Ethnic Chart of the Eurafrican Race.
Ethnic Chart of the Eurafrican Race.
Early Migrations and Subdivisions.—It is not necessary to suppose that the different peoples of the race developed themselves from one central point. The contrary is more probable.
Beginning at the extreme West of Europe, and its appendix North Africa, the race pursued an easterly course, divided by the great intervening sea of the Mediterranean into two sections, which for convenience I designate as the “North Mediterranean” and the “South Mediterranean” branches, though it will be seen that these geographical limits are not to be taken absolutely.
The North Mediterranean branch embraces as its most important member the Indo-Germanic peoples. When first heard of in history, this stock extended along the shores and islands of Europe from Cape Finisterre to the Gulf of Finland, occupying all of Central Europe and much of Asia Minor, the regions of Modern Persia, and at a later date the southern vales of the Himalayas. Its northern limits have always been in contiguity with the Asian or Yellow race. Stretch a line on the map from Singapore to St. Petersburg, continue it to the Atlantic, and you have roughly the ethnic boundary which has ever separated the races, and does so to-day.
In western Europe, south of the Aryac was the Euskaric stock, occupying central Spain, central and southern France, portions of Italy, and various islands in the Mediterranean.
As speaking a language of a different family from the prevailing inflectional type of the race, it is spoken of as “allophyllic.” It does not stand alone in this respect. Some of the white Caucasian tribes speak similar agglutinative tongues, and it is supposed by some that the ancient Pictish, Illyrian, Lycian, Van, and Etruscan were of similar character. Probably many such languages obtained which are now extinct.
The South Mediterranean Branch consists of two related stocks, which have been called the Hamitic and the Semitic. These names are not objectionable, in so far as they indicate a distant genealogic unity, still recognizable, between the two branches; but should not in any way be accepted as acknowledging as historic facts the myth of the Deluge and their origin in Asia. The reverse is true. The migrations of both stocks have been from west to east, and the two great branches of the White Race entering Asia, the one by the Bosphorus and the second by the Isthmus of Suez, encountered each other after thousands of years of separation in the region where the venerable myth locates their point of departure.
I shall begin my survey of the race and its distribution with the South Mediterranean branch, as thatwhich has been the more important of the two in history, controlling by far the greater territory, and developing the earlier and more potent civilizations. It has ever been, and still is, the leader in intellectual acumen, and the monuments of its achievements, both in the realms of thought and action, remain unrivalled in the world. With great propriety, therefore, it claims our first attention.
The affinity between the Hamitic and Semitic stocks is distinctly shown by their physical traits and the character of their languages. The latter statement, which was long in doubt, has now been acknowledged by the most competent students, such as Friedrich Müller and A. H. Sayce.53
Within their own lines the Hamites are divided into three groups, the Libyan, the Egyptian and the East African groups, each distinguished by physical and linguistic differences.
Of these the Libyan group occupies the region furthest to the west, and presents the purest type of the stock. From time immemorial it has occupied the land from the Nile Valley to the Atlantic, and from theMediterranean to the Soudan. In the classical geographies its tribes are referred to as Numidians, Libyans, Mauritanians and Getulians, and at present they are known as Berbers, Rifians, and Shilhas in Morocco, the Tuariks and Tibbus of the desert, the Kabyles and Zouaves in Algeria, the Ghadames, Serkus, Mzabites of the south, the Senegas of Senegal, and many others. The Guanches, who once inhabited Teneriffe, and are now extinct, belonged to the Rifian tribes of this stock,54and the rulers of the once powerful empire of Ghanata, which for centuries before the rise of Mohammedanism controlled the valley of the Upper Niger, were allied to the Moroccan family.55Arab historians of the seventh century tell us that at that time the Berbers were “the lords of Maghreb (Africa), from the Arabian Gulf to the western ocean, and from the middle sea to the Soudan.”56
The physical appearance of the Libyan peoples distinctly marks them as members of the White Race, often of uncommonly pure blood. As the race elsewhere,they present the blonde and brunette type, the latter predominant, but the former extremely well marked. Among the Kabyles in Algeria, I have seen many fine specimens of blondes, with yellow hair, light eyes, auburn beard, and tall stature. An English traveller who visited last year some remote villages in the mountains of Morocco, describes their inhabitants as “for the most part fair, with blue eyes and yellow beards, perfectly built and exceedingly handsome men.”57This has been from the earliest times the characteristic of the Libyans, and there is abundant evidence that it was more general in former centuries than it is now. The Guanches of Teneriffe are described by the first voyagers as unusually tall and fair, their yellow hair reaching below their waists.58
The Greek poet Callimachus, who was librarian of the famous library at Alexandria two hundred and fifty years before the Christian era, applies the same adjective ξανθος, blonde or auburn, to the Libyan women, which Strabo and other Greeks do to the Goths and blonde Celts of Germany.59
Long before this, again, in monuments of the XIXth dynasty of Egypt, the Libyans are painted as of a pronounced blonde type, with light eyes and skins, and are mentioned by a term which signifies fair or blonde.60The extended researches of ethnologists on this point have accumulated a mass of facts proving that the ancient Libyans were in appearance strikingly similar to the North Germans and Scandinavians, having a fair skin, yellow or auburn hair, blue or grey eyes, full blonde beards, the face medium, the skull dolichocephalic, the orbital ridges prominent, the chin square and firm, forehead vertical or slightly retreating, the stature tall, and the body powerful.61
This identity of type impressed me very much among the Kabyles, and I note that the German ethnologist, Quedlinfeldt, who was among the Berbers in Morocco lately, writes of them: “I very often met individuals with flaxen hair and blue eyes, who in face and form corresponded perfectly to the ordinary type of our North German people.”62For this reason, I give it the name of the “Libyo-Teutonic” type.
In the pure-blooded clans who still dwell in the fastnesses of the Atlas and the Djurdjura, this antique type is that which is general; but in the valleys, in the desert and in Tunisia the type is darker, having been corrupted by admixture with negro, Arabic and other stocks.63The fact which I wish especially to impress on you is that nowhere do we find a purer type of the white race than in northern Africa, and that this was recognized by the earliest writers and records as that especially belonging to this stock.
