Graebner[976] has traced throughout the Pacific area, representing successive waves of migration. The first immigration, corresponding with Graebner's Ur-period, is represented by languages with postposed genitive, the earliest stratum being pure only in Tasmania; remnants of the first stratum and a second stratum occur in Victoria, and remnants of the second stratum to the north and north-east. According to Schmidt this cultural stratum is characterised by absence of group or marriage totemism, and presence of sex patrons ("sex-totemism"). The second immigration is represented by languages with preposition of the genitive, initial r and l, vowel and explosive endings, and is found fairly pure only in the extreme north-west and north, and in places in the north-east. The great multiplicity of languages belonging to this stratum may be attributed to the predominance of the strictly local type of totem-groups. These are the languages of Graebner's "totem-culture." The third immigration is represented by languages with preposition of the genitive, no initial r and l, and purely vowel terminations. These are the languages of the south central group of tribes with a 2-class system and matrilinear descent. This uniform group has the largest area and has influenced the whole mass of Australian languages, only North Australia and Tasmania remaining immune. Their sociological structure with no localisation of totems and classes contributed to their power of expansion. The fourth immigration is represented by languages of an intermediate type, with vowel and liquid endings but no initial r and l. These are the tribes with 4-class and 8-class systems, universal father-right (proving the strong influence of older totemic ideas), curious fertility rites, conception ideas and migration myths.
It will be seen that Schmidt's conclusions confute the evolutionary theory developed by Frazer, Hartland, Howitt, Spencer and Gillen, Durkheim and (in part) Andrew Lang, that Australia was essentially homogeneous in fundamental ideas which have developed differently on account of geographic and climatic variation. Schmidt's view is that Australia was entered successively by a number of entirely different tribes, so that the variation now met with is due to radical diversities and to the numerous intermixtures arising from migrations and stratifications of peoples. The linguistic data dispose of the idea that the oldest tribes with mother-right, 2-class system, traces of group-marriage, and lack of moral and religious ideas live in the centre, and that from thence advancement radiated towards the coast bringing about father-right, abandonment of class system and totemism, individual marriage, and higher ethical and religious ideas. On the contrary it would appear that the centre of the continent is the great channel in which movements are still taking place; the older peoples are driven out towards the margin and there preserve the old sociological, ethical and religious conditions. In fact, the older the people, judging from their linguistic stratum, the less one finds among them what has been assumed to be the initial stage for Central Australia[977]. These are Schmidt's views and they confirm the cultural results established by Graebner. But as the whole question of the culture layers in the Pacific is still under discussion it is inadvisable at this stage of our knowledge to make any definite statements. It is worth noting, however, that[978] the distribution of simple burial of the dead coincides in the main with Schmidt's South Australian language area, and the area roughly enclosed on the east by long. 140 deg. E. and the north by lat. 20 deg. S. appears to form a technological province distinct from the rest of Australia[979].
Rarely can the Australian depend on regular supplies of food. He feeds on flesh, fish, grubs and insects, and wild vegetable food; probably everything that is edible is eaten. Cannibalism is widely spread, but human flesh is nowhere a regular article of food. Clothing, apart from ornament, is rarely worn, but in the south, skin cloaks and fur aprons are fairly common. Scarification of the body is frequent and conspicuous. The men usually let their hair grow long, and the women keep theirs short. Dwellings are of the simplest character, usually merely breakwinds or slight huts, but where there is a large supply of vegetable food, huts are made of boughs covered with bark or grass and are sometimes coated with clay. Implements are made of shell, bone, wood and stone. Baldwin Spencer remarks "It is not too much to say that at the present time we can parallel amongst Australian stone weapons all the types known in Europe under the names Chellean, Mousterian, Aurignacian etc.... The terms Eolithic, Palaeolithic, and Neolithic do not apply in Australia as indicating either time periods or levels of culture[980]." Spears and wooden clubs are universal, and the use of the spear-thrower is generally distributed. The boomerang is found almost throughout Australia; the variety that returns when it is thrown is as a rule only a plaything or for throwing at birds. The forms of the various implements vary in different parts of the country and in some districts certain implements may be entirely absent. For example the boomerang is not found in the northern parts of Cape York peninsula or of the Northern Territory, and the spear-thrower is absent from south-east Queensland. Bows and arrows are unknown and pottery making does not occur. Rafts are made of one or more logs, and the commonest form of canoe is that made of a single sheet of bark. Dug-outs occur in a few places, and both single and double outriggers are found only on the Queensland coast. These sporadic occurrences give additional support to the modern view that the racial and cultural history of Australia is by no means so simple as has till lately been assumed[981].
Students of Australian sociology have been so much impressed with certain prominent features of social organisation that they have paid insufficient attention to kinship and the family; the former has however recently been investigated by A. R. Brown[982], while information concerning the latter has been carefully sifted by B. Malinowski[983]. The main features of social groupings are the tribe, the local groups, the classes, the totemic clans and the families. A tribe is composed of a number of local groups and these are perpetuated in the same tracts by the sons, who hunt over the grounds of their fathers; this is the "local organisation." The local group is the only political unit, and intra-group justice has been extended to inter-group justice, where the units of reference are not based on kinship; this may be regarded as the earliest stage of what is known as International Law[984]. In the so-called "social organisation," the tribe as a community is divided into two parts (moieties or phratries), which are quite distinct from the local groups, though rarely they may be coincident. Each moiety may be subdivided into two or four exogamous sections which are generally called "classes" and are peculiar to Australia. Descent in the classes is as a rule indirect matrilineal or indirect patrilineal, that is to say, while the child still belongs to its mother's or father's moiety (as the case may be) it is assigned to the class to which the mother or the father does not belong; but the grandchildren belong to the class of a grandmother or grandfather. In diagram I (below) A and C are classes of one moiety, #B# and D those of the other. Thus when A man marries B woman the children are D. B man marries A woman and the children are C and so on. When there are four classes in each moiety the diagram works out as follows (II)[985]:
Very important in social life are the initiation ceremonies by means of which a youth is admitted to the status of tribal manhood. These ceremonies vary greatly from tribe to tribe but they agree in certain fundamental points. "(1) They begin at the age of puberty. (2) During the initiation ceremonies the women play an important part. (3) At the close of the first part of the ceremonies, such as that of tooth knocking out or circumcision, a definite performance is enacted emblematic of the fact that the youths have passed out of the control of the women. (4) During the essential parts the women are typically absent and the youths are shown the bull-roarer, have the secret beliefs explained to them and are instructed in the moral precepts and customs, including food restrictions, that they must henceforth observe under severe penalties. (5) The last grade is not passed through until a man is quite mature[986]."
Practically universal is the existence of a grouping of individuals under the names of plants, animals or various objects; these are termed totems and the human groups are termed totem clans. The members of a totem clan commonly believe themselves to be actually descended from or related to their totem, and all members of a clan, whatever tribe they may belong to, are regarded as brethren, who have mutual duties, prohibitions and privileges. Thus a member of a totem clan must help and never injure any fellow member. "Speaking generally it may be said that every totemic group has certain ceremonies associated with it and that these refer to old totemic ancestors. In all tribes they form part of a secret ritual in which only the initiated may take part. In most tribes a certain number are shown to the youths during the early stages of initiation, but at a later period he sees many more[987]."
In several tribes, and probably it was very general, certain magical ceremonies were performed to render the totem abundant or efficacious. The sex patron ("sex totem"), when the women have one animal, such as the owlet night-jar associated with them, and the men another, such as the bat; and the guardian genius (mis-called "individual totem"), acquired by dreaming of some animal, are of rare occurrence.
The individual family has been shown by Malinowski[988] to be "a unit playing an important part in the social life of the natives and well defined by a number of moral, customary and legal norms; it is further determined by the sexual division of labour, the aboriginal mode of living, and especially by the intimate relation between the parents and children. The individual relation between husband and wife (marriage) is rooted in the unity of the family ... and in the well-defined, though not always exclusive, sexual right the husband acquires over his wife." All sexual licence is regulated by and subject to strict rules. The Pirrauru custom, by which individuals are allocated accessory spouses, "proves that the relationship involved does not possess the character of marriage. For it completely differs from marriage in nearly all the essential points by which marriage in Australia is defined. And above all the Pirrauru relation does not seem to involve the facts of family life in its true sense" (p. 298).
A. R. Brown[989] asserts that so far as our information goes, the only method of regulating marriage is by means of the relationship system. In every tribe there is a law to the effect that a man may only marry women who stand to him in a certain relationship, and there is no evidence that there is any other method of regulating marriage. The so-called class rule by which a man of a special division or group is required to marry a woman of another division is merely the law of relationship stated in a less exact form. It is the fact that a man may only marry a relative of a certain kind that necessitates the marrying into a particular relationship division. The rule of totemic exogamy, according to A. R. Brown, is equally seen to have no existence apart from the relationship rule. Where a totemic group is a clan and consists of relations all of one line of descent, a man is prohibited from marrying a woman of his own group by the ordinary rule of relationship. On the other hand, where the totemic group is not a clan, but is a local group (as in the Burduna tribe) or a cult society (as in the Arunta tribe) there is no rule prohibiting a man from marrying a woman of the same totemic group as himself. The so-called rule of local exogamy in some tribes (perhaps in all) is merely a result of the fact that the local group is a clan, i.e. a group of persons related in one line of descent only. Only two methods of regulating marriage are known to exist in the greater part of Australia[990]: Type I. A man marries the daughter of one of the men he denotes by the same term as his mother's brother. Type II. A man marries a woman who is the daughter's daughter of some man whom he denotes by the same term as his mother's mother's brother. In either case he may not marry any other kind of relative. The existence of two phratries or moieties or four named divisions ("classes") in a tribe conveys no information whatever as to the marriage rule of the tribe. The term "class" and "sub-class," according to A. R. Brown, had better be discarded as writers use them to denote several totally distinct kinds of divisions.
The tribe has collecting and hunting rights over an area with recognised limits, smaller communities down to the family unit having similar rights within the tribal boundaries. In some cases a tribe which had no stone suitable for making stone implements within its own boundaries was allowed to send tribal messengers to a quarry to procure what was needed without molestation, though Howitt speaks of family ownership of quarries[991]. Implements are personal property. An extensive system of intertribal communication and exchange is carried on, apparently by recognised middlemen, and tribes meet on certain occasions at established trade centres for a regulated barter.
Beneficent and malevolent magic are universally practised and totemism possesses a religious besides a social aspect. An emotional relation often exists between the members of a totem clan and their totem, and the latter are believed at times to warn or protect their human kinsmen. It may be noted that the widely spread and elaborate ceremonies designed to render the totem prolific or to ensure its abundance, though performed solely by members of the totem clan concerned, are less for their own benefit than for that of the community[992]. Owing perhaps to the difficulty of distinguishing between the purely social and the religious institutions of primitive peoples great diversity of opinion prevails even amongst the best observers regarding the religious views of the Australian aborigines. The existence of a "tribal All-Father" is perhaps most clearly emphasised by A. W. Howitt[993], who finds this belief widespread in the whole of Victoria and New South Wales, up to the eastern boundaries of the tribes of the Darling River. Amongst those of New South Wales are the Euahlayi, whom K. Langloh Parker describes[994] as having a more advanced theology and a more developed worship (including prayers, pp. 79-80) than any other Australian tribe. These now eat their hereditary totem without scruple--a sure sign that the totemic system is dying out, although still outwardly in full force. Amongst the Arunta, Kaitish, and the other Central and Northern tribes studied by Spencer and Gillen, totemism still survives, and totems are even assigned to the mysterious Iruntarinia entities, vague and invisible incarnations of the ghosts of ancestors who lived in the Alcheringa time, the dim remote past at the beginning of everything. These are far more powerful than living men, because their spirit part is associated with the so-called churinga, consisting of stones, pieces of wood or any other objects which are deemed sacred as possessing a kind of mana which makes the yams and grass to grow, enables a man to capture game, and so forth. "That the churinga are simply objects endowed with mana is the happy suggestion of Sidney Hartland[995] whose explanation has dispelled the dense fog of mystification hitherto enveloping the strange beliefs and observances of these Central and Northern tribes[996]." N. W. Thomas[997] reviews the whole question of Australian religion, and after describing Twanjiraka, Malbanga and Ulthaana, of the Arunta, Baiame or Byamee, famous in anthropological controversy[998], Daramulun of the Yuin, Mungan-ngaua (our father) of the Kurnai, Nurrundere of the Narrinyeri, Bunjil or Pundjel, often called Mamingorak (our father) of Victoria, and others, he concludes "These are by no means the only gods known to Australian tribes; on the contrary it can hardly be definitely asserted that there is or was any tribe which had not some such belief[999]."
FOOTNOTES:
[961] E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, 1909.
[962] P. and F. Sarasin, Ergebnisse Naturwissenschaftlicher Forschungen auf Ceylon. Die Steinzeit auf Ceylon, 1908; H. Parker, Ancient Ceylon, 1909. The most complete account is given by C. G. and B. Z. Seligman, The Veddas, 1911.
[963] W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, 1906; R. Martin, Die Inlandstaemme der Malayischen Halbinseln, 1905.
[964] Fritz Sarasin, Versuch einer Anthropologie der Insel Celebes. Zweiter Teil: Die Varietaeten des Menschen auf Celebes, 1906.
[965] A. C. Haddon, Appendix to C. Hose and W. McDougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, II. 1912.
[966] Federal Handbook, Brit. Ass. for Advancement of Science, 1914, p. 36.
[967] The Tasmanians can scarcely be termed Negritoes. The important point to be noted is that this early population was ulotrichous, cf. p. 159.
[968] Loc. cit. p. 34. Or the Strait may then have been very narrow.
[969] Loc. cit. p. 34.
[970] Two Representative Tribes of Queensland, 1910, p. 30.
[971] Loc. cit. p. 34.
[972] Reports Camb. Exped. to Torres Straits, III. 1907, p. 528.
[973] Die Mon-Khmer Voelker, 1906. Schmidt has for many years studied the Australian languages and has published his results in Anthropos, Vols, VII., VIII. 1912, 1913, from which, and also from Man, No. 8, 1908, the following summarised extracts are taken.
[974] See Man, No. 8, 1908, pp. 184-5.
[975] See the map constructed by P. W. Schmidt and P. K. Streit, Anthropos, VII. 1912.
[976] See Globus, XC. 1906, and "Die sozialen Systeme d. Suedsee," Ztschr. f. Sozialwissenschaft, XI. 1908. Schmidt's divergence from Graebner's views are dealt with in Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie, 1909, pp. 372-5, and Anthropos, VII. 1912, p. 246 ff.
[977] Anthropos, VII. 1912, pp. 247, 248.
[978] N. W. Thomas, "The Disposal of the Dead in Australia," Folklore, XIX. 1908.
[979] A. R. Brown, MS.
[980] Federal Handbook, British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1914, p. 76.
[981] A. C. Haddon, "The Outrigger Canoes of Torres Straits and North Queensland," Essays and Studies Presented to W. Ridgeway, 1913, p. 621, and W. H. R. Rivers, "The Contact of Peoples," in the same volume, p. 479.
[982] Man, No. 32, 1910.
[983] The Family among the Australian Aborigines, 1913.
[984] G. C. Wheeler, The Tribe, and intertribal relations in Australia, 1910, p. 163.
[985] A. R. Brown, "Marriage and Descent in North Australia," Man, No. 32, 1910.
[986] W. Baldwin Spencer, loc. cit. p. 50.
[987] W. Baldwin Spencer, loc. cit. p. 44.
[988] The Family among the Australian Aborigines, 1913, p. 304.
[989] MS.
[990] A. R. Brown, "Three Tribes of Western Australia," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLIII. 1913.
[991] A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-east Australia, 1904, p. 311.
[992] W. Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, 1899, Chap. VI., and The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 1904, Chap. IX.
[993] The Native Tribes of South-east Australia, 1904, p. 500.
[994] The Euahlayi Tribe, 1905.
[995] Presidential Address (Section H) Brit. Ass. York, 1906.
[996] A. H. Keane, Art. "Australasia," in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 1909, p. 244.
[997] The Natives of Australia, 1906, Chap. XIII. Religion.
[998] E. B. Tylor, Journ. Anthr. Inst. XXI. p. 292; A. Lang, Magic and Religion, p. 25; Myth, Ritual and Religion, Chap. XII.; K. Langloh Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe, 1905, Chap. II.; M. F. v. Leonhardi, Anthropos, IV. 1909, p. 1065, and many others.
[999] The following should be consulted:
Original memoirs: C. Strehlow, Die Aranda- und Loritza-Staemme in Zentral-Australien, 1907; W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies among the north-west-central Queensland Aborigines, 1897; North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletins 1-8, 1901-6, and Bulletins 9-18; Records of the Australian Museum, VI.-VIII. Sydney, 1890-1910.
Compilations and discussions: E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: a Study in Religious Sociology (translated by J. W. Swain), a very suggestive study based on Australian custom and belief; J. G. Frazer, Exogamy and Totemism, I. 1910; The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, I. pp. 67-169, 1913.
XIII. THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES
General Considerations--Constituent Elements--Past and Present Range--Cradle-land: Africa north of Sudan--Quaternary "Sahara"--Early European and Mauretanian types--The Guanches, Types and Affinities--Origin of the European Brachycephals-- Summary of Orthodox View--Linguistic Evidence--The Basques-- The Iberians--The Ligurians in Rhineland and Italy. Sicilian Origins--Sicani; Siculi--Sard and Corsican Origins--Ethnological Relations in Italy--Sergi's Mediterranean Domain--Range of the Mediterraneans--The Pelasgians-- Theory of pre-Hellenic Pelasgians--Pelasgians and Mykenean civilisation--Aegean Culture--Other Views--Range of the Hamites in Africa--The Eastern Hamites--The Western "Moors"--General Hamitic Type--Foreign Elements in Mauretania--Arab and Berber Contrasts-- The Tibus--The Egyptian Hamites--Origins--Theory of Asiatic Origins--Proto-Egyptian type--Armenoid type--Asiatic influence on Egyptian Culture--Negroid mixture--The Fulah--Other Eastern Hamites--Bejas--Somals--Somal Genealogies--The Galla--The Masai.
CONSPECTUS.
#Present Range.# All the extra-tropical habitable lands, except Chinese empire, Japan, and the Arctic zone; intertropical America, Arabia, India, and Indonesia; sporadically everywhere.
Three main types:--1. Southern dolichocephals, #Mediterranean#; 2. Northern Dolichocephals, #Nordic#; 3. Brachycephals, #Alpine#.
#Hair#: 1. Very dark brown or black, wiry, curly or ringletty. 2. Very light brown, flaxen, or red, rather long, straight or wavy, smooth and glossy. 3. Light chestnut or reddish brown, wavy, rather short and dull. All oval in section; beard of all full, bushy, straight, or wavy, often lighter than hair of head, sometimes very long. #Colour#: 1. Very variable--white, light olive, all shades of brown and even blackish (Eastern Hamites and others). 2. Florid. 3. Pale white, swarthy or very light brown. #Skull#: 1 and 2 long (72 to 79); 3 round (85 to 87 and upwards); all orthognathous. Cheek-bone of all small, never projecting laterally, sometimes rather high (some Berbers and Scotch). #Nose#, mostly large, narrow, straight, arched or hooked, sometimes rather broad, heavy, concave and short. #Eyes#: 1. Black or deep brown, but also blue. 2. Mainly blue. 3. Brown, hazel-grey and black.
