Chapter CXVIII: Appendix: A

NOTES TO ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP, PLACED AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS VOLUME.

To the eye of modern scholarship "language" forms the basis of every ethnic distinction. Physical and exterior features like the stature, the color of the skin, the diversity of habits and customs, the distinctions which once formed in great part the basis of ethnic research have all in our own day been relegated to a subordinate place.

The "language" test is of course subject to very serious limitations. The intermingling of different peoples, more general to be sure in our own day than in past ages, has nevertheless been sufficiently great in every age to make the tracing of linguistic forms a task of great difficulty. In special cases where both the civilization and language of one people have become lost in that of another the test must of course fail utterly.

With all these restrictions however the adoption of the linguistic method by modern criticism has been practically universal. Its defence, if it requires any, is apparent. It is the only method of ethnic study the deductions of which, where successful at all, approach anything like certainty. The points wherein linguistic criticism has failed have been freely admitted; on the other hand the facts which it has established are unassailable by any other school of criticism.

Taking language then as the only tangible working basis the subject resolves itself from the start into a two-fold division: the debatable and the certain. It is the purpose to indicate in the course of these notes, what is merely conjecture and what may be safely accepted as fact.

The ethnology of Europe, studied on this basis, has for its central feature the _Indo-Germanic_ (_Indo-European_) or _Aryan_ race. The distinction between the races clearly Aryan and those doubtful or non-Aryan forms the primary division of the subject. As the map is intended to deal only with the Europe of the present, a historical distinction must be made at the outset between the doubtful or non-Aryan peoples who preceded the Aryans and the non-Aryan peoples who have appeared in Europe in comparatively recent times. The simple formula, _pre-Aryan, Aryan, non-Aryan,_ affords the key to the historical development of European ethnology.

PRE-ARYAN PEOPLES.

Of the presumably pre-Aryan peoples of western Europe the _Iberians_ occupy easily the first place. The seat of this people at the dawn of history was in Spain and southern France; their ethnology belongs entirely to the realm of conjecture. They are of much darker complexion than the Aryans and their racial characteristic is conservatism even to stubbornness, which places them in marked contrast to their immediate Aryan neighbors, the volatile Celts. Among the speculations concerning the origin of the Iberians a plausible one is that of Dr. Bodichon, who assigns to them an African origin making them, indeed, cognate with the modern Berbers (see R. H. Patterson's "Ethnology of Europe" in "Lectures on History and Art"). This generalization is made to include also the _Bretons_ of the north west. It is clear however that the population of modern Brittany is purely Celtic: made up largely from the immigrations from the British Isles during the fifth century.

To the stubbornness with which the Iberians resisted every foreign aggression and refused intermingling with surrounding races is due the survival to the present day of their descendants, the _Basques_.

The mountain ranges of northern Spain, the Cantabrians and Eastern Pyrenees have formed the very donjon-keep of this people in every age. Here the _Cantabri_ successfully resisted the Roman arms for more than a century after the subjugation of the remainder of Spain, the final conquest not occurring until the last years of Augustus. While the _Iberian_ race as a whole has become lost in the greater mass of Celtic and Latin intruders, it has remained almost pure in this quarter. The present seat of the Basques is in the Spanish provinces of Viscaya, Alava, Guipuzcoa, and Navarre and in the French department of Basses Pyrénées. The Ivernians of Ireland, now lost in the Celtic population, and the Ligurians along the shores of the Genoese gulf, later absorbed by the Romans, both belong likewise to this pre-Aryan class. (Modern research concerning these pre-Aryan peoples has in large part taken its inspiration from the "Untersuchungen" of Humboldt, whose view concerning the connection between the Basques and Iberians is substantially the one stated.)

Another early non-Aryan race now extinct were the Etruscans of Italy. Their origin was manifestly different from that of the pre-Aryan peoples just mentioned. By many they have been regarded as a branch of the great Ural-Altaic family. This again is conjecture.

ARYAN PEOPLES.