The languages spoken by the various Libyan peoples prove on examination to be dialects of one tongue, all so much alike that a few days’ practice will enable the speaker of any one of them to express himself in another. In its grammatical formation, it is inflectional with agglutinative tendencies. Its radicals are made up of consonants, the indications of time and place being formed by changes in the vowel sounds. In this respect it resembles the Semitic tongues, but differs from them in having radicals of one, two, three, or four consonants, while they have usually those of three consonants only. In many other respects it presents analogies to the Semitic dialects, of such a nature that these latter seem to have developed themselves out of conditions of speech as represented by the Libyan. Hence some writers have called it and its allied tongues “proto-Semitic languages.” Itstands in distinct relation to the Coptic or ancient Egyptian, and to some East African dialects.
The Libyans have possessed from time immemorial the country in which we find them. They are its indigenous inhabitants—all others, as Carthaginians, negroes and Arabs, being demonstrably intruders. Can we obtain any clue to their monuments in prehistoric times by the aid of archæology and linguistics? Some able students have thought they could, and have brought forward some singular surmises. There is a series of structures of huge stones, called dolmens, menhirs and cromlechs, extending over northern and central France, southern England, northern Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Algiers, and central Tunisia. They are much alike, and seem to have been constructed by some one people in very ancient times. The skulls in them are often long, like those of the Libyans and Teutons. Hence several French writers have suggested that the ancestors of the white Libyans moved from central Europe into Morocco, along the line of these megalithic structures.64
In spite of a good deal of severe criticism, there remains much in favor of the view that these remains mark a route by which some neolithic people extended their conquests. But it seems to me the trend of migration was in the other direction,towardthe east,and not from it. The white race began as such during the glacial epoch; it could scarcely have developed north of the Pyrenees, for the climate was so cold that the reindeer, which to-day cannot breed in Stockholm, found a suitable home in the valley of the Garonne. The Iberian peninsula and the Atlas at that time possessed climatic conditions about like those of Great Britain to-day.
In that peninsula, at that time connected with Morocco by a land bridge at the straits of Gibraltar, are the oldest forms of languages spoken by the race, the Euskaric dialects. There is reason to believe that at the dawn of history these occupied the centre of the peninsula; north of them, in the Cantabrian mountains and along the shores of the Bay of Biscay, were the Celtiberians, the rearguard of the migratory hordes of Aryans; and along the southern shores and in North Africa extended the tribes whose direct descendants are the Libyan peoples. The nameIberi, Iberians applied by the ancients to the inhabitants of the eastern and southern shores of Spain, testifies to this. It means in the Libyan tonguefreemen, and in the plural formberberior Berbers, is that by which the old Egyptians knew them, and which from the same root is their own favorite designation to-day.65
That the Iberians were Hamites, and not Basques, has long been suspected, and is plainly the opinion to be derived from the statements of the ancients and the presence of Libyan proper names in the south of Spain.66
When the Berber chieftain Tarik crossed the straits in the seventh century, and gave to the great rock his name (Gibraltar, Djebel-el-Tarik), he was but returning to seize anew the land from which his ancestors had been driven by Carthaginians and Romans.
From the remotest times the Libyans have had the same form of government—village communities, united by loose bonds into federations. The Egyptians referred to them as “the Nine Bows,” or Bands,67the Romans as the “Quinquigentes,” the Five Peoples, the Arabs as “Qabail” or Kabyles, Confederates. These confederations were sufficiently powerful, even so far back as 1400 years before Christ, to put in the field an army of 30,000 or more men for an attack on Egypt; and that the general culture of their country was quite high is shown by the character of the spoils obtained by the Egyptians—horses, chariots, vessels of brass, silver, copper and gold, swords, cuirasses, razors, etc.68
At that date the nations of the North Mediterranean branch were yet in the stone age, and the sites of Greece and Rome were the homes of savages.69
It is probable that this defeat of the Libyans by the armies of Rhamses gave a serious shock to their progress, by disintegrating their growing state. It appears that about this time there were various colonies which migrated to sites on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. One of these I have believed to be the Etruscans, who settled on the west coast of Italy about 1200 years before our era. They were tall blondes, dolichocephalic, speaking an un-Aryan language, and by their traditions came by sea from the south.70
The Libyans were at times partially under the dominion of the kings of Egypt, and many of them entered the Egyptian armies as mercenaries. They allowed the Phenicians peaceably to found the great cityof Carthage on their shores, and from these early colonists they learned the art of writing. The alphabet which is still preserved among some of their hordes is derived from the Punic letters.71When Carthage fell, Rome seized the mastery of the coasts and productive valleys, but her legions never penetrated to the inland fastnesses. When the great empire tottered to its fall, Goths and Vandals poured across and over the straits of Gibraltar to found an ephemeral empire in Africa; but these cavalry soldiers, knowing to fight only on horseback, scarcely touched the confines of the Libyan mountain homes. Even the Arabs, sweeping resistlessly across their land in the beginning of the eighth century, failed to penetrate many of these fastnesses. To this day no Arab dares venture into the land of the Rifian Berbers, and many a tribe of the Djurjura keeps its customs and its blood unaltered by the Koranic laws, or the Semitic intruders, or the Code Napoleon of the French invaders.
The ancient elements of their culture are still largely retained. Among the Kabyle and Touareg tribes of to-day, in spite of the liberty authorized by Islam, monogamy is the almost invariable rule, the women are not only respected, but generally possess most of the property, and prostitution is unknown. They are, moreover, usually the learned class, and most of the “tifinar” manuscripts come from the hands of thesefair scribes.72As to the general character of the Berbers of Morocco, we may take Sir Joseph Hooker’s word when he tells us that they are “decidedly superior in intelligence, industry and general activity to their neighbors.”73
The wander-loving Libyan tribes pursued other journeys far to the east. Following the coast of the Mediterranean, they formed settlements on the Syrian shore, and extended their possessions into the Mesopotamian valley, and north into the mountain vales of Asia Minor. The Phenicians and Canaanites, the Amorites, who were blonde Berbers of true Libyan type, the Hittites, and the old Assyrians, who were the builders of Babylon and Nineveh, were of Hamitic stock, as is shown by the accordance of the ancient biblical statement with modern linguistic and archæological research.74
From these culture-centres of the Hamitic stock followed the mighty stream of human progress back along the southern shores of the Mediterranean to Cyrene and Carthage, and along its northern shores to Cyprus, Greece, Italy and beyond; while the Accadian and Summerian learning, preserved for all time in the cuneiform writing, made its beneficient influence felt far into India and China, and reacted beneficially on the older wisdom of Egypt, from which it had at first largely drawn its inspiration.
