Chapter IX: Greek Lands and the Basis of Chronology (2)

It was about this time that others set out from Hungary through the Moravian gate, and while some went northwards, the majority passed along Galicia, across the Bukovina and Podolia, and arrived at length by the banks of the Koban. Here they settled for a time, and entered into trade relations with a humble tribe, living on the southern slopes of the Caucasus, from whom they learned the knowledge of iron. Armed with swords with iron blades, they returned to the Danube basin about 1100 /B.C./, and perhaps worked the iron mines at Gyalar, in Transylvania. Then they settled in the Hungarian plain and in the north of the Balkan peninsula. About 1050 /B.C./ a large body of these people from the Koban passed southwards and descended the Vardar valley. By degrees they passed thence to Thessaly. Then they began that slow but steady conquest of the Greek states, which is known as the Dorian invasion.

A little later, about 1000 /B.C./, the Koban folk, with their iron swords, began pushing up the Danube, the Drave and the Save. In the valley of the last they found whole mountains of iron, which they began to work, and by 900 /B.C./, if not earlier, they had reached Styria and the Salzkammergut, and were working the salt mines at Hallstatt. It was, perhaps, earlier than this that they moved up the Danube valley as far as Ulm and Sigmaringen, and soon after their arrival there quarrels arose between them and the lords of the mountain zone. It must have been before 900 /B.C./ that the newcomers destroyed the lake-dwellings and expelled their inhabitants, who fled from them to the north and west.

The refugees who went northwards were few in number, though some of them seem to have fled a long way, perhaps even to Finland. Large numbers escaped to France, and spread over most of that land except Brittany and the extreme west. But here they were followed by the men of the iron sword, who pursued them in every direction, except down the valley of the Seine.

A great number of these refugees reached Britain, landing mostly at the mouth of the Thames, and sailing up it as far as Reading. An important settlement was made at “Old England,” at the mouth of the Brent, and doubtless elsewhere by the Thames. They advanced across the south of England, where, as we have seen, some of their predecessors were living, and settled at All Cannings and doubtless other places in Wiltshire. They pushed on into South Wales, making settlements on the open hills above Cardiff. Some of these, too, reached Ireland.

Meanwhile the men of the iron sword, pursuing these refugees, followed them in every direction across France, except down the valley of the Seine. They went northwards down the valleys of the Meuse and Moselle, entered Belgium,[420] and perhaps even entered Denmark. There seems no evidence, however, that they crossed to Britain.

One further raid was made by the men of the iron sword, and this was on an extensive scale. Some time after 900 /B.C./ a number of them, coming from the Save valley, crossed the Predil pass. Some of these stayed for a time at Santa Lucia Tolmino, in the Isonzo valley, while the majority proceeded to Cividale in the Friuli plain. They passed on rapidly to the Po valley, and destroyed the villages of the Terramara-folk who lived there, expelling the inhabitants as seems to have been the invariable custom of these men of blood and iron.[421] The Terramara-folk fled, some to Etruria, others to Taranto and others again to Rome, where they built a dry terramara on the Palatine Hill.[422] The iron sword people passed on and settled at the foot of the Apennines, with their centre at Bologna, introducing into all the region north-east of the mountains the culture known to archæologists as that of Villa-nova.[423]

As we have seen in Chapter IV., the Etruscans had been for some little time settled in Tuscany, where they had established their trading cities governed by religious magistrates. Before long these Etruscan Prospectors found themselves face to face with this newly-arrived war-like people. I have already given my reasons for thinking that the Villa-nova folk conquered the Etruscans, and that together they extended their empire, which is said to have reached to Pompeii. They perhaps succeeded in pressing back the leaf-shaped sword people from the neighbourhood of Lake Trasimene, but did not apparently succeed at first in dislodging them from the valley of the Velino.