In beginning the survey of the Aryan peoples it is necessary to mention the principal divisions of the race. As generally enumerated there are seven of these, viz., the _Sanskrit_ (Hindoo), _Zend_ (Persian), _Greek, Latin, Celtic, Germanic_ and _Slavic_. To these may be added two others not definitely classified, the _Albanian_ and the _Lithuanian_. These bear the closest affinity respectively to the Latin and the _Slavic_.

Speculation concerning the origin of the Aryans need not concern us. It belongs as yet entirely to the arena of controversy. The vital question which divides the opposing schools is concerning their European or Asiatic origin. Of the numerous writers on this subject the two who perhaps afford the reader of English the best view of the opposing opinions are, on the Asiatic side, Dr. Max Müller (Lectures on the Science of Language); on the other, Professor A. H. Sayce (Introduction to the Science of Language).

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Of the divisions of the Aryan race above enumerated the first two do not appear in European ethnology. Of the other branches, the _Latin_, _Germanic_ and _Slavic_ form by great odds the bulk of the European population.

THE LATIN BRANCH.

The _Latin_ countries are France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the territory north of the Danube, between the Dniester and the Theiss. In the strictest ethnic sense however the term Latin can be applied only to Italy and then only to the central part. As Italy first appears in history it is inhabited by a number of different races: the _Iapygians_ and _Oenotrians_ of the south who were thrown in direct contact with the Greek settlers; the _Umbrians, Sabines, Latins, Volscians_ and _Oscans_ in the centre; the _Etruscans_ on the west shore north of the Tiber; while in the north we find the _Gauls_ in the valley of the Po, with the _Ligurians_ and _Venetians_ respectively on the west and east coasts. Of this motley collection the central group bore a close affinity to the Latin, yet all alike received the Latin stamp with the growing power of Rome.

The ethnic complexion of Italy thus formed was hardly modified by the great Germanic invasions which followed with the fall of the West-Roman Empire.

This observation applies with more or less truth to all the Latin countries, the Germanic conquerors becoming everywhere merged and finally lost in the greater mass of the conquered. Only in Lombardy where a more enduring Germanic kingdom existed for over two centuries (568-774), has the Germanic made any impression, and this indeed a slight one, on the distinctly Latin character of the Italian peninsula.

In Spain an interval between the Iberian period and the Roman conquest appears to have existed, during which the population is best described as _Celt-Iberian_. Upon this population the Latin stamp was placed by the long and toilsome, but for that reason more thorough, Roman conquest. The ethnic character of Spain thus formed has passed without material change through the ordeal both of Germanic and Saracenic conquest. The _Gothic_ kingdom of Spain (418-714) and the _Suevic_ kingdom of northern Portugal (406-584) have left behind them scarcely a trace. The effects of the great Mohammedan invasion cannot be dismissed so lightly.

Conquered entirely by the Arabs and Moors in 714, the entire country was not freed from the invader for nearly eight centuries. In the south (Granada) where the Moors clung longest their influence has been greatest. Here their impress on the pure Aryan stock has never been effaced.

The opening phrase of Cæsar's Gallic war, "all Gaul is divided into three parts," states a fact as truly ethnic as it is geographical or historical. In the south (Aquitania) we find the Celtic blending with the _Iberian_; in the northeast the Cimbrian Belgae, the last comers of the Celtic family, are strongly marked by the characteristics of the Germans; while in the vast central territory the people "calling themselves Galli" are of pure Celtic race. This brief statement of Caesar, allowing for the subsequent influx of the German, is no mean description of the ethnic divisions of France as they exist at the present day, and is an evidence of the remarkable continuity of ethnological as opposed to mere political conditions.

The four and a half centuries of Roman rule placed the Latin stamp on the Gallic nation, a preparation for the most determined siege of Germanic race influence which any Latin nation was fated to undergo.

In Italy and Spain the exotic kingdoms were quickly overthrown; the _Frankish_ kingdom in northern Gaul was in strictness never overthrown at all.

In addition we soon have in the extreme north a second Germanic element in the Scandinavian _Norman_. Over all these outside elements, however, the Latin influence eventually triumphed. While the _Franks_ have imposed their name upon the natives, the latter have imposed their language and civilization on the invaders.