From this all too hasty survey of this most ancient people we must turn to another, akin to it, which has played an important, yes, the most important part in the culture-history of our species. I refer to the ancient Egyptians. They belonged to the Hamitic stock, but wandering eastward from its primal seats certainly more than ten thousand years before our era, had possessed themselves of the Nile valley from the mouth of the stream quite up to and beyond the first cataract.
Their kinship to the Libyans is proved by numerous linguistic identities between the ancient Coptic and the Libyan dialects, and by their physical appearance. In color they are yellowish-white, passing to a reddish-brown though the women who are not exposed to the sun would pass in Europe as merely dark brunettes. In the bony structure, the skull, the face, and the proportions, they assimilate entirely withthe white race and the Libyan type. This has been shown by the researches of Virchow and others.75
The ancient Egyptian is represented to-day by the modern Fellah or field-laborer of the Nile. The type has been very well preserved, for though the riches of this wonderful valley have attracted myriads of foreigners in peace and war from the earliest times, all have suffered greatly in longevity and fertility compared to the native population. This type is of medium stature, the limbs and body symmetrical and delicately moulded; the skull is long, the face oval, the hair dark and straight, or slightly curly; the eyes are brown and small, the nose straight, the lips rather full, the mouth small, the chin not prominent, the beard scanty.
In all respects, in the pure Copt we must recognize a delicate, thorough-bred member of the Eurafrican race, in spite of his reddish-brown hue. These traits are to be explained by the narrow limits of the Nile valley, shut in by trackless deserts from the rest of the world. Here for thousands of years lived this stock, closely intermarrying, and under climatic conditions of singular uniformity.
Whether they were the first inhabitants of the valley has not been ascertained. Certain it is that at aperiod long before the date we usually assign to Egyptian civilization, a people dwelt on the Nile ignorant of any implements but those of rough stone. Their relics have been found in the stratified gravels of the hills, and on the summits of the arid plateaus.76I know no reason, however, to suppose that the tribes of the Egyptian stone age were other than the ancestors of those who were brought under the control of the founder of the first dynasty, the historic king Mena.
This was about 4000 B. C. But previous to him the ancient Egyptian priests claimed some 25,000 years of occupation under various gods and demi-gods; and the general accuracy of their claim I am not prepared to dispute.77Certainly the culture of lower Egypt must have been at a high level for thousands of years before the date of Mena, or he could never have established the state which we know he did. From all that archæology has yet taught us, we must place the beginnings of Egyptian civilization earlier than that in the valley of the Yang tse Kiang, earlier by far thanany other on the globe. Its streams have permeated all the lands to which the Eurafrican race have extended; fecund as the waters of its own Nile, its elements have nourished and developed the best intellectual powers of the race through all subsequent ages; to it we owe the seeds of our arts, the germs of our sciences, the forms of our religion, the schemes of our literatures, and the inestimable boon of our written language. Look where you will among the most ancient remains of the Old World culture, you find the impress of Egypt’s Land and mind—in Etruscan tombs, in Guanche mummy caves, in treasure houses of Mycenæ, in Cypriote vaults, in Assyrian mounds, under Carthagenian foundations.78The species Man owes nowhere else such gratitude as to these African nations of the Eurafrican race.
The Egyptian presents the best known and complete type of the psychical traits of the Hamitic stock. Unideal, laborious, utilitarian, he was devoted to material progress and the gross animal enjoyments of life. His preferred employment was agriculture, his favorite art the huge in architecture, his religion was a polytheism with numberless images and pictures, his pleasures were those of the appetite, his hopes of immortality were bound up with the preservation of the present body.
The singular uniformity of the Egyptian type does not allow us to divide it into several branches, and on account of its segregated position, it does not seem to have had much intercourse with the east African group of the Hamitic stock, living to the south of it.
At present this east African group of the Hamites includes the Bedjas and Bilins between the Nile and the Red Sea, the Afars or Danakils near the mouth of the Red Sea, Gallas and Somalis between the gulf of Aden and the Indian ocean, and the adjacent tribes of the Agaouas, Adals, Khamirs, and others. In appearance these peoples are usually reddish brown in color, with dark wavy hair, of moderate stature and symmetrical form, the face oval and the skull moderately long, the nose aquiline and the chin well shaped, and heavier built than the Egyptians.
Their life is principally nomadic, living in tents of skin, and governed by chiefs who rule over small communities. The descent is reckoned and property passes on the female side. Some are Mahommedans, but hold the faith lightly, and like the Kabyles, attach more importance to the customs of their clan than to the precepts of the Prophet. In many parts they betray admixture with the Negro tribes to whom they are neighbors, and from whom they have always obtained slaves.
Thus the Danakils are described as sooty black, with scanty beards, thin calves, and thick lips, but with features and hair in other respects quite European,their faces rarely prognathic, and their bodies symmetrical.79The Somalis are lighter in color, but like the Danakils, do not cultivate the soil nor establish fixed abodes.
Owing to the unreasoning acceptance of myths as history, it is generally believed that the Semites originated in Asia. From what I have already said you will appreciate that such an opinion is quite inconsistent with modern research. We may, at the most, concede that the peculiar form of their language and certain physical traits were developed during their long residence in the peninsula of Arabia, where history first finds them. But that they entered Arabia in remote pre-historic times from Africa, and not from Asia, is now acknowledged by an increasing number of learned and unprejudiced writers.80
There is a difference of opinion whether this immigration was by the way of the Isthmus of Suez or the Straits of Bab el Mandeb, but the course of their wanderings in Arabia seems to have been from north tosouth, the Ethiopian Semites being distinctly emigrants from the other side of the Red Sea. Hence the probability is that the ancestors of the ancient Arabians wandered from the Libyan plateau, or the eastern Atlas, through the Delta into the region of the Sinaitic mountains, whence they spread south and east, forming several distinct groups.81
The first of these included the Arabians proper. At a very early period they became divided into a northern and southern portion, the former represented by the Ishmaelites and Bedawins, the latter by the ancient Himyarites, Sabeans and Nabotheans, and the modern Ehkili and kindred clans. The Himyaritic nations had important cities, and possessed a written literature at least 700 B. C., and probably much earlier.82The Queen of Sheba, who paid a memorable visit to King Solomon, came from one of these cities, and her journey is strong testimony to the admiration for learning which prevailed in her land, and which she so evidently fostered.