Thus we see that the leaf-shaped sword folk, mainly the people of the mountain zone, have at one time or another invaded and in some way or another conquered nearly all Europe except the Iberian peninsula, while at the close of the bronze age they arrived as refugees in Celtic lands. The iron sword folk, the people of the plain, who had learned the use of iron in the Koban, followed them, making a complete conquest of Greece, of Italy north of the Apennines, of France all but the west and the Seine valley, Belgium and perhaps other regions further north. These people did not conquer Scandinavia, nor did they reach Britain, at any rate until several more centuries had elapsed.

/Chapter XII/

THE ARYAN CRADLE

During the middle half of the nineteenth century the minds of many European savants were focussed upon what was termed the Aryan hypothesis, which was investigated with more enthusiasm than discretion by comparative philologists in England and France, and with still greater vigour in Germany. Since then the general conclusions of these mid-nineteenth century speculations have been current among politicians and journalists, who talk glibly about Teutons and Celts and Slavs, and that medley of races and peoples, who still continue to use in a modified form the speech imposed upon them by their Roman conquerors, and are therefore called the Latin race. Such terms, meaningless though they are as applied to nations, have become popular during the last half century, with disastrous results, since they have been used to emphasise certain divisions which were growing up among European peoples, and which in their turn did much to give rise to the European war, and are still retarding the Peace for which everyone is longing.

The idea was first put forward in 1786, when Sir William Jones,[424] in a communication to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, pointed out the similarities between the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German and Celtic languages, but little progress was made until in 1833-5 Bopp[425] published his comparative grammar. For the next fifty years the hypothesis grew at a great pace. The world was anxious for a scientific classification of its peoples, especially of the peoples of Europe. Men were also enquiring what had happened in this continent before early Greek legend and literature began to lift the veil. The sciences of anthropology and prehistoric archæology were in their infancy, and unable to provide answers to these questions, and the comparative philologists, from the evidence of language alone, were prepared to give full and most detailed explanations.

Thus arose the Aryan hypothesis, forced upon an eagerly inquiring public with great enthusiasm and complete, or almost complete, agreement. But during the eighties rifts appeared to disturb this harmony, anthropology and archæology began to claim a hearing, and to disagree with the conclusions of philology. By 1890 the philological enthusiasm died out, at least in this country and in France, though for a time it lingered on in Germany. All those acquainted with the subject felt that the question needed reconsideration, partly in the light of more accurate philological study, and especially having regard to the newer evidence being produced in such quantities by the sciences of anthropology and prehistoric archæology. The general public, however, continued to talk and to write, with more confidence than before, of Teutons, Celts, Slavs and the Latin races.

A word as to the term Aryan. When it was found that Sanskrit was allied to most of the European languages, it was felt that a term was needed to describe the group. Bopp, thinking that the German or Teutonic group was the most westerly, as the Indian dialects were the most easterly, used the term Indo-Germanic, which had previously been suggested by Klaproth in 1823.[426] But when it was fully realised that the Celtic tongues were also included in the group, French and Italian scholars, who felt that the term German was receiving too much prominence, suggested the name Indo-European. Neither of these terms is quite accurate and both are clumsy, so to avoid the latter defect Professor Max-Müller suggested the term Aryan. This, too, is misleading, for the Aryas were the noble caste among the Vedic Indians and the early Persians. The name, however, is convenient, and is still used by many people, especially in this country. Recently Dr. Giles[427] has suggested for the original people who spoke these tongues the name of _Wiros_, as words similar to this, meaning _men_, occur in most of these languages. The term has much to recommend it, and it will be used in the following pages for the first users of this speech.

When the connection between these languages was first realised, it was felt that all the tongues had been derived from a primitive mother speech, and that this primitive speech must have been spoken originally by a small group of people, the primitive Aryans, or, as we shall call them, the Wiros. But owing to loose thinking all the people who speak these languages to-day, as well as those who have spoken them in the past, were considered Aryans, and it was assumed that because their languages were related they were racially identical. As long as this applied only to European peoples no one raised any protest, but when Max-Müller asserted that the same blood runs in the veins of English soldiers as in the veins of the darkest Bengalese,[428] the Nordic spirit in this country, which, as we have seen, is prone to race exclusiveness, rose in its wrath, and the whole generalisation was questioned.