The result of this clashing of influences is seen, however, in the present linguistic division of the old Gallic lands. The line running east and west through the centre of France marks the division between the French and the _Provençal_ dialects, the _langued'oil_ and the _langued'oc_. It is south of this line in the country of the _langued'oc_ that the Latin or Romance influence reigns most absolute in the native speech.

In the northeast, on the other hand, in the _Walloon_ provinces of Belgium, we have, as with the Belgae of classic times, the near approach of the Gallic to the Germanic stems.

Our survey of the Latin peoples must close with a short notice of its outlying members in the Balkan and Danubian lands. The _Albanians_ (_Skipetars_) and the _Roumans_ (_Vlachs_ or _Wallachs_) represent as nearly as ethnology can determine the ancient populations respectively of Illyricum and Thrace. The ethnology of the Albanians is entirely uncertain. Their present location, considerably to the south of their supposed pristine seat in Illyricum, indicates some southern migration of the race. This migration occurred at an entirely unknown time, though it is generally believed to have been contemporary with the great southward movement of the Slavic races in the seventh century.

The _Albanian_ migrations of the time penetrated Attica, Aetolia and the entire Peloponnesus; with the _Slavs_ and _Vlachs_ they formed indeed a great part of the population of Greece during the Middle Ages. While the Slavic stems have since been merged in the native Greek population, and the _Vlachs_ have almost entirely disappeared from these southern lands, the Albanians in Greece have shown a greater tenacity. Their part in later Greek history has been a prominent one and they form to-day a great part of the population of Attica and Argolis.

The _Roumans_ or _Vlachs_, the supposed native population of Thrace, are more closely identified than the Albanians with the other Latin peoples. They occupy at present the vast country north of the Danube, their boundary extending on the east to the Dniester, on the west almost to the Theiss.

Historically these people form a perplexing yet interesting study. The theory once general that they represented a continuous Latin civilization north of the Danube, connecting the classic Dacia by an unbroken chain to the present, has now been generally abandoned. (See Roesler's "Romänische Studien" or Freeman's "Historical Geography of Europe," page 435.)

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The present geographical location of the Vlach peoples is probably the result of a migration from the Thracian lands south of the Danube, which occurred for unexplained causes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The kernel of the race at the present day is the separate state of Roumania; in the East and West they come under the respective rules of Russia and Hungary.

In mediaeval times the part played by them south of the Balkans was an important one, and to this day they still linger in considerable numbers on either side of the range of Pindus. (For a short dissertation on the Vlach peoples, see Finlay, "History of Greece," volume 3, pages 224-230.)

THE GERMANIC BRANCH.

The _Germanic_ nations of modern Europe are _England, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Norway_ and _Sweden_. The Germanic races also form the major part of the population of Switzerland, the Cis-Leithan division of the Austrian Empire, and appear in isolated settlements throughout Hungary and Russia.

Of the earlier Germanic nations who overthrew the Roman Empire of the West scarcely a trace remains.

The population of the British Isles at the dawn of history furnishes a close parallel to that of Gaul. The pre-Aryan _Ivernians_ (the possible _Iberians_ of the British Isles) had been forced back into the recesses of Scotland and Ireland; next to them came the Celts, like those of Gaul, in two divisions, the _Goidels_ or _Gaels_ and the _Britons_.

In Britain, contrary to the usual rule, the Roman domination did not give the perpetual Latin stamp to the island; it is in fact the only country save the Pannonian and Rhaetian lands south of the upper Danube, once a Roman possession, where the Germanic element has since gained a complete mastery. The invasion of the Germanic races, the _Angles, Saxons_ and _Jutes_, from the sixth to the eighth centuries, were practically wars of extermination. The Celtic race is to-day represented on the British Isles only in _Wales_ and the western portions of _Scotland_ and _Ireland_. The invasions of the _Danes_, and later the _Norman_ conquest, bringing with them only slight infusions of kindred Germanic nations, have produced in England no marked modification of the _Saxon_ stock.

The _German_ Empire, with the smaller adjoining realms, Holland and Switzerland and the Austrian provinces of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Salzburg and Tyrol, contain the great mass of the Germanic peoples of the continent.