At that time, and for centuries afterwards, there were few parts of the world more favored than thesouthern portions of the peninsula. It was known as “Arabia felix,” Araby the Blest, and was famed for its abundant products, its spices and perfumes, and the wealth and luxury of its inhabitants. Some change of climate apparently, and the inroads of the Ishmaelitic hordes, quite destroyed this happy condition about the fifth century, A. D. The Himyaritic language disappeared, the cities were laid waste, many of the people migrated to Africa or sank into despised outcasts, as the present Ehkili of the Hadramaut. In this manner the whole of the great peninsula fell under the control of the true Arab.
It is he who preserves in his language the oldest and purest form of Semitic speech, and in mind and body its most pronounced mental and physical type. He is rather tall (1.65), his face oval, the nose straight or aquiline, the features sometimes singularly noble and prepossessing, the skull long (index 73°-75°), the complexion ruddy rather than brown, when due allowance is made for the tan, and the hair slightly wavy or straight. Crisp hair is looked upon with disapproval, as indicating mixed and ignoble blood.83In temperament the Arab is abstemious, and his powers of physical endurance are phenomenal. His mental temperament is that of an idealist; he has added nothing to the grand creations of plastic art, nothing to inventions of utility in life, nothing to the marvels of architectureor the beauties that appeal to the senses; he cares neither for history nor the drama. In his dreams he conquers the world, and it falls at his feet; in fact, his greatest states have been ephemeral bubbles.
Yet his dreams have been realized. The Semite has conquered the world, and it is at his feet. Twice have arisen among his people majestic forms, before whom all civilized nations bow, Jesus and Mahomet.
The religious idealism which led the Semite in the days of Moses to reject the images of stone and wood and proclaim that God is one, overawed in its later expressions the whole of the white race, and now extends its sway to the farthest seas.
Though the Aryan to-day may dislike the Semite and doubt of the God whom he preached, let him not forget that the first vivid impression of such a great idea came from the Semitic stock. If in his marts, his diplomacy and his learned professions, he finds the Semites still pressing him aside, let him remember that this is the people whose destiny seems to be to own no country, but to rule all.
Of tribes is evidently descended from fugitives from the Arabian peninsula. The Ethiopians, or Geez (a word meaning emigrants), speak a dialect the nearest related to the Himyaritic of the inscriptions. It has a literature and an ancient alphabet of its own. The Tigre, the Massawa, the Amhara, and, further to the south, the Harrari, are Semitic dialects, more or less akin to the Ethiopic.
The period when this migration took place is not precisely known, but it was at a calculable period before the beginning of our era. Quite likely it was about the time of the dissolution of the Joktanide monarchy in the Hadramaut. There can be no question but that the course of migration at this point was from Arabia into Africa.
The Tigre is the predominant nation of North Abyssinia, the Amhara in the south of that region. The Harrari extends into the land of the Somalis. All these are of Himyaritic descent, but near them are a number of later Arab tribes who speak dialects of the modern Arabic. These are the Jalin about Khartoum, and others near Senaar and Baqqara, west of the Nile. There are also many Jews, who have inhabited the country from the early centuries of our era.
An infusion of negro blood is visible in much of the population. Their color is dark brown, the hair is crisp, and the features are negroid. Where this mingling is absent, the color is a light or bright brown, the face oval, the nose thin, lips not at all thick, and the hair wavy and straight. In other words, the features are truly European, framed in a brown setting.
The Abyssinians proper have always been an agricultural, pastoral and manufacturing people. The soil is fertile and the climate temperate, but there are no large rivers, and communication is difficult. The crops are barley, dates, millet, sugar-cane, etc.Formerly the country was under one ruler, who was called the Grand Negus. The late “Negus,” Theodoras, could put in the field over fifty thousand fighting men, and made himself so obnoxious to Europeans that the English sent an expedition against him in 1868, and he perished under the ruins of his capital, Magdala.
From the fourth century the principal religion in Abyssinia has been Christianity, but in a corrupt form, mixed with the ancient heathen observances, such as ceremonies at the rise of certain stars, and veneration of holy stones and springs. The clergy are numerous, estimated at about 72,000, and exert a leading influence in the state. There are many monks and nuns living in cloisters, and possessing extensive holdings. The church service is conducted with an effort at pomp, and there is a considerable sacred literature, of very little value. The influence of the religious teaching on the people is scarcely visible except in making them fanatical, superstitious and averse to enlightenment. Abyssinia thus presents the picture of a country which for more than 1500 years has been a Christian state, and where Christianity has wholly failed to render the people moral, intelligent or pure.
The third group of the Semites was the Chaldean, including the Syrians and Arameans, the later Assyrians and Babylonians, the Israelites, Samaritansand Jews. All these were from early times deeply tinged with other blood. The Syrians and Chaldeans removed first from the Arabian peninsula, and their dialects depart the furthest from the pure stock. Abraham, the traditional ancestor of the Israelites, left northeastern Arabia for Mesopotamia about 2000 B. C., to dwell in “Ur of the Chaldees,” a city near the mouth of the Euphrates. Already the Chaldees had secured from the older Hamitic settlers a portion of Mesopotamia, and gradually extended their conquests.
Many of the Syrians united with the Hamitic residents on the coast, so that the Phœnicians became largely Semitized. All these nations were in constant intercourse with the highly developed civilization of Egypt, as is shown by the Mosaic books, and from that source derived most of the germs of their intellectual growth. In spite of their love of travel and commerce, in spite of their dispersion over the earth, this group has retained a striking individuality. Many ethnographers charge it against the Jews that the presence of blondes among them, and of brachycephalic heads, proves a crossing of the blood. This is not the case. The Semitic stock is a markedly white type of the race, and in all ages fair complexion, light eyes and hair, have been admired as especially beautiful. This is repeatedly referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures, and is shown by observation among these people at the present day.84
The physical type of the Jew is well known and unmistakable; wavy hair, dark or blonde, full beard, eyes soft, nose prominent, rather heavy, with an accentuated and peculiar outline, lips full, face oval, skull medium or long. Nor are his mental traits less familiar; a pliant, supple disposition, a distaste for physical labor or the toil of the pioneer or soldier; deficiency in personal courage; subtlety in monetary transactions; quickness in applying social or individual weaknesses to his own benefit; industry in intellectual pursuits; love of display and of position; strong devotion to family ties.