#Stature#: 1. Under-sized (mean 1.630 m. 5 ft. 4 in.), but variable (some Hamites, Hindus, and others medium or tall). 2. Tall (mean 1.728 m. 5 ft. 8 or 9 in.). 3. Medium (mean 5 ft. 6 in.), but also very tall (Indonesians 1.750 m. to 1.830 m. 5 ft. 9 to 6 ft.). #Lips#, mostly rather full and well-shaped, but sometimes thin, or upper lip very long (many Irish), and under lip pendulous (many Jews). #Arms#, rather short as compared with Negro. #Legs#, shapely, with calves usually well developed. #Feet#: 1 and 3 small with high instep; 2 rather large.
#Temperament#: 1 and 3. Brilliant, quick-witted, excitable and impulsive; sociable and courteous, but fickle, untrustworthy, and even treacherous (Iberian, South Italian); often atrociously cruel (many Slavs, Persians, Semites, Indonesians and even South Europeans); aesthetic sense highly, ethic slightly developed. All brave, imaginative, musical, and richly endowed intellectually. 2. Earnest, energetic, and enterprising; steadfast, solid, and stolid; outwardly reserved, thoughtful, and deeply religious; humane, firm, but not normally cruel.
#Speech#, mostly of the inflecting order with strong tendency towards analytical forms; very few stock languages (Aryan, Ibero-Hamito-Semitic), except in the Caucasus, where stock languages of highly agglutinating types are numerous, and in Indonesia, where one agglutinating stock language prevails.
#Religion#, mainly Monotheistic, with or without priesthood and sacrifice (Jewish, Christian, Muhammadan); polytheistic and animistic in parts of Caucasus, India, Indonesia, and Africa. Gross superstitions still prevalent in many places.
#Culture#, generally high--all arts, industries, science, philosophy and letters in a flourishing state now almost everywhere except in Africa and Indonesia, and still progressive. In some regions civilisation dates from an early period (Egypt, South Arabia, Babylonia; the Minoan, Hellenic, Hittite, and Italic cultures). Indonesians and many Hamites still rude, with primitive usages, few arts, no science or letters, and cannibalism prevalent in some places (Gallaland).
#Mediterranean type#: most Iberians, Corsicans, Sards, Sicilians, Italians; some Greeks; Berbers and other Hamites; Arabs and other Semites; some Hindus; Dravidians, Todas, Ainus, Indonesians, some Polynesians.
#Nordic type#: Scandinavians, North-west Germans, Dutch, Flemings, most English, Scotch, some Irish, Anglo-Americans, Anglo-Australasians, English and Dutch of S. Africa; Thrako-Hellenes, true Kurds, most West Persians, Afghans, Dards and Siah-post Kafirs.
#Alpine type#: most French, South Germans, Swiss and Tyrolese; Russians, Poles, Chekhs, Yugo-Slavs; some Albanians and Rumanians; Armenians, Tajiks (East Persians), Galchas.
* * * * *
It is a remarkable fact that the Caucasic division of the human family, of which nearly all students of the subject are members, with which we are in any case, so to say, on the most intimate terms, and with the constituent elements of which we might consequently be supposed to be best acquainted, is the most debatable field in the whole range of anthropological studies. Why this should be so is not at first sight quite apparent, though the phenomenon may perhaps be partly explained by the consideration that the component parts are really of a more complex character, and thus present more intricate problems for solution, than those of any other division. But to some extent this would also seem to be one of those cases in which we fail to see the wood for the trees. To put it plainly, few will venture to deny that the inherent difficulties of the subject have in recent times been rather increased than diminished by the bold and often mutually destructive theories, and, in some instances one might add, the really wild speculations put forward in the earnest desire to remove the endless obscurities in which the more fundamental questions are undoubtedly still involved. Controversial matter which seemed thrashed out has been reopened, several fresh factors have been brought into play, and the warfare connected with such burning topics as Aryan origins, Ibero-Pelasgic relations, European round-heads and long-heads, has acquired renewed intensity amid the rival theories of eminent champions of new ideas.
The question is not made any simpler by the frequent attacks that have been directed from more than one quarter against the long-established Caucasic terminology, and well-supported objections are raised to the use of such time-honoured names as "Hamitic," "Semitic," and even "Caucasic" itself. But no really satisfactory substitute for "Caucasic" has yet been suggested, and it is doubtful if any name could be found sufficiently comprehensive to include all the races, long-headed and short-headed, fair and dark, tall and short, that we are at present content to group under this non-committal heading. Undoubtedly the term "Caucasic" cannot be defended on ethnical grounds. "Nowhere else in the world probably is so heterogeneous a lot of people, languages and religions gathered together in one place as along the chain of the Caucasus mountains[1000]." But we are no more called upon to believe that the "Caucasic" peoples originated in the Caucasus, than that the Semites are all descendants of Shem or Hamites of Ham. "Caucasic" has one claim that can never be disputed, that of priority, and it would be well if innovators in these matters were to take to heart the sober language of Ehrenreich, who reminds us that the accepted names are, what they ought to be, "purely conventional," and "historically justified," and "should be held as valid until something better can be found to take their place[1001]." It was considerations such as these, weighing so strongly in favour of current usage, that induced me stare per vias antiquas in the Ethnology, and consequently also in the present work. Hence, here as there, the Caucasic Division retains its title, together with those of its main subdivisions--Hamitic, Semitic, Keltic, Slavic, Hellenic, Teutonic, Iranic, Galchic and so on.
The chief exception is "Aryan," a linguistic expression forced by the philologists into the domain of Ethnology, where it has no place or meaning. There was of course a time when a community, or group of communities, existed probably in the steppe region between the Carpathians and the Hindu-Kush[1002], by whom the Aryan mother-tongue was evolved, and who still for a time presented a certain uniformity in their physical characters, were, in fact, of Aryan speech and type. But while their Aryan speech persists in endlessly modified forms, they have themselves long disappeared as a distinct race, merged in the countless other races on whom they, perhaps as conquerors, imposed their Aryan language. Hence we can and must speak of Aryan tongues, and of an Aryan linguistic family, which continues to flourish and spread over the globe. But of an Aryan race there can be no further question since the absorption of the original stock in a hundred other races in remote prehistoric times. Where comprehensive references have to be made, I therefore substitute for Aryans and Aryan race the expression peoples of Aryan speech, at least wherever the unqualified term Aryan might lead to misunderstandings.
This way of looking at the question, which has now become more thorny than ever, has the signal advantage of being indifferent to any preconceived theories regarding the physical characters of that long vanished proto-Aryan race. How great this advantage is may be judged from the mere statement that, while German anthropologists are still almost to a man loyal to the traditional view that the first Aryans were best represented by the tall, long-headed, tawny-haired, blue-eyed Teutonic barbarians of Tacitus--who, Virchow tells us, have completely disappeared from sight in the present population--the Italian school, or at least its chief exponent, Sergi, was equally convinced that the picture was a myth, that such Aryans never existed, that "the true primitive Aryans were not long, but round-headed, not fair but dark, not tall but short, and are in fact to-day best represented by the round-headed Kelts, Slavs, and South Germans[1003]."
The fact is that the Aryan prototype has vanished as completely as has the Aryan mother-tongue, and can be conjecturally restored only by processes analogous to those by which Schleicher and other philologists have endeavoured with dubious success to restore the organic Aryan speech as constituted before the dispersion.
But here arises the more important question, by what right are so many and such diverse peoples grouped together and ticketed "Caucasians"? Are they to be really taken as objectively one, or are they merely artificial groupings, arbitrarily arranged abstractions? Certainly this Caucasic division consists apparently of the most heterogeneous elements, more so than perhaps any other. Hence it seems to require a strong mental effort to sweep into a single category, however elastic, so many different peoples--Europeans, North Africans, West Asiatics, Iranians and others all the way to the Indo-Gangetic plains and uplands, whose complexion presents every shade of colour, except yellow, from white to the deepest brown or even black.
But they are grouped together in a single division, because of certain common characteristics, and because, as pointed out by Ehrenreich, who himself emphasises these objections, their substantial uniformity speaks to the eye that sees below the surface. At the first glance, except perhaps in a few extreme cases for which it would be futile to create independent categories, we recognise a common racial stamp in the facial expression, the structure of the hair, partly also the bodily proportions, in all of which points they agree more with each other than with the other main divisions. Even in the case of certain black or very dark races, such as the Beja, Somali, and a few other Eastern Hamites, we are reminded instinctively more of Europeans or Berbers than of negroes, thanks to their more regular features and brighter expression. "Those who will accept nothing unless it can be measured, weighed, and numbered, may think perhaps that according to modern notions this appeal to the outward expression is unscientific. Nevertheless nobody can deny the evidence of the obvious physical differences between Caucasians, African Negroes, Mongols, Australians and so on. After all, physical anthropology itself dates only from the moment when we became conscious of these differences, even before we were able to give them exact expression by measurements. It was precisely the general picture that spoke powerfully and directly to the eye[1004]." The argument need not here be pursued farther, as it will receive abundant illustration in the details to follow.
Since the discovery of the New and the Austral Worlds, the Caucasic division as represented by the chief European nations has received an enormous expansion. Here of course it is necessary to distinguish between political and ethnical conquests, as, for instance, those of India, held by military tenure, and of Australia by actual settlement. Politically the whole world has become Caucasic with the exception of half-a-dozen states such as China, Turkey, Japan, Siam, Marocco, still enjoying a real or fictitious autonomy. But, from the ethnical standpoint, those regions in which the Caucasic peoples can establish themselves and perpetuate their race as colonists are alone to be regarded as fresh accessions to the original and later (historical) Caucasic domains. Such fresh accessions are however of vast extent, including the greater part of Siberia and adjoining regions, where Slav branches of the Aryan-speaking peoples are now founding permanent new homes; the whole of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, which have become the inheritance of the Caucasic inhabitants of the British Isles; large tracts in South Africa, already occupied by settlers chiefly from Holland and Great Britain; lastly the New World, where most of the northern continent is settled by full-blood Europeans, mainly British, French and German, while in the rest (Central and South America) the Caucasic immigrants (chiefly from the Iberian peninsula) have formed new ethnical groups by fusion with the aborigines. These new accessions, all acquired within the last 400 years, may be roughly estimated at about 28 million square miles, which with some 12 millions held throughout the historic period (Africa north of Sudan, most of Europe, South-West and parts of Central and South Asia, Indonesia) gives an extent of 40 million square miles to the present Caucasic domain, either actually occupied or in process of settlement. As the whole of the dry land scarcely exceeds 52 millions, this leaves not more than about 12 millions for the now reduced domains of all the other divisions, and even of this a great part (e.g. Tibetan table-land, Gobi, tundras, Greenland) is barely or not at all inhabitable. This, it may be incidentally remarked, is perhaps the best reply to those who have in late years given expression to gloomy forebodings regarding the ultimate fate of the Caucasic races. The "yellow scare" may be dismissed with the reflection that the Caucasian populations, who have inherited or acquired nearly four-fifths of the earth's surface besides the absolute dominion of the high seas, is not destined to be submerged by any conceivable combination of all the other elements, still less by the Mongol alone[1005].
Where have we to seek the primeval home of this most vigorous and dominant branch of the human family? Since no direct evidence can be cited, the answer necessarily takes the form of a hypothesis, and must rely mainly on the indirect evidence supplied by our vague knowledge of geographical conditions in pleistocene times, on past and present zoological distributions, with here and there, the assistance of a hint gleaned from archaeological discoveries. We may deal first with the arguments brought forward in favour of Africa north of Sudan. Here were found in quaternary times all the physical elements which zoologists demand for great specialisations--ample space, a favourable climate and abundance of food, besides continuous land connection at two or three points across the Mediterranean, by which the pliocene and early pleistocene faunas moved freely between the two continents.
Many of the speculations on the subject failed to convince, largely because the writers took, so to say, the ground from under their own feet, by submerging most of the land under a vast "Quaternary Sahara Sea," which had no existence, and which, moreover, reduced the whole of North Africa to a Mauretanian island, a mere "appendix of Europe," as it is in one place expressly called. Then this inconvenient inland basin was got rid of, not by an outflow--being on the same level as the Atlantic, of which it was, in fact figured as an inlet--but by "evaporation," which process is however somehow confined to this inlet, and does not affect either the Mediterranean or the Atlantic itself. Nor is it explained how the oceanic waters were prevented from rushing in according "as the Sahara sea evaporated to become a desert." The attempt to evolve a "Eurafrican race" in such an impossible area necessarily broke down, other endless perplexities being involved in the initial geological misconception.
Not only was the Sahara dry land in pleistocene times, but it stood then at a considerably higher altitude than at present, although its mean elevation is still estimated by Chavanne at 1500 feet above sea-level. "Quaternary deposits cover wide areas, and were at one time supposed to be of marine origin. It was even held that the great sand dunes must have been formed under the sea; but at this date it is scarcely necessary to discuss such a view. The advocates of a Quaternary Sahara Sea argued chiefly from the discovery of marine shells at several points in the middle of the Sahara. But Tournouer has shown that to call in the aid of a great ocean in order to explain the presence of one or two shells is a needless expenditure of energy[1006]."
At an altitude of probably over 2000 feet the Sahara must have enjoyed an almost ideal climate during late pliocene and pleistocene times, when Europe was exposed to more than one glacial invasion, and to a large extent covered at long intervals by a succession of solid ice-caps. We now know that these stony and sandy wastes were traversed in all directions by great rivers, such as the Massarawa trending south to the Niger, or the Igharghar[1007] flowing north to the Mediterranean, and that these now dry beds may still be traced for hundreds of miles by chains of pools or lakelets, by long eroded valleys and by other indications of the action of running waters.
Nor could there be any lack of vegetable or animal life in a favoured region, which was thus abundantly supplied with natural irrigation arteries, while the tropical heats were tempered by great elevation and at times by the refreshing breezes from sub-arctic Europe.
From these well-watered and fertile lands, some of which continued even in Roman times to be the granary of the empire, came that succession of southern animals--hippopotamus, hyaena, rhinoceros, elephant, cave-lion--which made Europe seem like a "zoological appendix of Africa." In association with this fauna may have come man himself, for although North Africa has not yet yielded evidence of a widespread culture comparable to that of the Palaeolithic Age in Europe, yet the negroid characters of the Grimaldi skeletons have been held to prove an early connection between the opposite shores of the Mediterranean. The hypothesis of African origin is supported by archaeological evidence of the presence of early man all over North Africa from the shores of the Mediterranean through Egypt to Somaliland. Thus one of J. de Morgan's momentous conclusions was that the existence of civilised men in Egypt might be reckoned by thousands, and of the aborigines by myriads of years. These aborigines he identified with the men of the Old Stone Age, of whom he believed four stations to have been discovered--Dahshur, Abydos, Tukh, and Thebes[1008].
Of Tunisia Arsene Dumont declared that "the immense period of time during which man made use of stone implements is nowhere so strikingly shown." Here some of the flints were found in abundance under a thick bed of quaternary limestone deposited by the waters of a stream that has disappeared. Hence "the origin of man in Mauretania must be set back to a remote age which deranges all chronology and confounds the very fables of the mythologies[1009]."
The skeleton found in 1914 by Hans Reck at Oldoway (then German East Africa) was claimed to be of Pleistocene Age, but according to A. Keith "the evidence ... cannot be accepted as having finally proved this degree of antiquity[1010]."
The doctrine of the specialisation of the dolichocephalic European types in Africa, before their migrations northwards, lies at the base of Sergi's views regarding the African origin of those types. Arguing against the Asiatic origin of the Hamites, as held by Prichard, Virchow, Sayce and others, he points out that this race, scarcely if at all represented in Asia, has an immense range in Africa, where its several sub-varieties must have been evolved before their dispersion over a great part of that continent and of Europe. Then, regarding Hamites and Semites as essentially one, he concludes that Africa is the cradle whence this primitive stock "spread northwards to Europe, where it still persists, especially in the Mediterranean and its three principal peninsulas, and eastwards to West Asia[1011]."
The theory of an African cradle for the dolichocephalic Mediterranean type does not lack supporters, but when, relying on the undeniable presence of brachycephals, some writers would derive the Alpine type from the same area, the larger aspect of continental migrations appears to be overlooked (see pp. 451-2 below). To constitute a distinct race, says Zaborowski, a wide geographical area is needed, such as is presented by both shores of the Mediterranean "with the whole of North Africa including the Sahara, which was till lately still thickly peopled[1012]." Then to the question by whom has this North African and Mediterranean region been inhabited since quaternary times, he answers "by the ancestors of our Libyans, Egyptians, Pelasgians, Iberians"; and after rejecting the Asiatic theory, he elsewhere arrives at "the grand generalisation that the whole of North Africa, connected by land with Europe in the Quaternary epoch, formed part of the geographical area of the ancient white race, of which the Egyptians, so far from being the parent stem, would appear to be merely a branch[1013]."
Coming to details, Bertholon[1014], from the human remains found by Carton at Bulla-Regia, determined for Tunisia and surrounding lands two main long-headed types, one like the Neandertal (occurring both in Khumeria, and in the stations abounding in palaeoliths), the other like the later Cro-Magnon dolmen-builders, whom De Quatrefages had already identified with the tall, long-headed, fair, and even blue-eyed Berbers still met in various parts of Mauretania, and formerly represented in the Canary Islands[1015]. Bertholon agrees with Collignon that the Mauretanian megalith-builders are of the same race as those of Europe, and besides the two long-headed races describes (1) a short round-headed type in Gerba Island and East Tunisia[1016] representing the Libyans proper, and (2) a blond type of the Sahel, Khumeria, and other parts, whom he identifies with the Mazices of Herodotus, with the "Afri," whose name has been extended to the whole continent, and the blond Getulians of the Aures Mountains.
It has been objected that, as established by de Lapouge and Ripley, there are three distinct ethnical zones in Europe:--(1) Nordic: the tall, fair, long-headed northern type, commonly identified by the Germans with the race represented by the osseous remains from the "Reihengraeber," i.e. the "Germanic," which the French call Kymric or Aryan, for which de Lapouge reserves Linne's Homo europaeus, and to which Ripley applies the term "Teutonic," because the whole combination of characters "accords exactly with the descriptions handed down to us by the ancients. Such were the Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Lombards, together with the Danes, Norsemen, Saxons.... History is thus corroborated by natural science." (2) Mediterranean: the southern zone of short, dark, long-heads, i.e. the primitive element in Iberia, Italy, South France, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and Greece, called Iberians by the English, and identified by many with the Ligurians, Pelasgians, and allied peoples, grouped together by Ripley as Mediterraneans[1017]. (3) Alpine: the central zone of short, medium-sized round-heads with light or chestnut hair, and gray or hazel eye, de Lapouge's and Ripley's Homo alpinus, the Kelts or Kelto-Slavs of the French, the Ligurians or Arvernians of Beddoe and other English writers. Here belong the tall Armenoids, the Armenians being descendants of the Hittites.
The question is, Can all these have come from North Africa? We have seen that this region has yielded the remains of one round-headed and two long-headed prehistoric types. Henri Malbot pointed out that, as far back as we can go, we meet the two quite distinct long-headed Berber types, and he holds that this racial duality is proved by the megalithic tombs (dolmens) of Roknia between Jemmapes and Guelma, possibly some 4000 or 5000 years old. The remains here found by L. L. C. Faidherbe belong to two different races, both dolichocephalic, but one tall, with prominent zygomatic arches and very strong nasal spine (it reads almost like the description of a brawny Caledonian), the other short, with well-balanced skull and small nasal spine[1018]. The earliest (Egyptian) records refer to brown and blond populations living in North Africa some 5000 years ago, and it has been claimed that the raw materials, so to say, were here to hand both of the fair northern and dark southern European long-heads.