During the confusion following the overthrow of the West-Roman Empire the _Germanic_ peoples were grouped much further westward than they are at present; the eastward reaction involving the dispossession of the _Slavic_ peoples on the Elbe and Oder, has been going on ever since the days of Charlemagne. Germany like France possesses a linguistic division, Low German (Nieder-Deutsche) being generally spoken in the lands north of the cross line, High German (Hoch-Deutsche) from which the written language is derived, to the south of it, Holland uses the _Flemish_, a form of the Nieder-Deutsche; Belgium is about equally divided between the _Flemish_ and the _Walloon_. Switzerland, though predominantly German, is encroached upon by the French in the western cantons, while in the southeast is used the Italian and a form allied to the same, the Romance speech of the Rhaetian (Tyrolese) Alps. This form also prevails in Friuli and some mountainous parts of northern Italy.

The present population of the German Empire is almost exclusively Germanic, the exceptions being the Slavic _Poles_ of Posen, Pomerellen, southeastern Prussia and eastern Silesia, the remnant of the _Wends_ of Lusatia and the French element in the recently acquired Imperial lands of Alsace and Lorraine. Beyond the Empire we find a German population in the Austrian territories already noted, in the border lands of Bohemia, and in isolated settlements further east. The great settlement in the Siebenbürgen was made by German emigrants in the eleventh century and similar settlements dot the map both of Hungary and Russia. On the Volga indeed exists the greatest of them all.

Denmark, Norway and Sweden are peopled by the _Scandinavian_ branch of the Germanic race. Only in the extreme north do we find another and non-Aryan race, the _Lapps_. On the other hand a remnant of the Swedes still retain a precarious hold on the coast line of their former possession, the Russian Finland.

THE SLAVIC BRANCH.

The _Slavs_, though the last of the Aryan nations to appear in history, form numerically by far the greatest branch of the Indo-European family. Their present number in Europe is computed at nearly one hundred million souls.

At the time of the great migrations they extended over nearly all modern Germany; their slow dispossession by the Germanic peoples, beginning in the eighth century, has already been noticed. In the course of this dispossession the most westerly Slavic group, the _Polabic_, between the Elbe and the Oder, were merged in the German, and, barring the remnant of _Wends_ in Lusatia (the _Sorabi_ or _Northern Serbs_), have disappeared entirely from ethnic geography.

The great _Slavic_ nation of the present day is Russia, but the great number of Slavic peoples who are not Russian and the considerable Russian population which is not Slavic renders impossible the study of this race on strictly national lines.

The Slavic peoples are separated, partly by geographical conditions, into three great divisions: the _Eastern_, the _Western_ and the _Southern_. The greatest of these divisions, the Eastern, lies entirely within the boundaries of the Russian Empire. The sub-divisions of the Eastern group are as follows: The _Great Russians_ occupying the vast inland territory and numbering alone between forty and fifty millions, the _Little Russians_ inhabiting the entire south of Russia from Poland to the Caspian, and the _White Russians_, the least numerous of this division, in Smolensk, Wilna, and Minsk, the west provinces bordering on the Lithuanians and Poles.

The _West Slavic_ group, omitting names of peoples now extinct, are the _Poles, Slovaks, Czechs_ and the remnants of the Lusatian _Wends_. The _Poles_, excepting those already mentioned as within the German empire, and the Austrian Poles of Cracow, are all under the domination of Russia. Under the sovereignty of Austria are the _Slovaks, Moravians_ and _Czechs_ of Bohemia, the latter the most westerly as well as historically the oldest of the surviving Slavic peoples, having appeared in their present seats in the last years of the fifth century.

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In connection with this West Slavic group we should also refer to the _Lithuanians_ whose history, despite the racial difference, is so closely allied with that of Poland. Their present location in the Russian provinces of Kowno, Kurland and Livland has been practically the same since the dawn of history.

The _South Slavic_ peoples were isolated from their northern kinsmen by the great _Finno-Tatar_ invasions.