This is the Jew as we know him in the tussle of modern life, a character prominent in all European and American cities, without a nationality, in conflict with the prevailing religion, suspected and disliked, but wielding an influence out of all proportion to the numerical strength of his people. It may be regarded as continuing in his person that remarkable intellectual superiority which the South Mediterranean Branch of the white race has from the earliest time exerted on the history of man.
(Tribes initalicsare extinct.)
Contents.—B.—The North Mediterranean Branch.I.The Euskaric Stock.Basques and their congeners. Physical type. Language.II.The Aryac Stock.Synonyms. Origin of the Aryans. Supposed Asiatic origin now doubted. The Aryac physical type. The proto-Aryac language. Culture of proto-Aryans. The “proto-Aryo-Semitic” tongue. Development of inflections. Proto-Aryac migrations. Southern and northern streams. Approximate dates. Scheme of Aryac migrations. Divisions. 1. The Celtic Peoples. Members and location. Physical and mental traits. 2. The Italic Peoples. Ancient and modern members. Physical traits. The modern Romance nations. Mental traits. 3. The Illyric Peoples. Members and physical traits. 4. The Hellenic Peoples. Ancient and modern Greeks. Physical type. Influence of Greek culture. 5. Lettic Peoples. Position and language. 6. The Teutonic Peoples. Ancient and modern members. Mental character. Recent progress. 7. The Slavonic Peoples. Ancient and modern Members. Physical traits. Recent expansion. Character. Relations to Asiatic Aryans. 8. The Indo-Eranic Peoples. Arrival in Asia. Location. Members. Indian Aryans. Appearance. Mental aptitude.III.The Caucasic Stock.Its languages. Various groups and members. Physical types. Error of supposing that the white race came from the Caucasus.
Contents.—B.—The North Mediterranean Branch.
I.The Euskaric Stock.Basques and their congeners. Physical type. Language.
II.The Aryac Stock.Synonyms. Origin of the Aryans. Supposed Asiatic origin now doubted. The Aryac physical type. The proto-Aryac language. Culture of proto-Aryans. The “proto-Aryo-Semitic” tongue. Development of inflections. Proto-Aryac migrations. Southern and northern streams. Approximate dates. Scheme of Aryac migrations. Divisions. 1. The Celtic Peoples. Members and location. Physical and mental traits. 2. The Italic Peoples. Ancient and modern members. Physical traits. The modern Romance nations. Mental traits. 3. The Illyric Peoples. Members and physical traits. 4. The Hellenic Peoples. Ancient and modern Greeks. Physical type. Influence of Greek culture. 5. Lettic Peoples. Position and language. 6. The Teutonic Peoples. Ancient and modern members. Mental character. Recent progress. 7. The Slavonic Peoples. Ancient and modern Members. Physical traits. Recent expansion. Character. Relations to Asiatic Aryans. 8. The Indo-Eranic Peoples. Arrival in Asia. Location. Members. Indian Aryans. Appearance. Mental aptitude.
III.The Caucasic Stock.Its languages. Various groups and members. Physical types. Error of supposing that the white race came from the Caucasus.
In my previous lectures I have shown with as much detail as my time permits, that the original home of the white race was in that portion of the Atlanticseaboard which I have calledEurafrica, and which includes the present areas of northwestern Africa and southwestern Europe. From this region, I have pointed out, the race divided into two branches, the one moving eastward, south of the Mediterranean sea, the other in the same direction, north of this separating stream. To-day we shall consider the ethnic history of the latter.
Unlike the South Mediterranean Branch, whose languages present everywhere some degree of resemblance, sufficient to predicate for them a remote common origin, the North Mediterranean Branch includes several stocks fundamentally diverse. They are the Euskaric, the Aryac, and the Caucasic stocks. The second of these is by far the most extended and important; but, as I have previously observed, it does not bear the impress of the highest antiquity, nor yet is its location that where we should look for the most ancient members of this branch. Both these conditions are fulfilled by
At present this contains but one group, the Basques, residing in the valleys of the Pyrenees, on both the Spanish and French frontiers. There is little doubt from the linguistic studies of Humboldt and from the researches of archæologists that the Basques once extended widely throughout the present area of Spainand Portugal; but I am not inclined to identify them with the Iberians of the classical geographers, for reasons given in my last lecture. There is a great deal of evidence that in proto-historic times they occupied central and southern France, portions of Italy, Corsica, Sardinia, perhaps Sicily, and some southern tracts of England. Many believe that the ancient Aquitanians and Ligurians, the Picts and Cantabrians, were of this stock, as well as the pre-Aryac tribes of Greece.85
I described in my last lecture the Basques as representatives of one of the dark types of the white race, with a peculiarly shaped skull, elongated posteriorly.86The face is oval, the chin pointed and weak. The general aspect indeed of a Basque cranium conveys the impression of a feeble character, and such the history of the people shows them to have been. They never contributed anything to the advance of the race, and from their earliest appearance in history have been retiring before the pressure of sturdier nationalities. At present they do not number over three hundred thousand, and in a few generations will be merged in the neighboring Spaniards and French.
The Basque language belongs to one of thoseprimitive forms of human speech such as we find among the Negroes of Central Africa, or the savage tribes of Siberia. It is of that type called agglutinative and polysynthetic, and in some points has the incorporative tendency of American tongues. It is the speech of a people whose ideas remained confined to objective material relations. According to the latest students, it is absolutely without connection with any of the so-called Turanian (Ural-Altaic) languages, and is equally remote from the Hamitic group.87
I now turn to
of peoples and languages. It is sometimes called the “Indo-European,” or “Indo-Germanic,” or “Celt-Indic”88stock, and embraces the principal historic nations of Europe, and in Asia the Armenians, Persians and Hindostanees.
Origin of the Aryans.—No ethnographic question of late years has led to keener discussion than the origin and affinities of these peoples. The theory derived from the Hebrew myth of the Deluge, that they migrated into Europe from Asia, was long acceptedwithout question, and seemed to be strengthened by the discovery that Sanscrit, the classical language of India, and Zend, the ancient tongue of Persia, are related to Greek, Latin and German.