These different races were represented even amongst the extinct Guanches of the Canary Islands, as shown by a study of the 52 heads procured in 1894 by H. Meyer from caves in the archipelago[1019]. Three distinct types are determined: (1) Guanche, akin to the Cro-Magnon, tall (5 ft. 8 in. to 6 ft. 2 in.), robust, dolicho (78), low, broad face; large eyes, rather short nose; fair, reddish or light chestnut hair; skin and eyes light; ranged throughout the islands, but centred chiefly in Tenerife; (2) "Semitic," short (5 ft. 4 or 5 in.), slim, narrow mesocephalic head (81), narrow, long face, black hair, light brown skin, dark eyes; range, Grand Canary, Palma, and Hierro; (3) Armenoid, akin to von Luschan's pre-Semitic of Asia Minor; shorter than 1 and 2; very short, broad, and high skull (hyperbrachy, 84); hair, skin and eyes very probably of the West Asiatic brunette type; range, mainly in Gomera, but met everywhere. Many of the skulls had been trepanned, and these are brought into direct association with the full-blood Berbers of the Aures Mts. in Algeria, who still practise trepanning for wounds, headaches, and other reasons. This type is scarcely to be distinguished from Lapouge's short brown Homo alpinus, which dates from the Stone Ages, and is found in densest masses in the Central Alpine regions, but the true Armenoids are differentiated by their taller stature[1020].
How numerous were the inhabitants of France at that time may be inferred from the long list of no less than 4000 neolithic stations given for that region by Ph. Salmon. Of the 688 skulls from those stations measured by him, 57.7 per cent. are classed as dolicho, 21.2 as brachycephalic, and 21.1 as intermediate. This distinguished palethnologist regards the intermediates as the result of crossings between the two others, and of these he thinks the first arrivals were the round-heads, who ranged over a vast area between Brittany, the Channel, the Pyrenees, and the Mediterranean, 60 per cent. of the graves hitherto studied containing skulls of this type[1021]. Belgium also, where a mixture of long- and round-heads is found amongst the men of Furfooz, must be included in this neolithic brachy domain, which can be traced as far westward as the British Isles[1022]. Attempts have been made, as indicated above, to derive these brachycephals, as well as the dolichocephals, from North Africa, in accordance with the view that the latter region was the true centre of evolution and of dispersion for all the main branches of the Caucasic family, but this theory has few supporters at the present time. Sergi recognised the Asiatic origin of the neolithic round-heads and regarded them as "peaceful infiltrations[1023]," forerunners of the great invasions of the later Metal Ages. Verneau points out[1024] that when all the neolithic stations in which brachycephalic skulls have been discovered are plotted out on a map of Europe it is easy to recognise a current running almost directly from east to west. Moreover towards the west this current divides, being clearly separated by zones of dolichocephaly.
Evidence of the presence in early times of tall blond peoples in Africa, side by side with a short dark population, and of brachycephals together with dolichocephals, proves that even in the Stone Age ethnic mixtures had already taken place, and racial purity--if indeed it ever existed--must be sought for in still remoter periods.
With Sergi's view which traces the neolithic inhabitants of the northern shores of the Mediterranean (Iberians, Ligurians, Messapians, Siculi and other Itali, Pelasgians), to North Africa, most anthropologists agree[1025]. Also that all or most of these were primarily of a dark (brown), short, dolicho type, which still persists both in South Europe and North Africa, and in fact is the race which Ripley properly calls "Mediterranean," although in the west they almost certainly ranged into Brittany and the British Isles. But there are some who hold that the migration was in the opposite direction, and derive the North African branch from Europe, rather than the European branches from Africa. "Anthropologists who have specially studied the question of the Berbers or Kabyles have concluded that they are descendants of prehistoric European invaders who occupied the tracts that suited them best[1026]." In France the neolithic "Mediterranean type" has been regarded as lineally descended from palaeolithic predecessors in situ[1027]. Some would even go further still, and claim Europe as the place of origin not only of the Mediterranean but also of the Alpine and Northern branches. "The so-called three races of Europe are in the main the result of variation from a common European stock, a variation due to isolation and natural selection[1028]."
Without making any claim to finality the following perhaps best represents orthodox opinion at the present time. It may be assumed that man evolved somewhere in Southern Asia in pliocene times, and that the early groups possessed a tendency to variability which was directed to some extent by geographical conditions and became fixed by isolation. The tall fair blue-eyed dolichocephals (Northern Race) and the short dark dolichocephals (Mediterranean Race) may be regarded as two varieties of a common stock, the former having their area of characterisation in the steppes north of the plateaus of Eur-Asia, and migrating eastwards and westwards as the country dried after the last glacial phase. The southern branch, entering East Africa from Southern Asia, spread all over North Africa; those in the east were the archaic Egyptians; to the west were the Libyans whose descendants are the Berbers; those who crossed the Mediterranean formed the European branches of the Mediterranean race. With regard to the third type, while the central plateaus of Asia were the centre of dispersal for the true Mongols the western plateaus were the area of characterisation of a non-Mongolian brachycephalic race, which includes short and tall varieties. This is the Alpine race, which extends from the Hindu Kush to Brittany, and formerly spread further westwards into the British Isles[1029].
The problem of European origins has often in the past been obscured rather than enlightened by an appeal to linguistics, but linguistic factors cannot altogether be ignored. No doubt the earliest populations of the Mediterranean shores during the Stone Age spoke non-Aryan languages, but it is only here and there that traces--mostly indecipherable--can be discovered. On the African side we have the Berber language still in its full vigour; and apparently little changed for thousands of years. But in Europe the primitive tongues have everywhere been swept away by the Aryan (Hellenic, Italic, Keltic) except in the region of the Pyrenees. In Italy Etruscan is the only language which can with safety be called non-Aryan[1030], though the place of Ligurian is still under dispute[1031]. Of Pelasgian, nothing survives except the statement of Herodotus, a dangerous guide in this matter, that it was a barbaric tongue like the peoples themselves[1032], but Ridgeway considers it Indo-European[1033]. Further east, in Asia Minor, neither Karian inscriptions and glosses nor occasional Lydian[1034] and Mysian glosses afford any safe basis for establishing relationships[1035]; the fuller evidence of Lycian leaves its position indeterminate[1036] and the Cretan script is still undeciphered[1037].
But in Iberia besides the Iberian inscriptions, which, so far, remain indecipherable[1038], there survives the Basque of the western Pyrenees, which beyond question represents a form of speech which was current in the peninsula in pre-Aryan times, and on the assumption of a common origin of the populations on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar might be expected to show traces of kinship with Berber. In a posthumous work on this subject[1039], the eminent philologist G. von der Gabelenz goes much further than mere traces, and claims to establish not only phonetic and verbal resemblances, but structural correspondences, so that his editor Graf von der Schulenberg was satisfied as to the relationship of the two languages[1040]. This conclusion has not, however, met with general acceptance[1041] and the affinities of Basque with Finno-Ugrian cannot be overlooked[1042]. A study of the physical features of the modern Basques adds complexity to the problem. Most observers are agreed that a distinct Basque type exists, and this physical and linguistic singularity has led to various more or less fanciful theories "connecting the Basques with every outlandish language and bankrupt people under the sun[1043]," while G. Herve[1044] would regard them as forming by themselves a separate ethnic group, "a fourth European race." On the other hand Feist[1045] has grounds for claiming that the Basques are not, in anthropological respects, essentially different from their Spanish or French neighbours (p. 357) and Jullian[1046] denies them more than a superficial unity. These apparently conflicting opinions are reconciled by the conclusions of R. Collignon[1047], himself one of the best authorities on the subject. "The physical traits characteristic of the Basques attach them unquestionably ('indiscutablement') to the great Hamitic branch of the white races, that is to say, to the ancient Egyptians and to the various groups commonly comprised under the collective name of Berbers. Their brachycephaly, slight as it is, cannot outweigh the aggregate of the other characters which they present.... It is therefore in this direction and not amongst Finns or Esthonians that is to be sought the parent stem of this paradoxical race. It is North African or European, assuredly not Asiatic." Collignon's explanation of the Basque type is that it is a sub-species of the Mediterranean stock evolved by long-continued and complete isolation, and in-and-in breeding, primarily engendered by peculiarity of language. The effects of heredity, aided perhaps by artificial selection, have generated local peculiarities and have developed them to an extreme[1048].
"The Iberian question," says Rice Holmes, "is the most complicated and difficult of all the problems of Gallic ethnology[1049]." From the testimony of Greek and Roman authors, he draws the following conclusions. "The name Iberian was probably applied, in the first instance, only to the people who dwelt between the Ebro and the Pyrenees. The Iberians once occupied the seaboard of Gaul between the Rhone and the Pyrenees; but Ligurians encroached upon this part of their territory. They also probably occupied the whole eastern region of the Spanish peninsula. But," he adds, "we must bear in mind that the data are both insufficient and uncertain" (p. 288). Later (p. 301), reviewing the evidence collected by philologists and by craniologists, he continues, "it seems to me probable that the Iberians comprised both people who spoke, or whose ancestors had spoken, Basque, and people who spoke the language or languages[1050] of the 'Iberian' inscriptions; that to observers who had not learned to measure skulls and knew nothing of scientific methods, they appeared to be homogeneous; that the prevailing type was that which is now called Iberian and is seen at its purest in Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily; but that a certain proportion of the whole population may have been characterised by physical features more or less closely resembling those which the modern Basques--French and Spanish--possess in common, and which, as MM. Broca and Collignon tell us, distinguish them from all other European peoples. Finally it seems probable that the true Iberians were the people who spoke the languages of the inscriptions, and that Basque was spoken by a people who occupied Spain and Southern Gaul before the Iberians arrived. But unless and until the key to those appalling inscriptions is found, the problem will never be solved."
The Ligurian question is still more complex than the Iberian. For while no facts can be brought forward in direct contradiction of the assumption that the Iberians were a short dark dolichocephalic population occupying the Iberian peninsula in the Stone Age, and speaking a non-Indo-European language, no such generalisations with regard to race, physical type, culture, geographical distribution or language are accepted for the Ligurians. Some, with Sergi[1051], consider the Ligurians merely as another branch of the Mediterranean race. Others, with Zaborowski[1052], tracing their presence among the modern inhabitants of Liguria, regard them as representing the small, dark, brachycephalic race at its purest. While many who recognise the Ligurians as belonging to the Mediterranean physical type deny their affinity with the Iberians. Meyer[1053] considers such a relationship "not improbable," but Dechelette[1054] shows that it is absolutely untenable on archaeological grounds. The geographical range is equally uncertain. C. Jullian[1055] distributes Ligurians not only over the whole of Gaul, but also throughout Western Europe, and attributes to them all the glories of neolithic civilisation; A. Bertrand[1056] thinks that they played even in Gaul merely a secondary role; Dechelette[1057], on archaeological evidence, proves that the Ligurian period was par excellence the Age of Bronze, and Ridgeway[1058] identifies it with the Terramare civilisation. Finally, if we follow Sergi, the Ligurians must have spoken a non-Indo-European language; but the most eminent authorities are in the main agreed that such traces of Ligurian as remain show affinities with Indo-European[1059]. With regard to their physical type Sergi puts forward the view that the true Ligurians were like the Iberians, a section of the long-headed Mediterranean (Afro-European) stock. From prehistoric stations in the valley of the Po he collected 59 skulls, all of this type, and all Ligurian; history and tradition being of accord that before the arrival of the Kelts this region belonged to the Ligurian domain. "If it be true that prehistoric Italy was occupied by the Mediterranean race and by two branches--Ligurian and Pelasgian--of that race, the ancient inhabitants of the Po valley, now exhumed in those 59 skulls, were Ligurian[1060]."
These Ligurians have been traced from their homes on the Mediterranean into Central Europe. From a study of the neolithic finds made in Germany, in the district between Neustadt and Worms, C. Mehlis[1061] infers that here the first settlers were Ligurians, who had penetrated up the Rhone and Saone into Rhineland. In the Kircherian Museum in Rome he was surprised to find a marked analogy between objects from the Riviera and from the Rhine; skulls (both dolicho), vases, stone implements, mill-stones, etc., all alike. Such Ligurian objects, found everywhere in North Italy, occur in the Rhine lands chiefly along the left bank of the main stream between Basel and Mainz, and farther north in the Rheingau at Wiesbaden, and in the Lahn valley.
The Ligurians may of course have reached the Riviera round the coast from Illiberis and Iberia; but the same race is found as the aboriginal element also at the "heel of the boot," and in fact throughout the whole of Italy and all the adjacent islands. This point is now firmly established, and not only Sergi, but several other leading Italian authorities hold that the early inhabitants of the peninsula and islands were Ligurians and Pelasgians, whom they look upon as of the same stock, all of whom came from North Africa, and that, despite subsequent invasions and crossings, this Mediterranean stock still persists, especially in the southern provinces and in the islands--Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. Hence it seems more reasonable to bring this aboriginal element straight from Africa by the stepping stones of Pantellaria, Malta, and Gozzo (formerly more extensive than at present, and still strewn with megalithic remains comparable to those of both continents), than by the roundabout route of Iberia and Southern Gaul[1062]. This is a simple solution of the problem, but it is a question if it is justifiable to extend the name Ligurian to all that branch of the Mediterranean race which undoubtedly forms the substratum of population in Italy and parts of Gaul, ignoring the presence or absence of "Ligurian" culture or traces of Ligurian language. Dechelette[1063], relying chiefly upon archaeological and cultural evidence, sums up as follows: we must consider the Ligurians as Indo-European tribes, whose area of domination had its centre, during the Bronze Age, in North Italy, and the left bank of the Rhone. They were enterprising and energetic in agriculture and in commerce. Together with neighbouring peoples of Illyrian stock they engaged in an indirect but nevertheless regular trade with the northern regions where amber was collected. Among the Ligurians, as among the Illyrians and Hyperboreans, a form of heliolatry was prevalent, popularising the old solar myths in which the swan appears to have played an important role. Rice Holmes[1064] defines more closely their geographical range. "Ligurians undoubtedly lived in South-eastern Gaul, where they were found at least as far north as Bellegarde in the department of the Ain; and, mingled more or less with Iberians, in the departments of the Gard, Herault, Aude and Pyrenees-Orientales. Most probably they had once occupied the whole eastern region as far north as the Marne, but had been submerged by Celts: and perhaps they had also pushed westward as far as Aquitania." He continues, "Were it possible to regard the theory of MM. d'Arbois de Jubainville and Jullian as more than an interesting hypothesis, we should have to conclude that the Ligurians were simply the long-headed and short-headed peoples who, reinforced perhaps from time to time by hordes of immigrants, had inhabited the whole of Gaul since the Neolithic Age, and of whom the former, or many of them, were descended from palaeolithic hunters; in other words that they were the same people who, after they had been conquered by, or had coalesced with, the Celtic invaders, called themselves Celtae: but to say which of them were first known as Ligurians or introduced the Ligurian language would be utterly hopeless. Finally the little evidence we possess tends to show that the people called Ligurians, when they became known to the Greek writers who described them, were a medley of different races."
For Sicily, with which may practically be included the south of Italy, we have the conclusions of G. Patroni based on years of intelligent and patient labours[1065]. To Africa this archaeologist traces the palaeolithic men of the west coast of Sicily and of the caves near Syracuse explored by Von Adrian[1066]. "We are forced to conclude that man arrived in Sicily from Africa at a time when the isthmus connecting the island with that Continent still stood above sea-level. He made his appearance about the same time as the elephant, whose remains are associated with human bones especially in the west. He followed the sea coasts, the shells of which offered him sufficient food[1067]." He was followed by the neolithic man, whose presence has been revealed by the researches of Paolo Orsi at the station of Stentinello on the coast north of Syracuse.
To Orsi is also due the discovery of what he calls the "Aeneolithic Epoch[1068]," represented by the bronzes of the Girgenti district. Orsi assigns this culture to the Siculi, and divides it into three periods, while regarding the neolithic men of Stentinello as pre-Siculi. But Patroni holds that the aeneolithic peoples have a right to the historic name of Sicani, and that the true Siculi were those that arrived from Italy in Orsi's second period. It seems no longer possible to determine the true relations of these two peoples, who stand out as distinct throughout early historic times. They are by many[1069] regarded as of one race, although both ([Greek: Sikanos, Sikelos]) are already mentioned in the Odyssey. But the evidence tends to show that the Sicani represent the oldest element which came direct from Africa in the Stone Age, while the Siculi were a branch of the Ligurians driven in the Metal Age from Italy to the island, which was already occupied by the Sicani, as related by Dionysius Halicarnassus[1070]. In fact this migration of the Siculi may be regarded as almost an historical event, which according to Thucydides took place "about 300 years before the Hellenes came to Sicily[1071]." The Siculi bore this national name on the mainland, so that the modern expression "Kingdom of the Two Sicilies" (the late Kingdom of Naples) has its justification in the earliest traditions of the people. Later, both races were merged in one, and the present Sicilian nation was gradually constituted by further accessions of Phoenician (Carthaginian), Greek, Roman, Vandal, Arab, Norman, French and Spanish elements.
Very remarkable is the contrast presented by the conditions prevailing in this ethnical microcosm and those of Sardinia, inhabited since the Stone Ages by one of the most homogeneous groups in the world. From the statistics embodied in R. Livi's Antropologia Militare[1072] the Sards would almost seem to be cast all in one mould, the great bulk of the natives having the shortest stature, the brownest eyes and hair, the longest heads, the swarthiest complexion of all the Italian populations. "They consequently form quite a distinct variety amongst the Italian races, which is natural enough when we remember the seclusion in which this island has remained for so many ages[1073]." They seem to have been preserved as if in some natural museum to show us what the Ligurian branch of the Mediterranean stock may have been in neolithic times. Yet they were probably preceded by the microcephalous dwarfish race described by Sergi as one of the early Mediterranean stocks. Their presence in Sardinia has now been determined by A. Niceforo and E. A. Onnis, who find that of about 130 skulls from old graves thirty have a capacity of only 1150 c.c. or under, while several living persons range in height from 4 ft. 2 in. to 4 ft. 11 in. Niceforo agrees with Sergi in bringing this dwarfish race also from North Africa[1074].
With remarkable cranial uniformity, similar phenomena are presented by the Corsicans who show "the same exaggerated length of face and narrowness of the forehead. The cephalic index drops from 87 and above in the Alps to about 75 all along the line. Coincidently the colour of hair and eyes becomes very dark, almost black. The figure is less amply proportioned, the people become light and rather agile. It is certain that the stature at the same time falls to an exceedingly low level: fully 9 inches below the average for Teutonic Europe," although "the people of Northern Africa, pure Mediterranean Europeans, are of medium size[1075]."
In the Italian peninsula Sergi holds not only that the aborigines were exclusively of Ligurian, i.e. Mediterranean stock, but that this stock still persists in the whole of the region south of the Tiber, although here and there mixed with "Aryan" elements. North of that river these elements increase gradually up to the Italian Alps, and at present are dominant in the valley of the Po[1076]. In this way he would explain the rising percentage of round-heads in that direction, the Ligurians being for him, as stated, long-headed, the "Aryans" round-headed.
Similarly Beddoe, commenting on Livi's statistics, showing predominance of tall stature, round heads, and fair complexion in North Italy, infers "that a type, the one we usually call the Mediterranean, does really predominate in the south, and exists in a state of comparative purity in Sardinia and Calabria; while in the north the broad-headed Alpine type is powerful, but is almost everywhere more or less modified by, or interspersed with other types--Germanic, Slavic, or of doubtful origin--to which the variations of stature and complexion may probably be, at least in part, attributed[1077]."