The invasion of Europe by the Avars in the sixth century clove like a wedge the two great divisions of the Slavic race, the southernmost being forced upon the confines of the East-Roman Empire. Though less imposing as conquests than the Germanic invasions of the Western Empire, the racial importance of these Slavic movements is far greater since they constitute, in connection with the _Finno-Tatar_ invasions which caused them, the most important and clearly defined series of ethnic changes which Europe has experienced during the Christian Era. During the sixth and seventh centuries these Slavic emigrants spread over almost the entire Balkan peninsula, including Epirus and the Peloponnesus. In Greece they afterwards disappeared as a separate people, but in the region between the Danube, the Save and the Balkans they immediately developed separate states (Servia in 641, Bulgaria in 678). As they exist at present they may be classed in three divisions. The _Bulgarians_, so called from the _Finno-Tatar_ people whom they absorbed while accepting their name, occupy the district included in the separate state of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia, with a considerable territory to the south of it in Macedonia and Thrace. It was this last named territory or one very nearly corresponding to it that was actually ceded to Bulgaria by the peace of San Stefano, though she unfortunately lost it by the subsequent compromise effected at the Congress of Berlin. The second division includes the _Servians, Montenegrans, Bosnians_ and _Croatians_, the last two under Austrian control; the third and smallest are the _Slovenes_ of Carniola, likewise under Austrian sovereignty. (Schafarik's "Slawische Alterthümer" is the greatest single authority on the early history and also comparative ethnology of the _Slavs_.)

The territory occupied by the _Greek_ speaking people is clearly shown on the accompanying map. As in all history, it is the coast lands where they seem to have formed the strongest hold. In free Greece itself and in the Turkish territories immediately adjoining, the _Greek_ population overwhelmingly preponderates.

Nevertheless there is still a considerable Albanian element in Attica and Argolis, a _Vlach_ element in Epirus while the _Turk_ himself still lingers in certain quarters of Thessaly. All these are remnants left over from the successive migrations of the Middle Ages. The _Slavs_, who also figured most prominently in these migrations, have disappeared in Greece as a distinct race. The question as to the degree of Slavic admixture among the modern Greeks is however another fruitful source of ethnic controversy. The general features of the question are most compactly stated in Finlay, volume 4, pages 1-37.

NON-ARYAN PEOPLES.

The _Non-Aryan_ peoples on the soil of modern Europe, excepting the Jews and also probably excepting those already placed in the unsolved class of pre-Aryan, all belong to the _Finno-Tatar_ or _Ural-Altaic_ family, and all, possibly excepting the _Finns_, date their arrival in Europe from comparatively recent and historic times. The four principal divisions of this race, the _Ugric, Finnic, Turkic_ and _Mongolic_, all have their European representatives.

Of the first the only representatives are the _Hungarians_ (_Magyars_). The rift between the North and South Slavic peoples opened by the _Huns_ in the fifth century, reopened and enlarged by the _Avars_ in the sixth, was finally occupied by their kinsmen the _Magyars_ in the ninth. The receding of this wave of Asiatic invasion left the _Magyars_ in utter isolation among their Aryan neighbors. It follows as a natural consequence that they have been the only one of the _Ural-Altaic_ peoples to accept the religion and civilization of the West. Since the conversion of their king St. Stephen in the year 1000, their geographical position has not altered. Roughly speaking, it comprises the western half of Hungary, with an outlying branch in the Carpathians.

More closely allied to the _Magyars_ than to their more immediate neighbors of the same race are the _Finnic_ stems of the extreme north. Stretching originally over nearly the whole northern half of Scandinavia and Russia they have been gradually displaced, in the one case by their Germanic, in the other by their Slavic neighbors. Their present representatives are the _Ehsts_ and _Tschudes_ of Ehstland, the _Finns_ and _Karelians_ of Finland, the _Tscheremissians_ of the upper Volga, the _Siryenians_ in the basin of the Petchora and the _Lapps_ in northern Scandinavia and along the shores of the Arctic ocean.

