Man, Past and Present by Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (best young adult book series .txt) 📖

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