Similar relations prevail in the Balkan peninsula, where the Mediterranean stock is represented by the "Pelasgic[1078]" substratum. Invented, as has been said, for the purpose of confounding future ethnologists, these Pelasgians certainly present an extremely difficult racial problem, the solution of which has hitherto resisted the combined attacks of ancient and modern students. When Dionysius tells us bluntly that they were Greeks[1079], we fancy the question is settled off-hand, until we find Herodotus describing them a few hundred years earlier as aliens, rude in speech and usages, distinctly not Greeks, and in his time here and there (Thrace, Hellespont) still speaking apparently non-Hellenic dialects[1080]. Then Homer several centuries still earlier, with his epithet of [Greek: dioi], occurring both in the Iliad and the Odyssey[1081], exalts them almost above the level of the Greeks themselves. It would seem, therefore, almost impossible to discover a key to the puzzle, one which will also fit in both with Sergi's Mediterranean theory, and with the results of recent archaeological researches in the Aegean lands. The following hypothesis is supported by a certain amount of evidence. If the pre-Mykenaean culture revealed by Schliemann and others in the Troad, Mykenae, Argos, Tiryns, by Evans and others in Crete, by Cesnola in Cyprus, be ascribed to a pre-Hellenic rather than to a proto-Hellenic people, then the classical references will explain themselves, while this pre-Hellenic race will be readily identified with the Pelasgians, as this term is understood by Sergi.
It is, I suppose, universally allowed that Greece really was peopled before the arrival of the Hellenes, which term is here to be taken as comprising all the invading tribes from the north, of which the Achaeans were perhaps the earliest. On their arrival the Hellenes therefore found the land not only inhabited, but inhabited by a cultured people more civilised than themselves, who could thus be identified with Sergi's Pelasgian branch of the Mediterranean or Afro-European stock, whom the proto-Hellenes naturally regarded as their superiors, and whom their first singers also naturally called [Greek: dioi Pelasgoi][1082]. But in the course of a few centuries[1083] these Pelasgians became Hellenised, all but a few scattered groups, which lagging behind in the general social progress are now also looked upon as barbarians, speaking barbaric tongues, and are so described by contemporary historians. Then these few remnants of a glorious but forgotten past are also merged in the Hellenic stream, and can no longer be distinguished from other Greeks by contemporary writers. Hence for Dionysius the Pelasgians are simply Greeks, which in a sense may be true enough. All the heterogeneous elements have been fused in a single Hellenic nationality, built upon a rough Pelasgic substratum, and adorned with all the graces of Hellenic culture.
Now to make good this hypothesis, it is necessary to show, first, that the Pelasgians were not an obscure tribe, a small people confined to some remote corner of Hellas, but a widespread nation diffused over all the land; secondly, that this nation, as far as can now be determined, presented mental and other characters answering to those of Sergi's Mediterraneans, and also such as might be looked for in a race capable of developing the splendid Aegean culture of pre-Hellenic times.
On the first point it has been claimed that the Pelasgians were so widely distributed[1084] that the difficulty rather is to discover a district where their presence was unknown. They fill the background of Hellenic origins, and even spread beyond the Hellenic horizon, to such an extent that there seems little room for any other people between the Adriatic and the Hellespont. Thus Ridgeway[1085] has brought together a good many passages which clearly establish their universal range, as well as their occupation especially of those places where have been found objects of Mykenaean and pre-Mykenaean culture, such as engraved gems, pottery, implements, buildings, inscriptions in pictographic and syllabic scripts. In Crete they had the "great city of Knossos" in Homer's time[1086]; not only was Mykenae theirs, but the whole of Peloponnesus took the name of Pelasgia; the kings of Tiryns were Pelasgians, and Aeschylus calls Argos a Pelasgian city; an old wall at Athens was attributed to them, and the people of Attica had from all time been Pelasgians[1087]. Orchomenus in Boeotia was founded by a colony from Pelasgiotis in Thessaly; Lesbos also was called Pelasgia, and Homer knew of Pelasgians in the Troad. Their settlements are further traced to Egypt, to Rhodes, Cyprus, Epirus--where Dodona was their ancient shrine--and lastly to various parts of Italy.
Moreover, the Pelasgians were traditionally the civilising element, who taught people to make bread, to yoke the ox to the plough, and to measure land. It would appear from these and other allusions that there were memories of still earlier aborigines, amongst whom the Pelasgians appear as a cultured people, introducing perhaps the arts and industries of the pre-Mykenaean Age. But the assumption, based on no known data, is unnecessary, and it seems more reasonable to look on this culture as locally developed, to some extent under eastern (Egyptian, Babylonian, Hittite?) influences[1088]. Here it is important to note that the Pelasgians were credited with a knowledge of letters[1089], and all this has been advanced as sufficient confirmation of our second postulate. Nevertheless it must be acknowledged that the difficulties are not all overcome by this hypothesis, and the further question of language divides even its stanchest supporters into opposing groups, for while Sergi's Mediterraneans necessarily speak a non-Indo-European language[1090], Ridgeway's Pelasgians speak Aeolic Greek[1091].
The range and importance of the Pelasgians are most strictly limited by J. L. Myres[1092], who thinks that the Alpine type may even be primitive in the Morea, Mediterranean man being an intruder from the south merely fringing the coast and never penetrating inland. The researches of von Luschan in Lycia support this view[1093], and Ripley's map of the present inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula shows the "Greek contingent closely confined to the sea-coast[1094]." Ripley, however, though carefully avoiding any dragging of "Pelasgians" into the question, assumes a primitive substratum of Mediterranean type all over Greece. "The testimony of these ancient Greek crania is perfectly harmonious. All authorities agree that the ancient Hellenes were decidedly long-headed, betraying in this respect their affinity to the Mediterranean Race.... Whether from Attica, from Schliemann's successive cities excavated upon the site of Troy, or from the coast of Asia Minor[1095]; at all times from 400 B.C. to the third century of our era, it would seem proved that the Greeks were of this dolichocephalic type.... Every characteristic of their modern descendants and every analogy with the neighbouring populations, leads us to the conclusion that the classical Hellenes were distinctly of the Mediterranean racial type, little different from the Phoenicians, the Romans or the Iberians[1096]." Nevertheless Doerpfeld[1097] claims that there were, from the first, two races in Greece, a Southern, or Aegean, and a Northern, who were the Aryan Achaeans of history, and recent archaeological discoveries certainly support this view.
Another attempt to solve the Pelasgian problem is that of E. Meyer[1098]. After enumerating the various areas said to have been occupied by the Pelasgians "ein grosses Urvolk" who ranged from Asia Minor to Italy, he pricks the bubble by saying that in reality there were no Pelasgians save in Thessaly, in the fruitful plain of Peneus, hence called "Pelasgic Argos[1099]," and later Pelasgiotis. They, like the Dorians, invaded Crete from Thessaly and at the beginning of the first millennium were defeated and enslaved by the incoming Thessalians. These are the only true Pelasgians. The other so-called Pelasgians are the descendants of an eponymous Pelasgos who in genealogical poetry becomes the ancestor of mankind. Since the Arcadians were regarded as the earliest of the indigenous peoples, Pelasgos was made the ancestor of the Arcadians. The name "Pelasgic Argos" was transferred from Thessaly to the Peloponnesian city. Attic Pelasgians were derived from a mistake of Hecataeus[1100]. So the legend grew. The only real Pelasgian problem, concludes Meyer, is whether the Thessalian Pelasgians were a Greek or pre-Greek people, and he is inclined to favour the latter view. The identity of "the most mysterious people of antiquity" is further obscured by philology, for, as P. Giles points out, their name appears merely to mean "the people of the sea," so that "they do not seem to be in all cases the same stock[1101]."
Whether we call them Pelasgians or no, there would seem to be little doubt that the splendours of Aegean civilisation which have been and still are being gradually revealed by the researches of British, Italian, American and German archaeologists are to be attributed to an indigenous people of Mediterranean type, occupying an area of which Crete was the centre, from the Stone Age, right through the Bronze Age, down to the Northern invasions of the second millennium and the introduction of iron. In range this culture included Greece with its islands, Cyprus, and Western Anatolia, and its influence extended westwards to Sicily, Italy, Sardinia and Spain, and eastwards to Syria and Egypt. Its chief characteristics are (1) an indigenous script both pictographic and linear, with possible affinities in Hittite, Cypriote and South-west Anatolian scripts, but hitherto indecipherable; (2) a characteristic art attempting "to express an ideal in forms more and more closely approaching to realities[1102]," exhibited in frescoes, pottery, reliefs, sculptures, jewelry etc.; (3) a distinctive architectural style, and (4) type of tomb, which have no parallels elsewhere. Excavations at Cnossos go far towards establishing a chronology for the Aegean area. At the base is an immensely thick neolithic deposit, above which come pottery and other objects of Minoan Period I. 1, which are correlated by Petrie with objects found at Abydos, referred by him to the 1st Dynasty (4000 B.C.). Minoan Period II. 2 corresponds with the Egyptian XII Dynasty (2500 B.C.), characteristic Cretan pottery of this period being found in the Fayum. Minoan Period III. 1 and 2 synchronises with Dynasty XVIII (1600 to 1400 B.C.). Iron begins to be used for weapons after Period III. 3, and is commonly attributed to incursions from the north, the Dorian invasion of the Greek authors, about 1000 B.C. which led to the destruction of the palace of Cnossos and the substitution of "Geometric" for "Mykenaean" art.
Turning to the African branch of the Mediterranean type, we find it forming not merely the substratum, but the great bulk of the inhabitants throughout all recorded time from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, and from the Mediterranean to Sudan, although since Muhammadan times largely intermingled with the kindred Semitic stock (mainly Arabs) in the north and west, and in the east (Abyssinia) with the same stock since prehistoric times. All are comprised by Sergi[1103] in two main divisions:--
1. EASTERN HAMITES, answering to the Ethiopic Branch of some writers, of somewhat variable type, comprising the Old and Modern Egyptians now mixed with Semitic (Arab) elements; the Nubians, the Bejas, the Abyssinians, collective name of all the peoples between Khor Barka and Shoa (with, in some places, a considerable infusion of Himyaritic or early Semitic blood from South Arabia); the Gallas (Gallas proper, Somals, and Afars or Danakils); the Masai and Ba-Hima.
2. NORTHERN HAMITES, the Libyan Race or Berber (Western) Branch of some writers, comprising the Mediterranean Berbers of Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli; the Atlantic Berbers (Shluhs and others) of Morocco; the West Saharan Berbers commonly called Tuaregs; the Tibus of the East Sahara; the Fulahs, dispersed amongst the Sudanese Negroes; the Guanches of the Canary Islands.
Of the Eastern Hamites he remarks generally that they do not form a homogeneous division, but rather a number of different peoples either crowded together in separate areas, or dispersed in the territories of other peoples. They agree more in their inner than in their outer characters, without constituting a single ethnical type. The cranial forms are variable, though converging, and evidently to be regarded as very old varieties of an original stock. The features are also variable, converging and characteristic, with straight or arched (aquiloid) nose quite different from the Negro; lips rather thick, but never everted as in the Negro; hair usually frizzled, not wavy; beard thin; skin very variable, brown, red-brown, black-brown, ruddy black, chocolate and coffee-brown, reddish or yellowish, these variations being due to crossings and the outward physical conditions.
In this assumption Sergi is supported by the analogous case of the western Berbers between the Senegal and Morocco, to whom Collignon and Deniker[1104] restrict the term "Moor," as an ethnical name. The chief groups, which range from the Atlantic coast east to the camping grounds of the true Tuaregs[1105], are the Trarsas and Braknas of the Senegal river, and farther north the Dwaish (Idoesh), Uled-Bella, Uled-Embark, and Uled-en-Nasur. From a study of four of these Moors, who visited Paris in 1895, it appears that they are not an Arabo-Berber cross, as commonly supposed, but true Hamites, with a distinct Negro strain, shown especially in their frizzly hair, bronze colour, short broad nose, and thickish lips, their general appearance showing an astonishing likeness to the Bejas, Afars, Somals, Abyssinians, and other Eastern Hamites. This is not due to direct descent, and it is more reasonable to suppose "that at the two extremities of the continent the same causes have produced the same effects, and that from the infusion of a certain proportion of black blood in the Egyptian [eastern] and Berber branches of the Hamites, there have sprung closely analogous mixed groups[1106]." From the true Negro they are also distinguished by their grave and dignified bearing, and still more by their far greater intelligence.
Both divisions of the Hamites, continues Sergi, agree substantially in their bony structure, and thus form a single anthropological group with variable skull--pentagonoid, ovoid, ellipsoid, sphenoid, etc., as expressed in his terminology--but constant, that is, each variety recurring in all the branches; face also variable (tetragonal, ellipsoid, etc.), but similarly identical in all the branches; profile non-prognathous; eyes dark, straight, not prominent; nose straight or arched; hair smooth, curly, long, black or chestnut; beard full, also scant; lips thin or slightly tumid, never protruding; skin of various brown shades; stature medium or tall.
Such is the great anthropological division, which was diffused continuously over the greater part of Africa, and round the northern shores of the Mediterranean. According to Stuhlmann[1107] it had its origin in South Arabia, if not further east, and entered Africa in the region of Erythrea. He regards the Red Sea as offering no obstacle to migrations, but suggests a possible land connection between the opposite shores.
Nothing is more astonishing than the strange persistence not merely of the Berber type, but of the Berber temperament and nationality since the Stone Ages, despite the successive invasions of foreign peoples during the historic period. First came the Sidonian Phoenicians, founders of Carthage and Utica probably about 1500 B.C. The Greek occupation of Cyrenaica (628 B.C.) was followed by the advent of the Romans on the ruins of the Carthaginian empire. The Romans have certainly left distinct traces of their presence, and some of the Aures highlanders still proudly call themselves Rumaniya. These Shawias ("Pastors") form a numerous group, all claiming Roman descent, and even still keeping certain Roman and Christian feasts, such as Bu Ini, i.e. Christmas; Innar or January (New Year's Day); Spring (Easter), etc. A few Latin words also survive such as urtho = hortus; kerrush = quercus (evergreen oak); milli = milliarium (milestone).
After the temporary Vandal occupation came the great Arab invasions of the seventh and later centuries, and even these had been preceded by the kindred Ruadites, who had in pre-Moslem times already reached Mauretania from Arabia. With the Jews, some of whom had also reached Tripolitana before the New Era, a steady infiltration of Negroes from Sudan, and the recent French, Spanish, Italian, and Maltese settlers, we have all the elements that go to make up the cosmopolitan population of Mauretania.
But amid them all the Berbers and the Arabs stand out as the immensely predominant factors, still distinct despite a probably common origin in the far distant past and later interminglings. The Arab remains above all a nomad herdsman, dwelling in tents, without house or hamlet, a good stock-breeder, but a bad husbandman, and that only on compulsion. "The ploughshare and shame enter hand in hand into the family," says the national proverb. To find space for his flocks and herds he continues the destructive work of Carthaginian and Roman, who ages ago cleared vast wooded tracts for their fleets and commercial navies, and thus rendered large areas barren and desolate.
The Berber on the contrary loves the sheltering woodlands; he is essentially a highlander who carefully tills the forest glades, settles in permanent homes, and often develops flourishing industries. Arab society is feudal and theocratic, ruled by a despotic Sheikh, while the Berber with his Jemaa, or "Witenagemot," and his Kanun or unwritten code, feels himself a freeman; and it may well have been this democratic spirit, inherited by his European descendants, that enabled the western nations to take the lead in the onward movement of humanity. The Arab again is a fanatic, ever to be feared, because he blindly obeys the will of Allah proclaimed by his prophets, marabouts, and mahdis[1108]. But the Berber, a born sceptic, looks askance at theological dogmas; an unconscious philosopher, he is far less of a fatalist than his Semitic neighbour, who associates with Allah countless demons and jins in the government of the world.
In their physical characters the two races also present some striking contrasts, the Arab having the regular oval brain-cap and face of the true Semite, whereas the Berber head is more angular, less finely moulded, with more prominent cheekbones, shorter and less aquiline nose, which combined with a slight degree of sub-nasal prognathism, imparts to the features coarser and less harmonious outlines. He is at the same time distinctly taller and more muscular, with less uniformity in the colour of the eye and the hair, as might be expected from the numerous elements entering into the constitution of present Berber populations.
In the social conflict between the Arab and Berber races, the curious spectacle is presented of two nearly equal elements (same origin, same religion, same government, same or analogous tribal groupings, at about the same cultural development) refusing to amalgamate to any great extent, although living in the closest proximity for over a thousand years. In this struggle the Arab seems so far to have had the advantage. Instances of Berberised Arabs occur, but are extremely rare, whereas the Berbers have not only everywhere accepted the Koran, but whole tribes have become assimilated in speech, costume, and usages to the Semitic intruders. It might therefore seem as if the Arab must ultimately prevail. But we are assured by the French observers that in Algeria and Tunisia appearances are fallacious, however the case may stand in Morocco and the Sahara. "The Arab," writes Malbot, to whom I am indebted for some of these details, "an alien in Mauretania, transported to a soil which does not always suit him, so far from thriving tends to disappear, whereas the Berber, especially under the shield of France, becomes more and more aggressive, and yearly increases in numbers. At present he forms at least three-fifths of the population in Algeria, and in Morocco the proportion is greater. He is the race of the future as of the past[1109]."
This however would seem to apply only to the races, not to their languages, for we are elsewhere told that Arabic is encroaching steadily on the somewhat ruder Berber dialects[1110]. Considering the enormous space over which they are diffused, and the thousands of years that some of the groups have ceased to be in contact, these dialects show remarkably slight divergence from the long extinct speech from which all have sprung. Whatever it be called--Kabyle, Zenatia, Shawia, Tamashek, Shluh--the Berber language is still essentially one, and the likeness between the forms current in Morocco, Algeria, the Sahara, and the remote Siwah Oasis on the confines of Egypt, is much closer, for instance, than between Norse and English in the sub-Aryan Teutonic group[1111].
But when we cross the conventional frontier between the contiguous Tuareg and Tibu domains in the central Sahara the divergence is so great that philologists are still doubtful whether the two languages are even remotely or are at all connected. Ever since the abandonment of the generalisation of Lepsius that Hamitic and Negro were the sole stock languages, the complexity of African linguistic problems has been growing more and more apparent, and Tibu is only one among many puzzles, concerning which there is great discordance of opinion even among the most recent and competent authorities[1112].
The Tibu themselves, apparently direct descendants of the ancient Garamantes, have their primeval home in the Tibesti range, i.e. the "Rocky Mountains," whence they take their name[1113]. There are two distinct sections, the Northern Tedas, a name recalling the Tedamansii, a branch of the Garamantes located by Ptolemy somewhere between Tripolitana and Phazania (Fezzan), and the Southern Dazas, through whom the Tibu merge gradually in the negroid populations of central Sudan. This intermingling with the blacks dates from remote times, whence Ptolemy's remark that the Garamantes seemed rather more "Ethiopians" than Libyans[1114]. But there can be no doubt that the full-blood Tibu, as represented by the northern section, are mainly Mediterranean, and although the type of the men is somewhat coarser than that of their Tuareg neighbours, that of the women is almost the finest in Africa. "Their women are charming while still in the bloom of youth, unrivalled amongst their sisters of North Africa for their physical beauty; pliant and graceful figures[1115]."
It is interesting to notice amongst these somewhat secluded Saharan nomads the slow growth of culture, and the curious survival of usages which have their explanation in primitive social conditions. "The Tibu is always distrustful; hence, meeting a fellow-countryman in the desert he is careful not to draw near without due precaution. At sight of each other both generally stop suddenly; then crouching and throwing the litham over the lower part of the face in Tuareg fashion, they grasp the inseparable spear in their right and the shanger-mangor, or bill-hook, in their left. After these preliminaries they begin to interchange compliments, inquiring after each other's health and family connections, receiving every answer with expressions of thanksgiving to Allah. These formalities usually last some minutes[1116]." Obviously all this means nothing more than a doffing of the hat or a shake-hands amongst more advanced peoples; but it points to times when every stranger was a hostis, who later became the hospes (host, guest).