East of the _Lapps_, also bordering the Arctic ocean, lie the _Samojedes_, a people forming a distinct branch of the Ural-Altaic family though most closely allied to the Finnic peoples. The great division of the Ural-Altaic family known indifferently as _Tatar_ (_Tartar_) or _Turk_, has, like the Aryan Slavs, through the accidents of historical geography rather than race divergence been separated into two great divisions: the northern or Russian division commonly comprised under the specific name of _Tartar_; and the southern, the _Turk_.

These are the latest additions to the European family of races. The _Mongol-Tatar_ invasion of Russia occurred as late as the thirteenth century, while the _Turks_ did not gain their first foothold in Europe through the gates of Gallipoli until 1353. The bulk of the Turks of the present day are congregated in Asia-Minor.

Barring the _Armenians_, the _Georgians_ of the northeast, the _Greeks_ of the seacoast and the scattered _Circassians_, the whole peninsula is substantially Turkish.

In Europe proper the Turks as a distinct people never cut a great figure. Even in the grandest days of Osmanli conquest they were always outnumbered by the conquered nations whose land they occupied, and with the decline of their power this numerical inferiority has become more and more marked. At the present day there are very few portions of the Balkan peninsula where the Turkish population actually predominates; their general distribution is clearly shown on the map.

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The _Tartars_ or _Russian Turks_ represent the siftings of the Asiatic invasions of the thirteenth century.

Their number has been steadily dwindling until they now count scarcely three millions, a mere handful in the mass of their former Slavic subjects.

The survivors are scattered in irregular and isolated groups over the south and east. Prominent among them are the _Crim Tartars_, the kindred Nogais of the west shores of the Caspian, the _Kirghis_ of the north shore and Ural valley, and the _Bashkirs_ between the upper Ural and the Volga, with an isolated branch of Tartars in the valley of the Araxes south of the Caucasus.

The great Asiatic irruption of the thirteenth century has been commonly known as the Mongol invasion. Such it was in leadership, though the residuum which it has left behind in European Russia proves that the rank and file were mostly Tartars. One Mongol people however, the _Kalmucks_, did make their way into Europe and still exist in the steppes between the lower Don and the lower Volga.

The ethnology of the Caucasian peoples is the most difficult part of the entire subject. On the steppes of the Black and Caspian seas up to the very limit of the Caucasus we have two races between whom the ethnic distinction is clearly defined, the Mongol-Tartar and the Slav. Entering the Caucasus however we find a vast number of races differing alike from these and from each other.

To enumerate all the different divisions of these races, whose ethnology is so very uncertain, would be useless. Grouped in three general divisions however they are as follows: the so-called _Circassians_ who formerly occupied the whole western Caucasus with the adjoining Black sea coast but who, since the Russian conquest of 1864, have for the most part emigrated to different quarters of the Turkish Empire; the _Lesghians_, under which general name are included the motley crowd of peoples inhabiting the eastern Caucasus; and the _Georgians_, the supposed descendants of the ancient _Iberians_ of the Caucasus, who inhabit the southern slope, including all the Tiflis province and the Trapezuntine lands on the southeast coast of the Black sea.

The _Tartars_ are hardly found in the Caucasus though they reappear immediately south of it in the lower basin of the Kura and the Araxes. Here also appear the various _Iranian_ stems of the Asiatic Aryans, the _Armenians_, the _Persians_ and the _Kurds_.

R. H. Latham's works on "European Ethnology" are the best general authority in English. Of more recent German guides, map and otherwise, the following are noteworthy: Bastain's "Ethnologisches Bilderbuch," "Das Beständige in den Menschenrassen," "Allgemeine Grundzüge der Ethnologie," Kiepert's "Ethnographische Uebersichtskarte des Europäischen Orients," Menke's "Europa nach seinen Ethnologischen Verhältnissen in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhundert," Rittich's "Ethnographie des europäischen Russland," Sax's "Ethnographische Karte der europäischen Turkei," Berghaus's "Ethnographische Karte vom österreichischen Kaiserstaat," Wendt's "Bilder Atlas der Länder und Völkerkunde," Andree's "Allgemeiner Hand-atlas (Ethnographischen Karten)," Gerland's "Atlas der Ethnographie."

A. C. Reiley.

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