But reflection and extended observation led to other results. It was perceived that the majority of the Aryac peoples had lived in Europe from the remotest historic times, and only a small minority in Asia; that some of the Aryac tongues of Europe retain more ancient forms than either Sanscrit or Zend; that the oldest traditions point to migrations from Europe into Asia, and not the reverse; that these traditions are supported by the Indian Aryans, who distinctly claim that their ancestors migrated from the north into India, and by the Persians, whose sacred book, the Avesta, declares they were not the original owners of Iran, and finally by an examination of the arts of the pre-historic Europeans,89and an exhaustive analysis of the words common to all the dialects of Aryac speech, which indicate that the ancestral tribe must have lived in geographic surroundings not to be found in the Aryac districts of Asia, but answering in all points to the regions of central or western Europe.
I constantly see it stated in works on ethnology and linguistics that the scientist who first advancedthis opinion was the Englishman, Dr. Robert G. Latham. Nothing is more erroneous. For a score of years before he introduced it to the English public, this view had been repeatedly and ably defended by the eminent Belgian naturalist, d’Omalius d’Halloy. He lost no opportunity of showing that the ancestors of the modern Europeans did not come from Asia, but belonged originally to the continent they now inhabit.90
Since his first promulgation of this theory in 1839, the evidence in its favor has been slowly but steadily accumulating, until now it numbers among its adherents practically all the ethnologists of the day who do not feel committed by their previous writings, or by their creeds, to the Asian hypothesis. Among the English writers who have recently treated the subject with marked ability and much more fullness than is possible for me at present, I mention Canon IsaacTaylor and Professor A. W. Sayce; in Germany, O. Schrader, Karl Penka, Theodor Pösche, L. Geiger, and in France, M. de Lapouge, etc.
I shall not enter into a recital of these arguments, for I believe the debate is so nearly terminated that the conclusion may be accepted that the Aryac peoples originated in Western Europe and migrated easterly. This you will observe is in accord with the general theory of the origin and distribution of the white race which I laid before you, and is a potent argument in its support.
The Aryac Physical Type.—When we endeavor to fix more precisely the home of that tribe which was the lineal Aryac progenitor, several considerations must be carefully weighed. The physical types of the Aryac people differ markedly, as I stated in my last lecture, and some writers (Penka, Lapouge, etc.) have claimed that the Teutonic, the tall blonde type, is peculiar to the Aryans, and must have been the original character. But it is found with just as great purity among the Libyans of Africa, so that the assumption is vain.
It is an undeniable fact that at the earliest period, both in Europe and Asia, the majority of Aryan-speaking peoples were brunettes, and it is also a fact that in the population of Europe to-day there is a tendency to revert to that type. When a blonde and a brunette intermarry, ten per cent. more children will take after the brunette.91There is a probability, therefore,that the original Aryac tribe was a mixture of blondes and brunettes, with a majority of the latter, and also that the form of its skulls was variable, some long, some broad.92
This would indicate a mixed descent, and such, no doubt, it owned. It is absurd to suppose the contrary. The type ofthe proto-Aryac languageis one which originates not early, but late in the history of human speech. The process of grammatical inflection is the highest stage of linguistic evolution. It is the result of a slow growth, in which the material elements of language are transformed into formal elements, and the “grammatical categories,” or parts of speech, gradually assume logical distinctness and independent expression. We can watch this growth in its imperfect form in the Nahuatl of Mexico and the Berber of Morocco; and when we see it completed, as in the Arabic or Latin, we may be sure it is a comparatively late fruit of the human intellect. The expressions common to all Aryac languages reveal a primitive social condition to correspond with this. It was above that of savagery. These common ancestors had domesticated dogs, cattle, and perhaps sheep; nomadic at times, they at some seasons tilled the soil; they were acquaintedwith copper, and brewed mead from honey; they had probably even invented a wagon, and milked their cows, and they certainly lived on or near the seashore, and used boats.
The conclusion is that the original inflected Aryac tongue arose from the coalescing of two or more uninflected agglutinative or semi-incorporative tongues, the mingling of the speeches being accompanied, as always, by a mingling of blood and of physical traits. This explains the fact that has puzzled so many ethnologists, that there is no fixed Aryac type.
Where should we look for this intermingling to have taken place? From the arguments already advanced you would naturally say, somewhere on the western coast of Europe.
This is supported by an unexpected piece of evidence of a strong character. The system of consonants is undoubtedly the most persistent part of a language, and there is no question but that the Celtic and Lithuanian, of all the Aryac tongues, have kept most closely to the primitive system of consonants once common to them all.93The Lithuanian is spoken by a limited community on the coast of the Baltic sea, while the Celtic, in proto-historic times, occupied the whole of Great Britain and northern Belgium, France and Spain. In the two latter areas it was from immemorial time in close connection with the Euskaric (Basque), and perhaps the Libyan (Berber) groups, and it is possible that in comparatively late (neolithic)times the Aryac with its inflections might have been developed from these partly agglutinative languages.
This suggestion is not so hazardous as it may seem. William von Humboldt, one of the ablest linguists of this century, suggested that the Basques and the Celts, the Ligurians and the Gauls, in spite of the contrasted structure of their languages, may have sprung from the same ethnic trunk, and derived their languages from a common source.94
Other scholars of eminence, such as Delitzsch, Ascoli, Raumer, Schultze and Abel, have pointed out numerous affinities between the Hamito-Semitic, Libyan, old Coptic and Assyrian tongues, and the oldest Aryac forms, and have argued for the existence of a fundamental “proto-Ayro-Semitic” speech which existed before the separation of the white race into its northern and southern branches.95There is evidence that this very ancient tongue was of the “isolating” character, with a tendency to agglutination by suffixes.
It is now recognized that inflection did not exist in the primitive Aryac dialects, but was gradually developed by means of such suffixes added to the stem, by different processes in the different dialects, many ofwhich are in activity to-day.96These inflective processes bear closer resemblance to the Libyan, which has suffixes, and the old Egyptian, than to pure Semitic tongues, which leads to the suggestion, again, that the separation of the race was in the west rather than the east.
Proto-Aryac Migrations.—Leaving these speculations as to the origin of the Aryac stock, let us sketch its probable migrations, as indicated by linguistic research. It appears to have divided early into two main streams, the one occupying central and southern Europe, the other moving eastward on a northerly route, the two meeting as they neared the Bosphorus.