It will be noticed that the Tibu domain, with the now absolutely impassable Libyan desert[1117], almost completely separates the Mediterranean branch from the Hamites proper. Continuity, however, is accorded, both on the north along the shores of the Mediterranean to the Nile Delta (Lower Egypt), and on the south through Darfur and Kordofan to the White Nile, and thence down the main stream to Upper Egypt, and through Abyssinia, Galla and Somali lands to the Indian Ocean. Between the Nile and the east coast the domain of the Hamites stretches from the equator northwards to Egypt and the Mediterranean.
It appears therefore that Egypt, occupied for many thousands of years by an admittedly Hamitic people, might have been reached either from the west by the Mediterranean route, or down the Nile, or, lastly, it maybe suggested that the Hamites were specialised in the Nile valley itself. The point is not easy to decide, because, when appeal is made to the evidence of the Stone Ages, we find nothing to choose between such widely separated regions as Somaliland, Upper Egypt, and Mauretania, all of which have yielded superabundant proofs of the presence of man for incalculable ages, estimated by some palethnologists at several hundred thousand years. In Egypt the palaeoliths indicate not only extreme antiquity, but also that the course of civilisation was uninterrupted by any such crises as have afforded means of chronological classification in Western Europe. The differences in technique are local and geographical, not historic. The Neolithic period tells the same tale, and the use of copper at the beginning of the historic period only slowly replaced the flint industry, which continued during the earlier dynasties down to the period of the Middle Empire and attained a degree of perfection nowhere surpassed. Prehistoric pottery strengthens the evidence of a slow, gradual development, the newer forms nowhere jostling out the old, but co-existing side by side[1118].
It might seem therefore that the question of Egyptian origins was settled by the mere statement of the case, and that there could be no hesitation in saying that the Egyptian Hamites were evolved on Egyptian soil, consequently are the true autochthones in the Nile valley. Yet there is no ethnological question more hotly discussed than this of Egyptian origins and culture, for the two seem inseparable. There are broadly speaking two schools: the African, whose fundamental views are thus briefly set forth, and the Asiatic, which brings the Egyptians with all their works from the neighbouring continent. But, seeing that the Egyptians are now admitted to be Hamites, that there are no Hamites to speak of (let it be frankly said, none at all) in Asia, and that they have for untold ages occupied large tracts of Africa, there are several members of the Asiatic school who allow that, not the people themselves, but their culture only came from western Asia (Mesopotamia). If so, this culture would presumably have its roots in the delta, which is first reached by the Isthmus of Suez from Asia, and spread thence, say, from Memphis up the Nile to Thebes and Upper Egypt, and here arises a difficulty. For at that time there was no delta[1119], or at least it was only in process of formation, a kind of debatable region between land and water, inhabitable mainly by crocodiles, and utterly unsuited to become the seat of a culture whose characteristic features are huge stone monuments, amongst the largest ever erected by man, and consequently needing solid foundations on terra firma. It further appears that although Memphis is very old, Thebes is much older, in other words, that Egyptian culture began in Upper Egypt, and spread not up but down the Nile. On the other hand the Egyptians themselves looked upon the delta as the cradle of their civilisation, although no traces of material culture have survived, or could be expected to survive, in such a soil[1120]. Moreover it is not necessary to introduce Asiatic invaders by way of Lower Egypt. F. Stuhlmann postulates a land connection between Africa and Arabia, but even without this assumption he regards the Red Sea as affording no hindrance to early infiltrations[1121]. Flinders Petrie, while rejecting any considerable water transport for the uncultured prehistoric Egyptians (whom he derives from Libya), detects a succession of subsequent invasions from Asia, the dynastic race crossing the Red Sea to the neighbourhood of Koptos, and Syrian invasions leading to the civilisation of the Twelfth Dynasty, besides the later Hyksos invasions of Semito-Babylonian stock[1122].
The theory of Asiatic origins is clearly summed up by H. H. Johnston[1123]. He regards the earliest inhabitants of Egypt as a dwarfish Negro-like race, not unlike the Congo Pygmies of to-day (p. 375), with possibly some trace of Bushman (p. 378), but this population was displaced more than 15,000 years ago by Mediterranean man, who may have penetrated as far as Abyssinia, and may have been linguistically parent of the Fulah[1124]. The Fulah type was displaced by the invasions of the Hamites and the Libyans or Berbers. "The Hamites were no doubt of common origin, linguistically and racially, with the Semites, and perhaps originated in that great breeding ground of conquering peoples, South-west Asia. They preceded the Semites, and (we may suppose) after a long stay and concentration in Mesopotamia invaded and colonised Arabia, Southern Palestine, Egypt, Abyssinia, Somaliland and North Africa to its Atlantic shores. The Dynastic Egyptians were also Hamites in a sense, both linguistically and physically; but they seem to have attained to a high civilisation in Western Arabia, to have crossed the Red Sea in vessels, and to have made their first base on the Egyptian coast near Berenice in the natural harbour formed by Ras Benas. From here a long, broad wadi or valley--then no doubt fertile--led them to the Nile in the Thebaid, the first seat of their kingly power[1125]. The ancestors of the Dynastic Egyptians may have originated the great dams and irrigation works in Western Arabia; and such long struggles with increasing drought may have first broken them in to the arts of quarrying stone blocks and building with stone. Over population and increasing drought may have caused them to migrate across the Red Sea in search of another home; or their migration may have been partly impelled by the Semitic hordes from the north, whom we can imagine at this period--some 9000 to 10,000 years ago--pressing southwards into Arabia and conquering or fusing with the preceding Hamites; just as these latter, no doubt, at an earlier day, had wrested Arabia from the domain of the Negroid and Dravidian" (p. 382).
That the founding of the First Dynasty was coincident with a physical change in the population, is proved by the thousands of skeletons and mummies examined by Elliot Smith[1126], who regards the Pre-dynastic Egyptians as "probably the nearest approximation to that anthropological abstraction, a pure race, that we know of (p. 83)." He describes the type as follows (Chap. IV.).
The Proto-Egyptian (i.e. Pre-dynastic) was a man of small stature, his mean height, estimated at a little under 5 ft. 5 in., in the flesh for men, and almost 5 ft. in the case of women, being just about the average for mankind in general, whereas the modern Egyptian fellah averages about 5 ft. 6 in. He was of very slender build with indications of poor muscular development. In fact there is a suggestion of effeminate grace and frailty about his bones, which is lacking in the more rugged outlines of the skeletons of his more virile successors. The hair of the Proto-Egyptian was precisely similar to that of the brunet South European or Iberian people of the present day. It was a very dark brown or black colour, wavy or almost straight and sometimes curly, never "woolly." There can be no doubt whatever that this dark hair was associated with dark eyes and a bronzed complexion. Elliot Smith emphatically endorses Sergi's identification of the ancient Egyptian as belonging to his Mediterranean Race. "So striking is the family likeness between the Early Neolithic peoples of the British Isles and the Mediterranean and the bulk of the population, both ancient and modern, of Egypt and East Africa, that a description of the bones of an early Briton might apply in all essential details to an inhabitant of Somaliland." But he points out also that there is an equally close relationship linking the Proto-Egyptians with the populations to the east, from the Red Sea as far as India, including Semites as well as Hamites. Rejecting the terms "Mediterranean" or "Hamite" as inadequate he would classify his Mediterranean-Hamite-Semite group as the "Brown Race[1127]."
A most fortunate combination of circumstances afforded Elliot Smith an opportunity for determining the ethnic affinities of the Egyptian people.
The Hearst Expedition of the University of California, under the direction of G. A. Reisner, was occupied from 1901 onwards with excavations at Naga-ed-Der in the Thebaid, where a cemetery, excavated by A. M. Lythgoe, contained well-preserved bodies and skeletons of the earliest known Pre-dynastic period. Close by was a series of graves of the First and Second Dynasties; a few hundred yards away tombs of the Second to the Fifth Dynasties (examined by A. C. Mace), with a large number of tombs ranging from the time of the Sixth Dynasty to the Twelfth. "Thus there was provided a chronologically unbroken series of human remains representing every epoch in the history of Upper Egypt from prehistoric times, roughly estimated at 4000 B.C., up till the close of the Middle Empire, more than two thousand years later." To complete the story Coptic (Christian Egyptian) graves of the fifth and sixth centuries were discovered on the same site.
"The study of this extraordinarily complete series of human remains, providing in a manner such as no other site has ever done the materials for the reconstruction of the racial history of one spot during more than forty-five centuries, made it abundantly clear that the people whose remains were buried just before the introduction of Islam into Egypt were of the same flesh and blood as their forerunners in the same locality before the dawn of history. And nine years' experience in the Anatomical Department of the School of Medicine in Cairo," continues Elliot Smith, "has left me in no doubt that the bulk of the present population in Egypt conforms to precisely the same racial type, which has thus been dominant in the northern portion of the Valley of the Nile for sixty centuries[1128]."
As early as the Second Dynasty certain alien traits began to appear, which became comparatively common in the Sixth to Twelfth series. The non-Egyptian characters are observable in remains from numerous sites excavated by Flinders Petrie in Lower and Middle Egypt, and are particularly marked in the cemetery round the Giza Pyramids (excavated by the Hearst Expedition, 1903), containing remains of more than five hundred individuals, who had lived at the time of the Pyramid-builders; they are therefore referred to by Elliot Smith as "Giza traits," and attributed to Armenoid influence. Soon after the amalgamation of the Egyptian kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt by Menes (Mena), consequent perhaps upon the discovery of copper and the invention of metal implements[1129], expeditions were sent beyond the frontiers of the United Kingdom to obtain copper ore, wood and other objects. Even in the times of the First Dynasty the Egyptians began the exploitation of the mines in the Sinai Peninsula for copper ore. It is claimed by Meyer[1130] that Palestine and the Phoenician coast were Egyptian dependencies, and there is ample evidence that there was intimate intercourse between Egypt and Palestine as far north as the Lebanons before the end of the Third Dynasty. From this time forward the physical characters of the people of Lower Egypt show the results of foreign admixture, and present marked features of contrast to the pure type of Upper Egypt. The curious blending of characters suggests that the process of racial admixture took place in Syria rather than in Egypt itself[1131]. The alien type is best shown in the Giza necropolis, and its representatives may be regarded as the builders and guardians of the Pyramids. The stature is about the same as that of the Proto-Egyptians, possibly rather lower, but they were built on far sturdier lines, their bones being more massive, with well-developed muscular ridges and impressions, and none of the effeminacy or infantilism of the prehistoric skeletons. The brain-case has greater capacity with no trace of the meagre ill-filled character exhibited by the latter. Characteristic peculiarities were the "Grecian profile" and a jaw closely resembling those of the round-headed Alpine races.
These "Giza traits" were not a local development, for they have been noted in all parts of Palestine and Asia Minor, and abundantly in Persia and Afghanistan. They occur in the Punjab but are absent from India, having an area of greatest concentration in the neighbourhood of the Pamirs; while in a westerly direction, besides being sporadically scattered over North Africa, they are recognised again in the extinct Guanches of the Canary Islands. From these considerations Elliot Smith shapes the following "working hypothesis."
"The Egyptians, Arabs and Sumerians may have been kinsmen of the Brown Race, each diversely specialized by long residence in its own domain; and in Pre-dynastic times, before the wider usefulness of copper as a military instrument of tremendous power was realized, the Middle Pre-dynastic phase of culture became diffused far and wide throughout Arabia and Sumer. Then came the awakening to the knowledge of the supremacy which the possession of metal weapons conferred upon those who wielded them in combat against those not so armed. Upper Egypt vanquished Lower Egypt in virtue of this knowledge and the possession of such weapons. The United Kingdom pushed its way into Syria to obtain wood and ore, and incidentally taught the Arabs the value of metal weapons. The Arabs thereby obtained the supremacy over the Armenoids of Northern Syria, and the hybrid race of Semites formed from this blend were able to descend the Euphrates and vanquish the more cultured Sumerians, because the latter were without metal implements of war. The non-Semitic Armenoids of Asia Minor carried the new knowledge into Europe[1132]."
This hypothesis might explain some of the difficult problems connecting Egypt and Babylonia[1133]. The non-Asiatic origin of the Egyptian people appears to be indicated by recent excavations, but, as mentioned above, there are still many who hold that Egyptian culture and civilisation were derived mainly, if not wholly, from Asiatic (probably Sumerian) sources. The Semitic elements existing in the ancient Egyptian language, certain resemblances between names of Sumerian and Egyptian gods, and the similarity of hieroglyphic characters to the Sumerian system of writing have been cited as proofs of the dependence of the one culture upon the other; while the introduction of the knowledge of metals, metal-working and the crafts of brick-making and tomb construction have, together with the bulbous mace-head, cylinder-seal and domesticated animals and plants[1134], been traced to Babylonia.
But the excavations of Reisner at Naga-ed-Der and those of Naville at Abydos (1909-10) appear to place the indigenous development of Egyptian culture beyond question. Reisner's conclusions[1135] are that there was no sudden break of continuity between the neolithic and early dynastic cultures of Egypt. No essential change took place in the Egyptian conception of life after death, or in the rites and practices accompanying interment. The most noticeable changes, in the character of the pottery and household vessels, in the materials for tools and weapons and the introduction of writing, were all gradually introduced, and one period fades into another without any strongly marked line of division between them. Egypt no doubt had trading relations with surrounding countries. Egyptians and Babylonians must have met in the markets of Syria, and in the tents of Bedouin chiefs. Still, as Meyer points out, far from Egypt taking over a ready-made civilisation from Babylonia, Egypt, as regards cultural influence, was the giver not the receiver[1136].
One more alien element in Egypt remains to be discussed. Most writers on Egyptian ethnology detect a Negro or at least Negroid element in the Caucasoid population, and although usually assigning priority to the Negro, assume the co-existence of the two races from time immemorial to the present day. Measurements on more than 1000 individuals were made by C. S. Myers, and these are his conclusions. "There is no anthropometric (despite the historic) evidence that the population of Egypt, past or present, is composed of several different races. Our new anthropometric data favour the view which regards the Egyptians always as a homogeneous people, who have varied now towards Caucasian, now towards negroid characters (according to environment), showing such close anthropometric affinity to Libyan, Arabian and like neighbouring peoples, showing such variability and possibly such power of absorption, that from the anthropometric standpoint no evidence is obtainable that the modern Egyptians have been appreciably affected by other than sporadic Sudanese admixture[1137]."
It was seen above (Chap. III.) that non-Negro elements are found throughout the Sudan from Senegal nearly to Darfur, nowhere forming the whole of the population, but nearly always the dominant native race. These are the Fulah (Fula, Fulbe or Fulani), whose ethnic affinities have given rise to an enormous amount of speculation. Their linguistic peculiarity had led many ethnologists to regard them as the descendants of the first white colonists of North Africa, "Caucasoid invaders," 15,000 years ago, prior to Hamitic intrusions from the east[1138]. Thus would be explained the fact that their language betrays absolutely no structural affinity with Semitic or Libyo-Hamitic groups, or with any other speech families outside Africa, though offering faint resemblances in structure with the Lesghian[1139] speech of the Caucasus and the Dravidian tongues of Baluchistan and India. Physically there seems to be nothing to differentiate them from other blends[1140] of Hamite-Negro. The physical type of the pure-bred Fulah H. H. Johnston describes as follows: "Tall of stature (but not gigantic, like the Nilote and South-east Sudanese), olive-skinned or even a pale yellow; well-proportioned, with delicate hands and feet, without steatopygy, with long, oval face, big nose (in men), straight nose in women (nose finely cut, like that of the Caucasian), eyes large and "melting," with an Egyptian look about them, head-hair long, black, kinky or ringlety, never quite straight[1141]." They were at first a quiet people, herdsmen and shepherds with a high and intricate type of pagan religion which still survives in parts of Nigeria. But large numbers of them became converted to Islam from the twelfth century onwards and gained some knowledge of the world outside Africa by their pilgrimages to Mecca. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries an uprise of Muhammadan fanaticism and a proud consciousness of their racial superiority to the mere Negro armed them as an aristocracy to wrest political control of all Nigeria from the hands of Negro rulers or the decaying power of Tuareg and Songhai. This race was all unconsciously carrying on the Caucasian invasion and penetration of Africa.
A less controversial problem is presented by the Eastern Hamites, who form a continuous chain of dark Caucasic peoples from the Mediterranean to the equator, and whose ethnical unity is now established by Sergi on anatomical grounds[1142]. Bordering on Upper Egypt, and extending thence to the foot of the Abyssinian plateau, is the Beja section, whose chief divisions--Ababdeh, Hadendoa, Bisharin, Beni Amer--have from the earliest times occupied the whole region between the Nile and the Red Sea.
C. G. Seligman has analysed the physical and cultural characters of the Beja tribes (Bisharin, Hadendoa and Beni Amer), the Barabra, nomad Arabs (such as the Kababish and Kawahla), Nilotes (Shilluk, Dinka, Nuer) and half-Hamites (Ba-Hima, Masai), in an attempt by eliminating the Negro and Semitic elements to deduce the main features which may be held to indicate Hamitic influence. He regards the Beni Amer as approximating most closely to the original Beja type which he thus describes. "Summarizing their physical characteristics it may be said that they are moderately short, slightly built men, with reddish-brown or brown skins in which a greater or less tinge of black is present, while in some cases the skin is definitely darker and presents some shade of brown-black. The hair is usually curly, in some instances it certainly might be described as wavy, but the method of hair dressing adopted tends to make difficult an exact description of its condition. Often, as is everywhere common amongst wearers of turbans, the head is shaved.... The face is usually long and oval, or approaching the oval in shape, the jaw is often lightly built, which with the presence of a rather pointed chin may tend to make the upper part of the face appear disproportionately broad. The nose is well shaped and thoroughly Caucasian in type and form[1143]." Among the Hadendoa the "Armenoid" or so-called "Jewish" nose is not uncommon. Seligman draws attention to the close resemblance between the Beja type and that of the ancient Egyptians.
Through the Afars (Danakil) of the arid coastlands between Abyssinia and the sea, the Bejas are connected with the numerous Hamitic populations of the Somali and Galla lands. For the term "Somal," which is quite recent and of course unknown to the natives, H. M. Abud[1144] suggests an interesting and plausible explanation. Being a hospitable people, and milk their staple food, "the first word a stranger would hear on visiting their kraals would be 'So mal,' i.e. 'Go and bring milk.'" Strangers may have named them from this circumstance, and other tribal names may certainly be traced to more improbable sources.
The natives hold that two races inhabit the land: (1) ASHA, true Somals, of whom there are two great divisions, Darod and Ishak, both claiming descent from certain noble Arab families, though no longer of Arab speech; (2) HAWIYA, who are not counted by the others as true Somals, but only "pagans," and also comprise two main branches, Aysa and Gadabursi. In the national genealogies collected by Abud and Cox, many of the mythical heroes are buried at or near Meit, which may thus be termed the cradle of the Somal race. From this point they spread in all directions, the Darods pushing south and driving the Galla beyond the Webbe Shebel, and till lately raiding them as far as the Tana river. It should be noticed that these genealogical tables are far from complete, for they exclude most of the southern sections, notably the Rahanwin who have a very wide range on both sides of the Jub.
In the statements made by the natives about true Somals and "pagans," race and religion are confused, and the distinction between Asha and Hawiya is merely one between Moslem and infidel. The latter are probably of much purer stock than the former, whose very genealogies testify to interminglings of the Moslem Arab intruders with the heathen aborigines.
Despite their dark colour C. Keller[1145] has no difficulty in regarding the Somali as members of the "Caucasic Race." The Semitic type crops out decidedly in several groups, and they are generally speaking of fine physique, well grown, with proud bearing and often with classic profile, though the type is very variable owing to Arab and Negro grafts on the Hamitic stock. The hair is never woolly, but, like that of the Beja, ringlety and less thick than the Abyssinian and Galla, sometimes even quite straight. The forehead is finely rounded and prominent, eye moderately large and rather deep-set, nose straight, but also snub and aquiline, mouth regular, lips not too thick, head sub-dolichocephalic.
Great attention has been paid to all these Eastern Hamitic peoples by Ph. Paulitschke[1146], who regards the Galla as both intellectually and morally superior to the Somals and Afars, the chief reason being that the baneful influences exercised by the Arabs and Abyssinians affect to a far greater extent the two latter than the former group.
The Galla appear to have reached the African coast before the Danakil and Somali, but were driven south-east by pressure from the latter, leaving Galla remnants as serfs among the southern Somali, while the presence of servile negroid tribes among the Galla gives proof of an earlier population which they partially displaced. Subsequent pressure from the Masai on the south forced the Galla into contact with the Danakil, and a branch penetrating inland established themselves on the north and east of Victoria Nyanza, where they are known to-day as the Ba-Hima, Wa-Tusi, Wa-Ruanda and kindred tribes, which have been described on p. 91.
The Masai, the terror of their neighbours, are a mixture of Galla and Nilotic Negro, producing what has been described as the finest type in Africa. The build is slender and the height often over six feet, the face is well formed, with straight nose and finely cut nostrils, the hair is usually frizzly, and the skin dark or reddish brown. They are purely pastoral, possessing enormous herds of cattle in which they take great pride, but they are chiefly remarkable for their military organisation which was hardly surpassed by that of the Zulu. They have everywhere found in the agricultural peoples an easy prey, and until the reduction of their wealth by rinderpest (since 1891) and the restraining influence of the white man, the Masai were regarded as an ever-dreaded scourge by all the less warlike inhabitants of Eastern Africa[1147].
Amongst the Abyssinian Hamites we find the strangest interminglings of primitive and more advanced religious ideas. On a seething mass of African heathendom, already in pre-historic times affected by early Semitic ideas introduced by the Himyarites from South Arabia, was somewhat suddenly imposed an undeveloped form of Christianity by the preaching of Frumentius in the fourth century, with results that cannot be called satisfactory. While the heterogeneous ethnical elements have been merged in a composite Abyssinian nationality, the discordant religious ideas have never yet been fused in a consistent uniform system. Hence "Abyssinian Christianity" is a sort of by-word even amongst the Eastern Churches, while the social institutions are marked by elementary notions of justice and paradoxical "shamanistic" practices, interspersed with a few sublime moral precepts. Many things came as a surprise to the members of the Rennell Rodd Mission[1148], who could not understand such a strange mixture of savagery and lofty notions in a Christian community which, for instance, accounted accidental death as wilful murder. The case is mentioned of a man falling from a tree on a friend below and killing him. "He was adjudged to perish at the hands of the bereaved family, in the same manner as the corpse. But the family refused to sacrifice a second member, so the culprit escaped." Dreams also are resorted to, as in the days of the Pharaohs, for detecting crime. A priest is sent for, and if his prayers and curses fail, a small boy is drugged and told to dream. "Whatever person he dreams of is fixed on as the criminal; no further proof is needed.... If the boy does not dream of the person whom the priest has determined on as the criminal, he is kept under drugs until he does what is required of him."
To outsiders society seems to be a strange jumble of an iron despotism, which forbids the selling of a horse for over L10 under severe penalties, and a personal freedom or licence, which allows the labourer to claim his wages after a week's work and forthwith decamp to spend them, returning next day or next month as the humour takes him. Yet somehow things hold together, and a few Semitic immigrants from South Arabia have for over 2000 years contrived to maintain some kind of control over the Hamitic aborigines who have always formed the bulk of the population in Abyssinia[1149].
FOOTNOTES:
[1000] The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study, W. Z. Ripley, 1900, p. 437.
[1001] "Diese Namen sind natuerlich rein conventionell. Sie sind historisch berechtigt ... und moegen Geltung behalten, so lange wir keine zutrefferenden an ihre Stelle setzen koennen" (Anthropologische Studien, etc., p. 15).
[1002] E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 1909, l. 2, discussing the original home of the Indo-Europeans (Sec. 561, Das Problem der Heimat und Ausbreitung der Indogermanen) remarks (p. 800) that the discovery of Tocharish (Sieg und Siegling, "Tocharish, die Sprache der Indo-skythen," Sitz. d. Berl. Ak. 1908, p. 915 ff.), a language belonging apparently to the centum (Western and European) group, overthrows all earlier conceptions as to the distribution of the Indogermans and gives weight to the hypothesis of their Asiatic origin.
[1003] "Io non dubito di denominare aria questa stirpe etc." (Umbri, Italici, Arii, Bologna, 1897, p. 14, and elsewhere).
[1004] Anthrop. Studien, p. 15, "Diese Gemeinsamkeit der Charakteren beweist uns die Blutverwandtschaft" (ib.).
[1005] Sir W. Crooke's anticipation of a possible future failure of the wheat supply as affecting the destinies of the Caucasic peoples (Presidential Address at Meeting Br. Assoc. Bristol, 1898) is an economic question which cannot here be discussed.
[1006] Ph. Lake, "The Geology of the Sahara," in Science Progress, July, 1895.
[1007] This name, meaning in Berber "running water," has been handed down from a time when the Igharghar was still a mighty stream with a northerly course of some 800 miles, draining an area of many thousand square miles, in which there is not at present a single perennial brooklet. It would appear that even crocodiles still survive from those remote times in the so-called Lake Miharo of the Tassili district, where von Bary detected very distinct traces of their presence in 1876. A. E. Pease also refers to a Frenchman "who had satisfied himself of the existence of crocodiles cut off in ages long ago from watercourses that have disappeared" (Contemp. Review, July, 1896).
[1008] Recherches sur les Origines de l'Egypte: L'Age de la Pierre et des Metaux, 1897.
[1009] Bul. Soc. d'Anthrop. 1896, p. 394. This indefatigable explorer remarks, in reference to the continuity of human culture in Tunisia throughout the Old and New Stone Ages, that "ces populations fortement melangees d'elements neanderthaloides de la Kromirie fabriquent encore des vases de tous points analogues a la poterie neolithique" (ib.).
[1010] The Antiquity of Man, 1915, p. 255.
[1011] Africa, Antropologia della Stirpe Camitica, Turin, 1897, p. 404 sq.
[1012] "Le nord de l'Afrique entiere, y compris le Sahara naguere encore fort peuple," i.e. of course relatively speaking, "Du Dniester a la Caspienne," in Bul. Soc. d'Anthrop. 1896, p. 81 sq.
[1013] Ibid. p. 654 sq.
[1014] Resume de l'Anthropologie de la Tunisie, 1896, p. 4 sq.
[1015] This identity is confirmed by the characters of three skulls from the dolmens of Madracen near Batna, Algeria, now in the Constantine Museum, found by Letourneau and Papillaut to present striking affinities with the long-headed Cro-Magnon race (Ceph. Index 70, 74, 78); leptoprosope with prominent glabella, notable alveolar prognathism, and sub-occipital bone projecting chignon-fashion at the back (Bul. Soc. d'Anthrop. 1896, p. 347).
[1016] He shows ("Exploration Anthropologique de l'Ile de Gerba," in L'Anthropologie, 1897, p. 424 sq.) that the North African brown brachycephalics, forming the substratum in Mauretania, and very pure in Gerba, resemble the European populations the more they have avoided contact with foreign races. He quotes H. Martin: "Le type brun qui domine dans la Grande Kabylie du Jurjura ressemble singulierement en majorite au type francais brun. Si l'on habillait ces hommes de vetements europeens, vous ne les distingueriez pas de paysans ou de soldats francais." He compares them especially to the Bretons, and agrees with Martin that "il y a parmi les Berberes bruns des brachycephales; je croirais volontiers que les brachycephales bruns sont des Ligures. Libyens et Ligures paraissent avoir ete originairement de la meme race." He thinks the very names are the same: "[Greek: Libyes] est exactement le meme mot que [Greek: Ligyes]; rien n'etait plus frequent dans les dialectes primitifs que la mutation du b en g."
[1017] The Races of Europe, 1900, passim.
[1018] "Les Chaouias," etc., in L'Anthropologie, 1897, p. 1 sq.
[1019] Ueber eine Schaedelsammlung von den Kanarischen Inseln, with F. von Luschan's appendix; also "Ueber die Urbewohner der Kanarischen Inseln," in Bastian-Festschrift, 1896, p. 63. The inferences here drawn are in substantial agreement with those of Henry Wallack, in his paper on "The Guanches," in Journ. Anthr. Inst. June, 1887, p. 158 sq.; and also with J. C. Shrubsall, who, however, distinguishes four pre-Spanish types from a study of numerous skulls and other remains from Tenerife in Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc. IX. 154-78. The 152 cave skulls measured by Von Detloff von Behr, Metrische Studien an 152 Guanchenschaedeln, 1908, agree in the main with earlier results.
[1020] For an interpretation of the significance of Armenoid skulls in the Canary Is. see G. Elliot Smith, The Ancient Egyptians, 1911, pp. 156-7.
[1021] "Denombrement et Types des Cranes Neolithiques de la Gaule," in Rev. Mens. de l'Ecole d'Anthrop. 1896.
[1022] T. Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain, 1907, p. 424.
[1023] "Infiltrazioni pacifiche." (Arii e Italici, p. 124.)
[1024] L'Anthr. XII. 1901, pp. 547-8.
[1025] Cf. G. Elliot Smith, The Ancient Egyptians, 1911, p. 58 ff.
[1026] T. Rice Holmes, Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, 1911, p. 266, with list of authorities. See also Sigmund Feist, Kultur, Ausbreitung und Herkunft der Indogermanen, 1913, p. 364, and H. H. Johnston, "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLIII. 1913, pp. 386 and 387.
[1027] T. Rice Holmes, loc. cit. p. 272.
[1028] W. Wright, Middlesex Hospital Journal, XII. 1908, p. 44.
[1029] See A. C. Haddon, The Wanderings of Peoples, 1911, pp. 16, 17, 55.
[1030] R. S. Conway, The Italic Dialects, 1897, and Art. "Etruria: Language," Ency. Brit. 1911.
[1031] Cf. T. Rice Holmes, Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, 1911, p. 283. "The truth is that linguistic data are insufficient."
[1032] I. 57.
[1033] See p. 465.
[1034] For Lydian see E. Littmann, Sardis, "Lydian Inscriptions," 1916, briefly summarised by P. Giles, "Some Notes on the New Lydian Inscriptions," Camb. Univ. Rep. 1917, p. 587.
[1035] S. Feist, Kultur, Ausbreitung und Herkunft der Indogermanen, 1913, p. 385.
[1036] "The attempts to connect the language with the Indo-European family have been unsuccessful," A. H. Sayce, Art. "Lycia," Ency. Brit. 1911. But cf. also S. Feist, loc. cit. pp. 385-7; and Th. Kluge, Die Lykier, ihre Geschichte und ihre Inschriften, 1910.
[1037] A. J. Evans, Scripta Minoa, 1909.
[1038] T. Rice Holmes, Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, 1911, p. 289 n. 4.
[1039] Die Verwandtschaft des Baskischen mit den Berbersprachen Nord-Afrikas nachgewiesen, 1894.
[1040] "Die Sprachen waren mit einander verwandt, das stand ausser Zweifel." (Pref. IV.)
[1041] J. Vinson (Rev. de linguistique, XXXVIII. 1905, p. 111) says, "no more absurd book on Basque has appeared of late years." See T. Rice Holmes, Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, 1911, p. 299 n. 3.
[1042] "In the general series of organised linguistic families it [Basque] would take an intermediate place between the American on the one side and the Ugro-Altaic or Ugrian on the other." Wentworth Webster and Julien Vinson, Ency. Brit. 1910, "Basques."
[1043] See W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, 1900, Chap. VIII. "The Basques," pp. 180-204.
[1044] Rev. mensuelle de l'Ecole d'Anthr. X. 1900, pp. 225-7.
[1045] S. Feist, Kultur, Ausbreitung und Herkunft der Indogermanen, 1913.
[1046] Hist. de la Gaule, I. 1908, p. 271.
[1047] "La Race Basque," L'Anthrop. 1894.
[1048] W. Z. Ripley, loc. cit. p. 200.
[1049] Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, 1911, p. 287. Cf. J. Dechelette (Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique, II. 1910, p. 27), "As a rule it is wise to attach to this expression (Iberian) merely a geographical value." Reviewing the problems of Iberian origins (which he considers remain unsolved), he quotes as an example of their range, the opinion of C. Jullian (Revue des Etudes Anciennes, 1903, p. 383), "There is no Iberian race. The Iberians were a state constituted at latest towards the 6th century, in the valley of the Ebro, which received, either from strangers or from the indigenous peoples, the name of the river as nom de guerre."
[1050] J. Vinson (Rev. de linguistique, XL. 1907, pp. 5, 211) divides the Iberian inscriptions into three groups, each of which, he believes, represents a different language.
[1051] The Mediterranean Race, 1901.
[1052] Dict. des sc. anthr. p. 247, and Rev. de l'Ecole d'Anthr. XVII. 1907, p. 365.
[1053] Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 1909, p. 723.
[1054] Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique, II. 1910, p. 27 n., see also p. 22 for archaeological proofs of "ethnographic distinctions."
[1055] Hist. de la Gaule, I. Chap. IV. The author makes it clear, however, that his "Ligurians" are not necessarily an ethnic unit, "De l'unite de nom, ne concluons pas a l'unite de race" (119), and later (p. 120), "Ne considerons donc pas les Ligures comme les representants uniformes d'une race determinee. Ils sont la population qui habitait l'Europe occidentale avant les invasions connues des Celtes ou des Etrusques, avant la naissance des peuples latin ou ibere. Ils ne sont pas autre chose."
[1056] Gaule av. Gaulois, p. 248.
[1057] Loc. cit. p. 23 n. I.
[1058] Early Age of Greece, 1901, p. 237 ff., and "Who were the Romans?" Proc. Brit. Acad. III. 19, 1908, p. 3.
[1059] See R. S. Conway, Art. "Liguria," Ency. Brit. 1911. It may be noted, however, as Feist points out (Ausbreitung und Herkunft des Indogermanen, 1913, p. 368), this hypothesis rests on slight foundations ("ruht auf schwachen Fuessen").
[1060] Arii e Italici, p. 60.
[1061] Corresbl. d. d. Ges. f. Anthrop., Feb. 1898, p. 12.
[1062] Yet Ligurians are actually planted on the North Atlantic coast of Spain by S. Sempere y Miguel (Revista de Ciencias Historicas, I. v. 1887).
[1063] Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique, II. 1910, p. 22.
[1064] Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, 1911, p. 287.
[1065] "La Civilisation Primitive dans la Sicilie Orientale," in L'Anthropologie, 1897, p. 130 sq.; and p. 295 sq.
[1066] Praehistorische Studien aus Sicilien, quoted by Patroni.
[1067] p. 130.
[1068] See p. 21.
[1069] It may be mentioned that while Penka makes the Siculi Illyrians from Upper Italy ("Zur Palaeoethnologie Mittel-u. Suedeuropas," in Wiener Anthrop. Ges. 1897, p. 18), E. A. Freeman holds that they were not only Aryans, but closely akin to the Romans, speaking "an undeveloped Latin," or "something which did not differ more widely from Latin than one dialect of Greek differed from another" (The History of Sicily, etc., I. p. 488). On the Siculi and Sicani, see E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 1909, I. 2, p. 723, also Art. "Sicily, History," Ency. Brit. 1911. Dechelette (Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique, II. 1910, p. 17) suggests that Sikelos or Siculus, the eponymous hero of Sicily, may have been merely the personification of the typical Ligurian implement, the bronze sickle (Lat. secula, sicula).
[1070] I. 22.
[1071] VI. 2.
[1072] Parte I. Dati Antropologici ed Etnologici, Rome, 1896.
[1073] p. 182.
[1074] Atti Soc. Rom. d' Antrop. 1896, pp. 179 and 201.
[1075] Cf. W. Z. Ripley, "Racial Geography of Europe," _Pop. Sci. Monthly_, New York, 1897-9, and The Races of Europe, 1900, pp. 54, 175.
[1076] Arii e Italici, p. 188. Hence for these Italian Ligurians he claims the name of "Italici," which he refuses to extend to the Aryan intruders in the peninsula. "A questi primi abitatori spetta legittimamente il nome di Italici, non a popolazioni successive [Aryan Umbrians], che avrebbero sloggiato i primi abitanti" (p. 60). The result is a little confusing, "Italic" being now the accepted name of the Italian branch of the Aryan linguistic family, and also commonly applied to the Aryans of this Italic speech, although the word Italia itself may have been indigenous (Ligurian) and not introduced by the Aryans. It would perhaps be better to regard "Italia" as a "geographical expression" applicable to all its inhabitants, whatever their origin or speech.
[1077] Science Progress, July, 1894. It will be noticed that the facts, accepted by all, are differently interpreted by Beddoe and Sergi, the latter taking the long-headed element in North Italy as the aboriginal (Ligurian), modified by the later intrusion of round-headed Aryan Slavs, Teutons, and especially Kelts, while Beddoe seems to regard the broad-headed Alpine as the original, afterwards modified by intrusive long-headed types "Germanic, Slavic, or of doubtful origin." Either view would no doubt account for the present relations; but Sergi's study of the prehistoric remains (see above) seems to compel acceptance of his explanation. From the statistics an average height of not more than 5 ft. 4 in. results for the whole of Italy.
[1078] For the identification of the Mediterranean race in Greece with the Pelasgians, see W. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, I. 1901, though Ripley contends (The Races of Europe, 1900, p. 407), "Positively no anthropological data on the matter exist."
[1079] [Greek: To ton Pelasgon genos Hellenikon.]
[1080] I. 57.
[1081] Il. X. 429; Od. XIX. 177.
[1082] "We recognize in the Pelasgi an ancient and honourable race, ante-Hellenic, it is true, but distinguished from the Hellenes only in the political and social development of their age.... Herodotus and others take a prejudiced view when, reasoning back from the subsequent Tyrrhenian Pelasgi, they call the ancient Pelasgians a rude and worthless race, their language barbarous, and their deities nameless. Numerous traditionary accounts, of undoubted authenticity, describe them as a brave, moral, and honourable people, which was less a distinct stock and tribe, than a race united by a resemblance in manners and the forms of life" (W. Wachsmuth, The Historical Antiquities of the Greeks, etc., Engl. ed. 1837, I. p. 39). Remarkable words to have been written before the recent revelations of archaeology in Hellas.
[1083] That the two cultures went on for a long time side by side is evident from the different social institutions and religious ideas prevailing in different parts of Hellas during the strictly historic period.
[1084] [Greek: kata ten Hellada pasan epepolase] (Strabo, V. 220). This might almost be translated, "they flooded the whole of Greece."
[1085] Early Age of Greece, 1901, Chaps. I. and II.
[1086] Od. XIX.
[1087] Thuc. I. 3.