The central stream was of Celtic affinities. Its tribes having possessed themselves of the coast line from Cape Finisterre to the mouth of the Rhine and the islands of Great Britain, passed up the valleys of the Rhine and its affluents into southern Germany, the valleys of Switzerland and the Tyrol, quite to the Danube. Its easternmost tribes were probably the Dacians.
The Aryac Italic peoples, the Umbrians, the Oscans, the Latins, were the first offshoot of this southern migration; not that they were directly descended from the Celts, but that they sprang from the same division of the primitive Aryac stock. This is still so clear that I remember Matthew Arnold in his lectures onpoetry quotes sentences from ancient Irish which are also intelligible Latin.
A second offshoot was the Illyrians, who peopled the northern and eastern shores of the Adriatic, the ancestors of the modern Albanians.
A third was the Hellenic people, organized later than the Latins, and imbued with elements quite foreign to these.
The northern stream was the Letto-Slavic, whose primitive home was on the shores of the German Ocean north of the mouth of the Rhine, and in the region which extends thence to the Gulf of Finland. Its members presented the physical traits of the Libyo-Teutonic type, contrasting in this to the traits of the central and southern stream, who were of the dark type of the race. The Cymric type seems to have been a mingling of the two, and was found at or near the boundaries between them.
At a comparatively late period—certainly after the beginning of the bronze age, as we know from their languages—the Teutonic tribes separated from the Letto-Slavs, and moved into Central and South Germany, where they remained. Numerous Slavonic hordes, however, pushed eastward, some passing to the north of the Black and Caspian Seas, where they formed the ancient Sarmatians, others approaching the Hellespont, where they mingled with Celtic and other elements to make the Thracian and other peoples.
Passing into Asia across the Hellespont and Bosphorus,or along the coast in their vessels, or pursuing the shores of the Caspian, numerous Aryac colonies from the vanguard of the eastern emigrants wandered into Asia. The Indo-Eranians that is, the ancient Persians and Sanscrit speaking tribes, entered first and progressed farthest, settling in Iran, and occupying the land between the Caspian Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Later came the Phrygians and Armenians, who had formerly lived in Thrace, crossing the Bosphorus and establishing themselves in Asia Minor.
The dates of these occurrences can be fixed only approximately. The Armenian migration was later than 700 B. C., as previous to that date the Vans, a people of non-Aryac speech, occupied the region later known as Armenia. The Brahmans crossed the Hindu-Kusch into India, about 1500-2000 B. C., and the Persians possessed themselves of Iran at least a thousand years earlier.
We must not suppose that the languages of these peoples developed one out of the other. That is not the way languages grow. It was by contact in various centres with various dialects and wholly different linguistic stocks that the speech of these nomads was altered. They did not journey always in one direction, but to and fro, now rapidly advancing, now retreating, now long stationary, ever through war, commerce and marriage adding new elements to their speech, each tribe developing its dialect with independent material and on different grammatical principles.
We are now prepared to study the historic and modern representatives of this important stock.
The Celtic peoples of the present day form a decaying group, which in a few generations will wholly disappear. Two thousand years ago they were the most important Aryac stock in central and western Europe. Their sole representatives now are the Highland Scotch, the Irish, the Manx, the Welsh, and the natives of Brittany in France. In all these localities the Celtic speech is losing ground before English or French. In Ireland about 900,000 persons can speak Irish, but not more than 150,000 are ignorant of English.
These Celtic groups form two dialects, one spoken in Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man, known asGaelic, the other common to Wales, Brittany, and in the last century to Cornwall, calledArmoricanorCymric. The Irish possessed a sparse literature going back to the eighth century, and the Welsh to the twelfth, while the oldest Scotch or Breton songs date at the furthest from the fourteenth century, in spite of assertions to the contrary.
To this day the Celtic peoples present the same contrast of physical type that they did to the Romans. Some of the Scotch clans, many of the Irish, most of the Welsh and Bretons, are of moderate stature, dark eyes and hair, and brunette complexion, while the remainder are tall, raw-boned, red-haired, with florid, freckled skins and tawny beards.
Their mental traits are quite as conspicuous; turbulent, boastful, alert, courageous, but deficient in caution, persistence and self-control, they never have succeeded in forming an independent state, and are a dangerous element in the body politic of a free country. In religion they are fanatic and bigoted, ready to swear in the words of their master, rather than to exercise independent judgment. France is three-fifths of Celtic descent, and this explains much in its history and the character of its inhabitants.
The principal Aryac tribes who possessed themselves of the Italian peninsula were the Umbrians in the north, and the Samnites (or Oscans) and Latins in the south. They conquered in time the Etruscans, Ligurians, Volscians and others of non-Aryac lineage, and laid the foundation for the mighty Aryac Empireof Rome, destined to command the world, and to introduce the Latin tongue as the dominant speech of Southern Europe.
From the Latin speaking Roman colonies have sprung theRomance languagesof modern times and the existing “Latin peoples.” These include the modern Italian, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Roumanian, the Wallachian, and the Ladinish in Switzerland, besides a number of dialects. Through the conquests of the European Romance nations, their tongues have gained the ascendency over the whole continent of America south of the United States, over a large part of Canada and North Africa, and over many islands. To-day, the speech of imperial Rome, more or less modified, prevails over an area five times as great as that of the empire in the zenith of its glory.
Like the language, the physical type of the ancient Italic peoples indicated their near relationship to the dark Celts. The Latin and Umbrian skulls were short or rounded (brachycephalic), the stature medium, the hair dark and curly, the eyes brown or black, the nose aquiline, the complexion brunette. In later generations this type was modified by mixture with the blonde or long-skulled Etruscans, and the numerous foreigners who came to live in Rome; but to this day it is that which prevails throughout the peninsula.
None of the Romance nations can boast of much purity of descent. After the fall of the Western Empire (476 A. D.), hordes of Germans poured intoItaly; they also overran France and Spain, while Arabs and Berbers occupied for generations nearly the whole of the Iberian peninsula, the island of Sicily, and portions of France. The Roumanians are partly Slavonic, and the Portuguese have Celtic and Basque blood.
Tn spite of these admixtures, the Romance peoples have retained many of the mental features of the old Romans. In government they display the same acknowledgment of authority, love of system and bureaucratic forms of administration, which made the Roman municipium the wonder of the world; in religion, they cultivate the same respect for external show and material rites rather than for the ideal aspects of faith; and in literature, it is only in later days that they have declared independence from the models of classicism, which too long fettered their best minds.