[1088] This idea of an independent evolution of western (European) culture is steadily gaining ground, and is strenuously advocated, amongst others, by M. Salomon Reinach, who has made a vigorous attack on what he calls the "oriental mirage," i.e. the delusion which sees nothing but Asiatic or Egyptian influences everywhere. Sergi of course goes further, regarding the Mediterranean (Iberian, Ligurian, Pelasgian) cultures not only as local growths, but as independent both of Asiatics and of the rude Aryan hordes, who came rather as destroyers than civilisers. This is one of the fundamental ideas pervading the whole of his Arii e Italici, and some earlier writings.
[1089] Pausanias, III. 20. 5.
[1090] G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, 1901. In the main he is supported by philologists. "The languages of the indigenous peoples throughout Asia Minor and the Aegean area are commonly believed to have been non-Indo-European." H. M. Chadwick, The Heroic Age, 1912, p. 179 n.
[1091] W. Ridgeway, The Early Age of Greece, 1901, p. 681 ff.
[1092] The Dawn of History, 1911, p. 40. For his views on Pelasgians, see Journ. Hell. St. 1907, p. 170, and the Art. "Pelasgians" in Ency. Brit. 1911.
[1093] E. Petersen and F. von Luschan, Reisen in Lykien, 1889.
[1094] W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, p. 404 ff. The map (facing p. 402) does not include Greece, and the grouping is based on language, not race.
[1095] The Mykenaean skull found by Bent at Antiparos is described as "abnormally dolichocephalic." W. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, I. 1901, p. 78.
[1096] But in Ridgeway's view the "classical Hellenes" were descendants of tall fair-haired invaders from the North, and in this he has the concurrence of J. L. Myres, The Dawn of History, 1911, p. 209.
[1097] Mitt. d. K. d. Inst. Athen. XXX. See H. R. Hall, Ancient History of the Near East, 1913, pp. 61-4.
[1098] Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 1909, Sec. 507.
[1099] For a discussion of the meaning of "Pelasgic Argos" see H. M. Chadwick, The Heroic Age, 1912, pp. 274 ff. and 278-9, and for his criticism of Meyer, p. 285.
[1100] But see W. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, I. 1901, p. 138 ff.
[1101] Art. "Indo-European Languages," Ency. Brit. 1911.
[1102] R. S. Conway, Art. "Aegean Civilisation," in Ency. Brit. 1911, whence this summary is derived, including the chronology, which is not in all respects universally adopted (see p. 27). For a full discussion of the chronology see J. Dechelette, Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique, Vol. II. 1910, Archeologie celtique ou protohistorique, Ch. II. Sec. V. Chronologie egeenne, p. 54 ff.
[1103] In his valuable and comprehensive work, Africa: Antropologia della Stirpe Camitica, Turin, 1897. It must not be supposed that this classification is unchallenged. T. A. Joyce, "Hamitic Races and Languages," Ency. Brit. 1911, points out that it is impossible to prove the connection between the Eastern and Northern Hamites. The former have a brown skin, with frizzy hair, and are nomadic or semi-nomadic pastors; the latter, whom he would call not Hamites at all, but the Libyan variety of the Mediterranean race, are a white people, with curly hair, and their purest representatives, the Berbers, are agriculturalists. For the fullest and most recent treatment of the subject see the monumental work of Oric Bates, The Eastern Libyans: An Essay, 1913, with bibliography.
[1104] "Les Maures du Senegal," L'Anthropologie, 1896, p. 258 sq.
[1105] That is, the Sanhaja-an Litham, those who wear the litham or veil, which is needed to protect them from the sand, but has now acquired religious significance, and is never worn by the "Moors."
[1106] p. 269.
[1107] See F. Stuhlmann's invaluable work on African culture and race distribution, Handwerk und Industrie in Ostafrika, 1910, especially the map showing the distribution of the Hamites, Pl. II. B.
[1108] The Kababish and Baggara tribes, chief mainstays of former Sudanese revolts, claim to be of unsullied Arab descent with long fictitious pedigrees going back to early Muhammadan times (see p. 74).
[1109] "Les Chaouias," L'Anthropologie, 1897, p. 14.
[1110] P. 17.
[1111] The words collected by Sir H. H. Johnston at Dwirat in Tunis show a great resemblance with the language of the Saharan Tuaregs, and the sheikh of that place "admitted that his people could understand and make themselves understood by those fierce nomads, who range between the southern frontier of Algeria and Tunis and the Sudan" (Geogr. Jour., June, 1898, p. 590).
[1112] Cf. Meinhof, Die Moderne Sprachforschung in Africa, 1910.
[1113] Ti-bu = "Rock People"; cf. Kanem-bu = "Kanem People," southernmost branch of the family on north side of Lake Chad.
[1114] [Greek: Onton de kai auton ede mallon Aithiopon] (I. 8). I take [Greek: ede], which has caused some trouble to commentators, here to mean that, as you advance southwards from the Mediterranean seaboard, you find yourself on entering Garamantian territory already rather amongst Ethiopians than Libyans.
[1115] Reclus, Eng. ed. Vol. XI. p. 429. For the complicated ancestral mixture producing the Tibu see Sir H. H. Johnston, "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLIII. 1913, p. 386.
[1116] Reclus, Eng. ed. Vol. XI. p. 430.
[1117] From the enormous sheets of tuffs near the Kharga Oasis Zettel, geologist of G. Rohlf's expedition in 1876, considered that even this sandy waste might have supported a rich vegetation in Quaternary times.
[1118] See Histoire de la Civilisation Egyptienne, G. Jequier, 1913, p. 53 ff. Also, concerning pottery, E. Naville, "The Origin of Egyptian Civilisation," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XXXVII. 1907, p. 203.
[1119] The Egyptians themselves had a tradition that when Menes moved north he found the delta still under water. The sea reached almost as far as the Fayum, and the whole valley, except the Thebais, was a malarious swamp (Herod. II. 4). Thus late into historic times memories still survived that the delta was of relatively recent formation, and that the Retu (Romitu of the Pyramid texts, later Rotu, Romi, etc.) had already developed their social system before the Lower Nile valley was inhabitable. Hence whether the Nile took 20,000 years (Schweinfurth) or over 70,000, as others hold, to fill in its estuary, the beginning of the Egyptian prehistoric period must still be set back many millenniums before the new era. "Ce que nous savons du Sahara, lui-meme alors sillonne de rivieres, atteste qu'il [the delta] ne devait pas etre habitable, pas etre constitue a l'epoque quaternaire" (M. Zaborowski, Bul. Soc. d'Anthrop. 1896, p. 655).
[1120] G. Jequier, Histoire de la Civilisation Egyptienne, 1913, p. 95, but see E. Naville, "The Origin of Egyptian Civilisation," _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XXXVII. 1907, p. 209.
[1121] Handwerk und Industrie in Ostafrika, 1910, p. 143.
[1122] "Migrations," Journ. Anthr. Inst. XXXVI. 1906.
[1123] "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLIII. 1913.
[1124] See p. 482 below.
[1125] For an alternative route see E. Naville, "The Origin of Egyptian Civilisation," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XXXVII. 1907, p. 209; J. L. Myres, The Dawn of History, 1911, pp. 56-7, also p. 65, and the criticism of Elliot Smith, The Ancient Egyptians, 1911, pp. 88-9.
[1126] The Ancient Egyptians, 1911.
[1127] The Ancient Egyptians, 1911, pp. 56, 58, 62.
[1128] The Ancient Egyptians, 1911, pp. 104-5.
[1129] G. Elliot Smith, loc. cit. pp. 97 and 147.
[1130] E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 1909, Sec.Sec. 229, 232, 253.
[1131] G. Elliot Smith, The Ancient Egyptians, 1911, p. 108, but for a different interpretation see J. L. Myres, The Dawn of History, 1911 pp. 51 and 65.
[1132] Loc. cit. p. 147.
[1133] H. R. Hall (The Ancient History of the Near East, 1913, p. 87 n. 3) sees "no resemblance whatever between the facial traits of the Memphite grandees of the Old Kingdom and those of Hittites, Syrians, or modern Anatolians, Armenians or Kurds. They were much more like South Europeans, like modern Italians or Cretans."
[1134] Cf. H. H. Johnston, "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Soc. XLIII. 1913, p. 383, and also E. Naville, "The Origin of Egyptian Civilisation," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XXXVII. 1907, p. 210.
[1135] G. A. Reisner, "The Early Dynastic Cemeteries of Naga-ed-Der," Part 1. Vol. II. of University of California Publications, 1908, summarised by L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, pp. 326, 334.
[1136] Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 1909, p. 156.
[1137] Journ. Anthr. Inst. XXXIII. 1903, XXXV. 1905, XXXVI. 1906, and Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XXXVIII. 1908.
[1138] Cf. H. H. Johnston, "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLIII. 1913, p. 382.
[1139] No physical affinity is suggested. The Lesghian tribes "betray an accentuated brachycephaly, equal to that of the pure Mongols about the Caspians." W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, p. 440.
[1140] J. Deniker, The Races of Man, 1900, p. 439, places the Fulahs in a separate group, the Fulah-Zandeh group. Cf. also A. C. Haddon, The Wanderings of Peoples, 1911, p. 59.
[1141] Loc. cit. p. 401 n.
[1142] Africa, 1897, passim.
[1143] "Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLIII. 1913, p. 604. See also C. Crossland, Desert and Water Gardens of the Red Sea, 1913.
[1144] Genealogies of the Somal, 1896.
[1145] "Reisestudien in den Somalilaendern," Globus, LXX. p. 33 sq.
[1146] Ethnographie Nord-Ost-Afrikas: Die geistige Kultur der Danakil, Galla u. Somal, 1896, 2 vols.
[1147] M. Merker, Die Masai, 1904; A. C. Hollis, The Masai, their Language and Folklore, 1905. C. Dundas, "The Organization and Laws of some Bantu Tribes in East Africa," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLV. 1915, pp. 236-7, thinks that the power of the Masai was over-rated, and that the Galla were really a fiercer race. He quotes Krapf, "Give me the Galla and I have Central Africa." The Nandi (an allied tribe) are described by A. C. Hollis, 1909, and The Suk by M. W. H. Beech, 1911.
[1148] A. E. W. Gleichen, Rennell Rodd's Mission to Menelik, 1897.
[1149] Among recent works on Abyssinia may be mentioned A. B. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, 1901; H. Weld Blundell, "A Journey through Abyssinia," Geog. Journ. XV. 1900, and "Exploration in the Abai Basin," ib. XXVII. 1906; the Anthropological Survey of Abyssinia published by the French Government in 1911; and various publications of the Princeton University Expedition to Abyssinia, edited by E. Littmann.
XIV. THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES (continued)
THE SEMITES--Cradle, Origins, and Migrations--Divisions: Semitic Migrations--Babylonia, People and Civilisation--Assyria, People and Civilisation--Syria and Palestine--Canaanites: Amorites: Phoenicians--The Jews--Origins--Early and Later Dispersions-- Diverse Physical Types--Present Range and Population-- THE HITTITES--Conflicting Theories--The Arabs--Spread of the Arab Race and Language--Semitic Monotheism--Its Evolution.
The Himyaritic immigrants, who still hold sway in a foreign land, have long ceased to exist as a distinct nationality in their own country, where they had nevertheless ages ago founded flourishing empires, centres of one of the very oldest civilisations of which there is any record. Should future research confirm the now generally received view that Hamites and Semites are fundamentally of one stock, a view based both on physical and linguistic data[1150], the cradle of the Semitic branch will also probably be traced to South Arabia, and more particularly to that south-western region known to the ancients as Arabia Felix, i.e. the Yemen of the Arabs. While Asia and Africa were still partly separated in the north by a broad marine inlet before the formation of the Nile delta, easy communication was afforded between the two continents farther south at the head of the Gulf of Aden, where they are still almost contiguous. By this route the primitive Hamito-Semitic populations may have moved either westwards into Africa, or, as has also been suggested, eastwards into Asia, where in the course of ages the Semitic type became specialised.
On this assumption South Arabia would necessarily be the first home of the Semites, who in later times spread thence north and east. They appear as Babylonians and Assyrians in Mesopotamia; as Phoenicians on the Syrian coast; as Arabs on the Nejd steppe; as Canaanites, Moabites and others in and about Palestine; as Amorites (Aramaeans, Syrians) in Syria and Asia Minor.
This is the common view of Semitic origins and early migrations, but as practically no systematic excavations have been possible in Arabia, owing to political conditions and the attitude of the inhabitants, definite archaeological or anthropological proofs are still lacking. The hypothesis would, however, seem to harmonise well with all the known conditions. In the first place is to be considered the very narrow area occupied by the Semites, both absolutely and relatively to the domains of the other fundamental ethnical groups. While the Mongols are found in possession of the greater part of Asia, and the Hamites with the Mediterraneans are diffused over the whole of North Africa, South and West Europe since the Stone Ages, the Semites, excluding later expansions--Himyarites to Abyssinia, Phoenicians to the shores of the Mediterranean, Moslem Arabs to Africa, Irania, and Transoxiana--have always been confined to the south-west corner of Asia, comprising very little more than the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, Syria, and (doubtfully) parts of Asia Minor. Moreover the whole mental outlook of the Semites, their mode of thought, their religion and organisation, indicate their derivation from a desert people; while in Arabia are found at the present time the purest examples not only of Semitic type, but also of Semitic speech[1151]. Their early history, however, as pointed out above, still awaits the spade of the archaeologist, and the earliest migrations that can be definitely traced are in the form of invasions of already established states[1152].
The first great wave of Semitic migration from Arabia is placed in the fourth millennium B.C., 3500 to 2500 or earlier; it affected Babylonia and probably Syria and Palestine, judging from the Palestinian place-names belonging to this "Babylonian-Semitic" period, and the close connection between Palestine and Babylonia in culture and in religious ideas, indicating prehistoric relationship[1153]. A second wave, Winckler's Canaanitic or Amoritic migration, followed in the third millennium, covering Babylonia, laying the foundations of the Assyrian Empire, invading Syria and Palestine (Phoenicians, Amorites) and possibly later Egypt (Hyksos). A third wave, the Aramaean, which spread over Babylonia, Mesopotamia and Syria in the second millennium, was preceded by the swarming into Syria from the desert of the Khabiri (Habiru) or Hebrews (Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites and Israelites among others). From the same area the Suti pressed into Babylonia about 1100, followed by another branch, the Chaldeans from Eastern Arabia.
These are but a few of the earlier waves of migration from the south of which traces can be detected in Western Asia. Of all invasions from the north, that of the Hittites is the most important and the most confusing. The Hittites appear to have moved south from Cappadocia about 2000 B.C., and they are found warring against Babylonia in the eighteenth century. A Hittite dynasty flourished at Mittanni 1420-1411 and in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries they conquered and largely occupied Syria[1154]. Invasions of Phrygians and Philistines from the west followed the breaking up of the Hittite Empire. The last great Semitic migration was the most widespread of all. "It issued, like its predecessors, along the whole margin of the desert, and in the course of a century had flooded not only Syria and Egypt, but all North Africa and Spain; it had occupied Sicily, raided Constance, and in France was only checked at Poitiers in 732. Eastward it flooded Persia, founded an empire in India, and carried war and commerce by sea past Singapore[1155]."
"Thus Western Asia has been swept times and again, almost without number, by conquering hordes and the no less severe ethnical disturbances of peaceful infiltrations converging from every point of the compass in turn.... How, then, is it possible to learn anything today from the contents of this cauldron, filled with such an assortment of ingredients and still seething from the effects of the disturbance incidental to the harsh mixing of such incompatible elements[1156]?" Some of the problems must for the present be regarded as insoluble, but with the evidence provided by archaeologists and anthropologists an attempt may be made to read the ethnological history in these obscure regions.
The earliest Semitic wave was traceable in Babylonia, but, as seen above, opinions differ as to its origin and date. "At what period the Semites first invaded Babylonia, when and where they first attained supremacy, are not yet matters of history. We find Semites in the land and in possession of considerable power almost as early as we can go back[1157]." The characteristic Semitic features are clearly marked, and the language is closely connected with Canaanitic and Assyrian[1158]. From the monuments we learn that the Babylonian Semites had full beards and wore their hair long, contrasting sharply with the shaven Sumerians, and thus gaining the epithet "the black-headed ones." In nose and lips, as in dress, they are clearly distinct from the Sumerian type[1159].
When history commences, the inhabitants of Babylonia were already highly civilised. They lived in towns, containing great temples, and were organised in distinct classes or occupations, and possessed much wealth in sheep and cattle, manufactured goods, gold, silver and copper. Engraving on metals and precious stones, statuary, architecture, pottery, weaving and embroidery, all show a high level of workmanship. They possessed an elaborate and efficient system of writing, extensively used and widely understood, consisting of a number of signs, obviously descended from a form of picture writing, but conventionalised to an extent that usually precludes the recognition of the original pictures. This writing was made by the impression of a stylus on blocks or cakes of fine clay while still quite soft. These "tablets" were sun-dried, but occasionally baked hard. This cuneiform writing was adopted by, or was common to, many neighbouring nations, being freely used in Elam, Armenia and Northern Mesopotamia as far as Cappadocia.
Assyrian culture was founded upon that of Babylonia, but the Assyrians appear to have differed from the Babylonians in character, though not in physical type[1160], while they were closely related in speech. "The Assyrians differed markedly from the Babylonians in national character. They were more robust, warlike, fierce, than the mild industrial people of the south. It is doubtful if they were much devoted to agriculture or distinguished for manufactures, arts and crafts. They were essentially a military folk. The king was a despot at home, but the general of the army abroad. The whole organisation of the state was for war. The agriculture was left to serfs or slaves. The manufactures, weaving at any rate, were done by women. The guilds of workmen were probably foreigners, as the merchants mostly were. The great temples and palaces, walls and moats, were constructed by captives.... For the greater part of its existence Assyria was the scourge of the nations and sucked the blood of other races. It lived on the tribute of subject states, and conquest ever meant added tribute in all necessaries and luxuries of life, beside an annual demand for men and horses, cattle and sheep, grain and wool to supply the needs of the army and the city[1161]."
The early history of Syria and Palestine is by no means clear, although much light has been shed in recent years by the excavations of R. A. S. Macalister at Gezer[1162], where remains were found of a pre-Semitic race, of Ernst Sellin at Tell Ta'anek and Jericho[1163], and the labours of the Deutscher Palaestina-Verein and especially G. Schumacher at Megiddo[1164]. Caves apparently occupied by man in the Neolithic period were discovered at Gezer, and are dated at about 3500 to 3000 B.C. from their position below layers in which Egyptian scarabs appear. Fragments of bones give indications of the physical type. None of the individuals exceeded 5 ft. 7 inches (1.702 m.) in height, and most were under 5 ft. 4 inches (1.626 m.). They were muscular, with elongated crania and thick heavy skull-bones. From their physical characters it could be clearly seen that they did not belong to the Semitic race. They burned their dead, a non-Semitic custom, a cave being fitted up as a crematorium, with a chimney cut up through the solid rock to secure a good draught[1165].
The first great influx of Semitic nomads is conjectured to have reached Babylonia, not from the south, but from the north-west, after traversing the Syrian coast lands. They left colonists behind them in this region, who afterwards as the Amurru (Amorites) pressed on in their turn into Babylonia and established the earliest independent dynasty in Babylon[1166].
The second great wave of Semitic migration appears to have included the Phoenicians[1167], so called by the Greeks, though they called themselves Canaanites and their land Canaan[1168], and are referred to in the Old Testament, as in inscriptions at Tyre, as "Sidonians." They themselves had a tradition that their early home was on the Persian Gulf, a view held by Theodore Bent and others[1169], and recent discoveries emphasise the close cultural (not necessarily racial) connection between Palestine and Babylonia[1170].