The ancient Romans had little idealism. They achieved nothing in poetry, philosophy or the plastic arts. It was owing to the Hellenic and Semitic influence that, under the Empire, Rome became the centre of artistic, as of all other training. These acquired qualities have been transmitted to the Romance nations, and it is to them we owe nearly all that is best in art down to the beginning of the present century. The sentiment of symmetry is native to them, and one has but to compare either the scientific works or the public buildings of France with those of Germany during the last five-and-twenty years to be convincedhow the sense of form is present in the former and defective in the latter.
The ancient Illyrians were the ancestors of the modern Albanians, a people numbering in all nearly two million souls, occupying a portion of western Turkey, bordering on the Adriatic Sea, about 40° north latitude. They are scarcely more than semi-civilized, and neither in ancient nor modern times have they taken any prominent part in the history of Europe. Their language undoubtedly belongs to the Aryac stock, and has various affinities with Greek and Latin, but is a long-separated and almost isolated fragment of Aryac speech. The national name they give themselves is Skypetars, which means mountaineers. They are also known as Arnauts.
The physical type of the Albanians is mixed, those to the south being chiefly blondes, to the north brunettes; their skulls are generally long, their stature tall, their bodies muscular. Some of them are Mohammedans, others Roman Catholics, while others belong to the Greek church. In disposition they are turbulent and warlike, caring little for the amenities of civilization.
The nearest related groups to the Illyrians are believed to have been the Thracians, who were a blonde people, the Dacians, who were largely Celtic, and the Macedonians. Some recent writers have argued that the ancient Japyges were Illyrians, and had occupiedmost of the peninsula of Italy previous to the arrival of the Latins;97but this question remains obscure.
It is acknowledged even by those who maintain the Asiatic origin of the Aryans that the Greeks entered the peninsula and the adjacent isles of the Ionian and Egean seas from a northwesterly direction.98It has been also argued “from the unmixed character of their language” that they found the region uninhabited,99but there are reasons for believing that it was sparsely populated by a non-Aryac people of the Euscaric physical type.100
The separation of the Greeks from the southern Aryac stream took place somewhere in the valley of the Danube, whence a portion of the original Hellenes moved down the Adriatic into the Morea, and other bands known as Carians, Leleges, Phrygians, etc., passed into Asia Minor.101Even the island of Cyprus,close to the Syrian shore, appears to have supported a Greek population previous to its occupancy by the Egyptians and Semitic peoples.102
The Greek language has strong affinities to the ancient Persian and Sanscrit, showing conclusively that the Aryac tribes whose descendants developed these tongues dwelt in eastern Europe between the Slavonic peoples on the north and the proto-Hellenes on the south. At a later date, that is, about 1500 B. C., numerous Phenician colonists occupied the shores of Greece, constructing the so-called “Cyclopean” walls, and leaving a lasting impression, both on the language and culture of the Aryac population.103Greek civilization undoubtedly derived its early inspiration from Semitic and Hamitic sources, and nearly thirty per cent. of the Greek roots are non-Aryac, proving a large admixture of foreign thought and blood at some remote epoch.
The ancient Greek physical type was rather Slavonic than Celtic. The skull was long (about 76), the forehead high, the nose narrow and straight (the “Grecian nose”), the face oval and orthognathic, the complexion fair, the hair blonde or chestnut, and the eyes blue or grey.104The highest bodily symmetry of thehuman species was reached among them, and its proportions were perpetuated for all time in the noble products of Greek plastic art.
The modern Greeks have undergone extensive commingling with Slavonians, Turks, Bulgarians, etc., so that the ancient type is no longer common, and the population is generally darker in complexion, and the skull more globular than in classic ages.
At a very remote epoch the Hellenic peoples occupied southern Italy (Magna Grecia), Sicily, portions of southern France and the regions on both shores of the Hellespont, their easternmost colonies extending quite into Syria. During the middle ages the establishment of the capital of the eastern empire at Constantinople, gave to Greek a position in the east equal to that of Latin in the west. Crushed out, first by the Romans and next by Mongolian hordes, within this century the Hellenic peoples are rapidly regaining a prominent position. Their settlements in Asia Minor are displacing the Turks, and in all the cities of the Levant they form one of the most active elements of the population.
In certain mental endowments, the Hellenic peoples won a position far ahead of all others. The sense of artistic form was possessed by them in a superlative degree; for the highest philosophic thought they showed an aptitude unparalleled in the annals of the race; in mathematics and mechanics, in poetry and the drama, in architecture and in literature, they created models of such perfection that the later generationsof other nations have been content to do little more than imitate them. To this day that culture which is properly called the highest, must be based on a long and loving study of Greek art and thought.
The Letts and Lithuanians, dwelling on the shores of the Baltic Sea, partly in Prussia and partly in Russia, are unimportant peoples politically, and indeed every way but ethnographically. In this respect, however, they deserve particular attention, because in the opinion of a number of modern writers they “have the best claim to represent the primitive Aryac race.”105This claim is based on the structure of their language, which seems to preserve characteristics of an exceedingly primitive type, such for instance as a dual number, numerous oblique cases, an archaic phonology;106and also on their physical appearance, being tall blondes, with blue eyes, and moderately long skulls (about 78°). Both in appearance and language they are a connecting link between the Slavonic and Teutonic peoples. The westernmost dialect of the group, the “old Prussian,” now extinct, was spoken west of the Vistula, and perhaps extended to the coast of the German Ocean. Their total number at present is not over 2,000,000.
Separated from the Letto-Slavonians about the beginning of the Age of Bronze (see above p. 152), and extended themselves toward central and southern Germany, north into Scandinavia, and west along the shores of the North Sea. Their most celebrated ancient tribes were the Goths and Vandals, the Angles and Saxons, the Danes and Norsemen, the Franks and Alemanni, the Lombards and the Burgundians. The modern nations which with more or less justice are classed as of Teutonic descent, are the German speaking population of the German and Austrian empires, the States of Sweden and Norway, Denmark, Holland, western Switzerland and England. It is needless to say that there is little purity of descent in most of these lands; the highest is believed to be in Scandinavia. There we find still in the ascendant the tall and muscular frame, the fair hair and complexion, the blue eyes and full blonde beards which the Greek and Roman writers agree in attributing to the dreaded northern barbarians. The skull is long, the temperament lymphatic, and the complete growth attained later than in the Celtic stock.107