The weakening of Egyptian hold upon Palestine about the fourteenth century B.C. encouraged incursions of restless Habiru (Habiri) from the Syrian deserts, commonly identified with the Hebrews, and invasions of Hittites from the north. In the thirteenth century Egypt recovered Palestine, leaving the Hittites in possession of Syria. About this time the coast was invaded by Levantines, including the Purasati, in whom may perhaps be recognised the Philistines, who gave their name to Palestine[1171].
With the Hebrew or Israelitish inhabitants of south Syria (Canaan, Palestine, "Land of Promise") we are here concerned only in so far as they form a distinct branch of the Semitic family. The term "Jews[1172]," properly indicating the children of Judah, fourth son of Jacob, has long been applied generally to the whole people, who since the disappearance of the ten northern tribes have been mainly represented by the tribe of Judah, a remnant of Benjamin and a few Levites, i.e. the section of the nation which to the number of some 50,000 returned to south Palestine (kingdom of Judaea) after the Babylonian captivity. These were doubtless later joined by some of the dispersed northern tribes, who from Jacob's alternative name were commonly called the "ten tribes of Israel." But all such Israelites had lost their separate nationality, and were consequently absorbed in the royal tribe of Judah. Since the suppression of the various revolts under the Empire, the Judaei themselves have been a dispersed nationality, and even before those events numerous settlements had been made in different parts of the Greek and Roman worlds, as far west as Tripolitana, and also in Arabia and Abyssinia.
But most of the present communities probably descend from those of the great dispersion after the fall of Jerusalem (70 A.D.), increased by considerable accessions of converted "Gentiles," for the assumption that they have made few or no converts is no longer tenable. In exile they have been far more a religious body than a broken nation, and as such they could not fail under favourable conditions to spread their teachings, not only amongst their Christian slaves, but also amongst peoples, such as the Abyssinian Falashas, of lower culture than themselves. In pre-Muhammadan times many Arabs of Yemen and other districts had conformed, and some of their Jewish kings (Asad Abu-Karib, Dhu Nowas, and others) are still remembered. About the seventh century all the Khazars--a renowned Turki people of the Volga, the Crimea, and the Caspian--accepted Judaism, though they later conformed to Russian orthodoxy. The Visigoth persecution of the Spanish Jews (fifth and sixth centuries) was largely due to their proselytising zeal, against which, as well as against Jewish and Christian mixed marriages, numerous papal decrees were issued in medieval times.
To this process of miscegenation is attributed the great variety of physical features observed amongst the Jews of different countries[1173], while the distinctly red type cropping out almost everywhere has been traced by Sayce and others to primordial interminglings with the Amorites ("Red People"). "Uniformity only exists in the books and not in reality. There are Jews with light and with dark eyes, Jews with straight and with curly hair, Jews with high and narrow and Jews with short and broad, noses; their cephalic index oscillates between 65 and 98--as far as this index ever oscillates in the genus homo[1174]!" Nevertheless certain marked characteristics--large hooked nose, prominent watery eyes, thick pendulous and almost everted under lip, rough frizzly lustreless hair--are sufficiently general to be regarded as racial traits.
The race is richly endowed with the most varied qualities, as shown by the whole tenour of their history. Originally pure nomads, they became excellent agriculturists after the settlement in Canaan, and since then they have given proof of the highest capacity for science, letters, erudition of all kinds, finance, music, and diplomacy. The reputation of the medieval Arabs as restorers of learning is largely due to their wise tolerance of the enlightened Jewish communities in their midst, and on the other hand Spain and Portugal have never recovered from the national loss sustained by the expulsion of the Jews in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In late years the persecutions, especially in Russia, have caused a fresh exodus from the east of Europe, and by the aid of philanthropic capitalists flourishing agricultural settlements have been founded in Palestine and Argentina. From statistics taken in various places up to 1911 the Jewish communities are at present estimated at about 12,000,000, of whom three-fourths are in Europe, 380,000 in Africa, 500,000 in Asia, the rest in America and Australia[1175].
Intimately associated with all these Aramaic Canaanitic Semites were a mysterious people who have been identified with the Hittites[1176] of Scripture, and to whom this name has been extended by common consent. They are also identified with the Kheta of the Egyptian monuments[1177], as well as with the Khatti of the Assyrian cuneiform texts. Indeed all these are, without any clear proof, assumed to be the same people, and to them are ascribed a considerable number of stones, cylinders, and gems from time to time picked up at various points between the Middle Euphrates and the Mediterranean, engraved in a kind of hieroglyphic or rather pictorial script, which has been variously deciphered according to the bias or fancy of epigraphists. This simply means that the "Hittite texts" have not yet been interpreted, and are likely to remain unexplained, until a clue is found in some bilingual document, such as the Rosetta Stone, which surrendered the secret of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. L. Messerschmidt, editor of a number of Hittite texts[1178], declared (in 1902) that only one sign in two hundred had been interpreted with any certainty[1179], and although the system of A. H. Sayce[1180] is based on a scientific plan, his decipherments must for the present remain uncertain. The important tablets found by H. Winckler in 1907[1181] at Boghaz Keui in Cappadocia, identified with Khatti, the Hittite capital, have thrown much light on Hittite history, and support many of Sayce's conjectures. The records show that the Hittites were one of the great nations of antiquity, with a power extending at its prime from the Asiatic coast of the Aegean to Mesopotamia, and from the Black Sea to Kadesh on the Orontes, a power which neither Egypt nor Assyria could withstand. "It is still not certain to which of the great families of nations they belonged. The suggestion has been made that their language has certain Indo-European characteristics; but for the present it is safer to regard them as an indigenous race of Asia Minor. Their strongly-marked facial type, with long, straight nose and receding forehead and chin, is strikingly reproduced on all their monuments, and suggests no comparison with Aryan or Semitic stocks[1182]."
F. von Luschan, however, is able to throw some light on the ethnological history of the Hittites. When investigating the early inhabitants of Western Asia he was constantly struck by the appearance of a markedly non-Semitic type, which he called "Armenoid." The most typical were the Tahtadji or woodcutters of Western Lycia living up in the mountains and totally distinct in every way from their Mohammedan neighbours. "Their somatic characters are remarkably homogeneous; they have a tawny white skin, much hair on the face, straight hair, dark brown eyes, a narrow, generally aquiline nose, and a very short and high head. The cephalic index varies only from 82 to 91, with a maximum frequency of 86[1183]." Similar types were found in the Bektash, who are town-dwellers in Lycia, and in the Ansariyeh in Northern Syria. In Upper Mesopotamia these features occur again among the Kyzylbash, and in Western Kurdistan among the Yezidi. "We find a small minority of groups possessing a similarity of creed and a remarkable uniformity of type, scattered over a vast part of Western Asia. I see no other way to account for this fact than to assume that the members of all these sects are the remains of an old homogeneous population, which have preserved their religion and have therefore refrained from intermarriage with strangers and so preserved their old physical characteristics[1184]." They all speak the languages of their orthodox neighbours, Turkish, Arabic and Kurdish, but are absolutely homogeneous as to their somatic characters. Two other groups with the same physical type are the Druses of the Lebanon and Antilebanos country, who speak Arabic and pass officially as Mohammedans, though their secret creed contains many Christian, Jewish and pantheistic elements. To the north of the Druses are the Christian Maronites, said to be the descendants of a Monophysite sect, separated from the common Christian Church after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. "Partly through their isolation in the mountains, partly through their not intermarrying with their Mahometan or Druse neighbours, the Maronites of today have preserved an old type in almost marvellous purity. In no other Oriental group is there a greater number of men with extreme height of the skull and excessive flattening of the occipital region than among the Maronites.... Very often their occiput is so steep that one is again and again inclined to think of artificial deformation." But "no such possibility is found[1185]."
These hypsibrachycephalic groups with high narrow noses, found also in Persia, among Turks, Greeks, and still more commonly among Armenians, were first (1892) called by von Luschan "Armenoid," but "there can be no doubt that they are all descended from tribes belonging to the great Hittite Empire. So it is the type of the Hittites that has been preserved in all these groups for more than 3000 years[1186]." As to their primordial home von Luschan connects them with the "Alpine Race" of Central Europe, but leaves it an open question whether the Hittites came from Central Europe, or the Alpine Race from Western Asia, though inclining to the latter view. The high narrow nose (the essential somatic difference between the Hittites and the other brachycephalic Arabs) "originated as a merely accidental mutation and was then locally fixed, either by a certain tendency of taste and fashion or by long, perhaps millennial in-breeding. The 'Hittite nose' has finally become a dominant characteristic in the Mendelian sense, and we see it, not only in the actual geographical province of the Alpine Race, but often enough also here in England[1186]."
In Arabia itself inscriptions point to the early existence of civilised kingdoms, among which those of the Sabaeans[1187] and the Minaeans[1188] stand out most clearly, though their dates and even their chronological order are much disputed. Possibly both lasted until the rise of the Himyarites at the beginning of the Christian era. All are agreed however that Arabian civilisation reached a very high level in the centuries preceding the birth of the Prophet, before the increase in shipping led to the abandonment of the caravan trade.
The modern inhabitants are divided into the Southern Arabians, mainly settled agriculturalists of Yemen, Hadramaut and Oman, who trace their descent from Shem, and the Northern Arabians (Bedouin[1189]), pastoral tribes, who trace their descent from Ishmael. The two groups have even been considered ethnologically distinct, but, as von Luschan points out, "peninsular Arabia is the least-known land in the world, and large regions of it are even now absolutely terrae incognitae, so great caution is necessary in forming conclusions, from the measurements of a few dozens of men, concerning the anthropology of a land more than five times as great as France[1190]." His measurements of "the only real Semites, the Bedawy," gave a cephalic index ranging from 68 to 78, while the nose was short and fairly broad, very seldom of a "Jewish type." Recently Seligman[1191] has shown that whereas the Semites of Northern Arabia conform more or less to the type just mentioned those of Southern Arabia are of low or median stature (1.62-1.65 m., 63-3/4-65 in.), and are predominantly brachycephalic, the cephalic index ranging from 71 to 92, with an average of about 82.
Elsewhere--Iberia, Sicily, Malta[1192], Irania, Central Asia, Malaysia--the Arab invaders have failed to preserve either their speech or their racial individuality. In some places (Spain, Portugal, Sicily) they have disappeared altogether, leaving nothing behind them beyond some slight linguistic traces, and the monuments of their wonderful architecture, crumbling Alhambras or stupendous mosques re-consecrated as Christian temples. But in the eastern lands their influence is still felt by multitudes, who profess Islam and use the Arabic script in writing their Persian, Turki, or Malay languages, because some centuries ago those regions were swept by a tornado of rude Bedouin fanatics, or else visited by peaceful traders and missionaries from the Arabian peninsula.
The monotheism proclaimed by these zealous preachers is often spoken of as a special inheritance of the Semitic peoples, or at least already possessed by them at such an early period in their life-history as to seem inseparable from their very being. But it was not so. Before the time of Allah or of Jahveh every hill-top had its tutelar deity; the caves and rocks and the very atmosphere swarmed with "jins"; Assyrian and Phoenician pantheons, with their Baals, and Molochs, and Astartes and Adonais, were as thickly peopled as those of the Hellenes and Hindus, and in this, as in all other natural systems of belief, the monotheistic concept was gradually evolved by a slow process of elimination. Nor was the process perfected by all the Semitic peoples--Canaanites, Assyrians, Amorites, Phoenicians, and others having always remained at the polytheistic stage--but only by the Hebrews and the Arabs, the two more richly endowed members of the Semitic family. Even here a reservation has to be made, for we now know that there was really but one evolution, that of Jahveh, the adoption of the idea embodied in Allah being historically traceable to the Jewish and Christian systems. As Jastrow points out, the higher religious and ethical movement began with Moses, who invested the national Jahveh with ethical traits, thus paving the way for the wider conceptions of the Prophets. "The point of departure in the Hebrew religion from that of the Semitic in general did not come until the rise of a body of men who set up a new ideal of divine government of the universe, and with it as a necessary corollary a new standard of religious conduct. Throwing aside the barriers of tribal limitations to the jurisdiction of a deity, it was the Hebrew Prophets who first prominently and emphatically brought forth the view of a divine power conceived in spiritual terms, who, in presiding over the universe and in controlling the fates of nations and individuals, acts from self-imposed laws of righteousness tempered with mercy[1193]."
FOOTNOTES:
[1150] The divergent views of orientalists concerning Semitic (linguistic) origins are summarised by W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, 1900, p. 375.
[1151] E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 1909, Sec. 336. O. Procksch, however, while regarding the origin of the Semites as an unsolved problem, considers Arabia as their centre of dispersal rather than their original home. As far as early Semitic migrations can be traced he thinks they indicate a north to south direction, and he sees no cause for disputing the Biblical account (Gen. ii. 10 ff.) deriving the descendants of Shem "from the neighbourhood of Ararat, i.e. Armenia, across the Taurus to the North Syrian plain." "Die Voelker Altpalaestinas," Das Land der Bibel, I. 2, 1914, p. 11. Cf. also J. L. Myres, The Dawn of History, 1911, p. 115.
[1152] For the discussion as to whether Semites or Sumerians were the earlier occupants of Babylonia see p. 263 above.
[1153] Hugo Winckler, "Die Voelker Vorderasiens," Der Alte Orient, I. 1900, pp. 14-15 and Auszug aus der Vorderasiatische Geschichte, 1905, p. 2.
[1154] Cf. A. C. Haddon, Wanderings of Peoples, 1911, p. 21.
[1155] J. L. Myres, The Dawn of History, 1911, pp. 118-9. For an admirable description of the Semitic migrations see pp. 104-5, and for the geographical aspect, see E. C. Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment: on the basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography, 1911, pp. 6-7 and under "Nomads" in the Index.
[1156] G. Elliot Smith, The Ancient Egyptians, 1911, p. 133.
[1157] C. H. W. Johns, Ancient Babylonia, 1913, pp. 18-19. For culture see pp. 16-17.
[1158] O. Procksch, "Die Voelker Altpalaestinas," Das Land der Bibel, I. 2, 1914.
[1159] Cf. E. Meyer, "Sumerier und Semiten in Babylonien," Abh. der Koenigl. Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaft. 1906; L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, p. 40 ff.
[1160] In the Assyrians von Luschan detects traces of the hyperbrachycephalic people of Asia Minor and Armenia, for they appear to differ from the pure Semites especially in the shape of the nose. Meyer regards this variation as possibly due to a prehistoric population, but, he adds, studies of physical types both historically and anthropologically are in their infancy. E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 1909, Sec. 330 A.
[1161] C. H. W. Johns, Ancient Assyria, 1912, p. 8.
[1162] Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statements, 1902 onwards. See also L. B. Paton, Art. "Canaanites," in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
[1163] Tell Ta'anek, 1904, Denkschriften, Vienna Academy, and "The German Excavations at Jericho," Pal. Expl. Fund Quart. St. 1910.
[1164] Tell el-Mutesellim, 1908.
[1165] Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statements, 1902, p. 347 ff.
[1166] L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, p. 55; C. H. W. Johns, Ancient Babylonia, 1913, pp. 61-2; L. B. Paton, Art. "Canaanites," Hastings' Ency. of Religion and Ethics, 1910; E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 1909, Sec.Sec. 396, 436; O. Procksch, "Die Voelker Altpalaestinas," Das Land der Bibel, I. 2, 1914, p. 25 ff.; G. Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, Egypt, Syria, and Assyria, 1910.
[1167] [Greek: Phoinikes], probably meaning red, either on account of their sun-burnt skin, or from the dye for which they were famous. For the Phoenician physical type cf. W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, 1900, pp. 287, 444.
[1168] In the Old Testament "Canaanite" and "Amorite" are usually synonymous.
[1169] A. C. Haddon, Wanderings of Peoples, 1911, p. 22. For a general account of Phoenician history see J. P. Mahaffy, in Hutchinson's History of the Nations, 1914, p. 303 ff.
[1170] Cf. Morris Jastrow, Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions (Haskell Lectures), 1913.
[1171] See S. A. Cook, Art. "Jews," Ency. Brit. 1911; O. Procksch, "Die Voelker Altpalaestinas," Das Land der Bibel, I. 2, 1914, p. 28 ff.
[1172] From Old French Juis, Lat. Judaei, i.e. Sons of Jehudah (Judah). See my article, "Jews," in Cassell's Storehouse of General Information, 1893, from which I take many of the following particulars.
[1173] W. M. Flinders Petrie attributes the variation to environment, not miscegenation. "History and common observation lead us to the equally legitimate conclusion that the country and not the race determines the cranium." "Migrations," Journ. Anthr. Inst. XXXVI. 1906, p. 218. He is here criticising the excellent discussion of the whole question in W. Z. Ripley's The Races of Europe, 1900, Chap. XIV. "The Jews and Semites," pp. 368-400, with bibliography. Cf. also R. N. Salaman, "Heredity and the Jews," Journ. of Genetics, I. p. 274.
[1174] F. von Luschan, "The Early Inhabitants of Western Asia," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLI. 1911, p. 226.
[1175] M. Fishberg, The Jews, 1911, p. 10.
[1176] As Heth, settled in Hebron (Gen. xxiii. 3) and the central uplands (Num. xiii. 29) but also as a confederacy of tribes to the north (1 Kings x. 29, 2 Kings vii. 6).
[1177] This identification is based on "the casts of Hittite profiles made by Petrie from the Egyptian monuments. The profiles are peculiar, unlike those of any other people represented by the Egyptian artists, but they are identical with the profiles which occur among the Hittite hieroglyphs" (A. H. Sayce, Acad., Sept. 1894, p. 259).
[1178] "Corpus insc. Hetticarum," Zeitschr. d. d. morgenlaend. Gesellsch. 1900, 1902, 1906, etc.
[1179] "Die Hettiter," Der Alte Orient, I. 4, 1902, p. 14 n. The sign in question, a bisected oval, is interpreted "god."
[1180] "Decipherment of the Hittite Inscriptions," Soc. of Bibl. Archaeology, 1903, and "Hittite Inscriptions," ib. 1905, 1907.
[1181] Orient. Literaturzeitung, 1907, and Orient-Gesellsch. 1907. See D. G. Hogarth, "Recent Hittite Research," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XXXVI. 1909, p. 408.
[1182] L. W. King, "The Hittites," Hutchinson's History of the Nations, 1914, p. 263. For this type see the illustration of Hittite divinities, Pl. XXXI. of F. von Luschan's paper referred to below. For language see now C. J. S. Marstrander, "Caractere Indo-Europeen de la langue Hittite," Videnskapsselskapets Skrifter II Hist. filos. Klasse, 1918, No. 2.
[1183] "The Early Inhabitants of Western Asia," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLI. 1911, p. 230. For this region see D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, 1902, with ethnological map.
[1184] Loc. cit. p. 232.
[1185] F. von Luschan, loc. cit. p. 233.
[1186] Loc. cit. pp. 242-3.
[1187] Saba', Sheba of the Old Testament, where there are various allusions to its wealth and trading importance from the time of Solomon to that of Cyrus.
[1188] Ma'[=i]n of the inscriptions.
[1189] Arabic badaw[=i]y, a dweller in the desert.
[1190] Loc. cit. p. 235.
[1191] C. G. Seligman, "The physical characters of the Arabs," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLVII. 1917, p. 214 ff.
[1192] The rude Semitic dialect still current in this island appears to be fundamentally Phoenician (Carthaginian), later affected by Arabic and Italian influences. (M. Mizzi, A Voice from Malta, 1896, passim.)
[1193] M. Jastrow, Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions, 1910.