It was then shown that languages could be imposed by conquerors upon their subjects, and that there were instances on record of the reverse process taking place, as in the case of the Frankish invaders of Gaul and the Viking settlers in Normandy. People then, with equal lack of lucid thinking, ran to the opposite extreme and said, “there is now no Aryan race, and there never has been one.” To Penka[429] is due the credit of making the matter clear. He pointed out that Aryan blood is not co-extensive with Aryan speech. He showed that those who use the latter are of several distinct anthropological types, but he argued that the primitive Aryans or Wiros must have been of one type.

Penka’s contention seems eminently reasonable and, one would think, incontrovertible, for a group of languages, so closely resembling one another, must have grown up in a somewhat restricted area, among a people who had, during the formative period of the language, little intercourse with the outside world. The very conditions which would produce a specialised type of language, would, we may feel sure, have produced an equally specialised type of men, that is to say, a race in the anthropological meaning of the term.

The failure of Penka’s views to carry widespread conviction was, I am inclined to think, due to the fact that his theory involved the identification of the primitive Wiros with the Nordic race. There is really no valid objection to this view, and, as will be seen later, the evidence which I am adducing points to a similar conclusion. But, unfortunately, this theory became associated with certain political opinions, and so became distasteful to those with a different outlook.

The original supporters of the Aryan hypothesis fell so in love with the languages and with the people who originally developed them, that they grew to believe that these Wiros were superior creatures, with a superior tongue, which they had imposed upon an inferior world. All good things found in the civilisation of Europe were attributed to them, and they became the super-men. As far as we can ascertain from the linguistic evidence available they had, it is true, evolved a language which, owing to its flexibility, was capable of great things, but it is by no means clear that the higher developments, which some of the tongues have reached, would have been attained had not the Wiros mixed with people possessing other ideas and other idioms. The evidence of linguistic palæontology shows that in material culture they were very backward, and, as we shall see later on, all the archæological evidence tends to show that in these respects they were far behind the peoples whom they conquered, and on whom they imposed their tongue. Their one important characteristic seems to have been their incapacity for learning other languages, and so insisting that other folk should adopt theirs. This may have been due to lack of linguistic ability, or to an overbearing conceit. Probably it was due to both. The original Wiros, then, as judged by linguistic evidence, were far from being super-men.

Another fallacy has been the belief that the Nordic is the superior person, the “white man” _par excellence_. The Nordic is strong, robust and courageous, and possesses certain manly qualities which are much admired; also he has taken care for some thousands of years to impress upon his neighbours that these are admirable qualities. The Nordic has also other good points, such as honesty and a genius for administration, but he is far from possessing a monopoly of the virtues, and in many respects falls behind members of the other European races. The works of Gobineau[430] and later of Madison Grant[431] have enumerated his virtues without defining his limitations, and no one, so far as I know, has yet written to extol the excellencies of the Alpine or Mediterranean races, who have contributed and still contribute much of what is good in the make-up of modern Europe.

During the latter part of the nineteenth century the Germans were engaged in making and consolidating their empire, and to do this they wished to encourage their nationals to believe that Germans, _qua_ Germans, were the inheritors of many, in fact of most admirable qualities. As a matter of fact such “patriotic” ideas were current in most countries, as can be seen by an examination of the school text-books, especially history books, in use at that time, and sometimes, too, at the present day. Only in this, as is their wont, the Germans were very thorough, and they pressed every science and every hypothesis into their service.

What was read into the hypothesis of Penka, though it does not follow that he wished it, was that these Wiros or Aryan super-men were the same as the Nordic super-men, and that their home was in Germany, as could easily be proved from the pages of Tacitus. It was implied that from Germany had come all that was Aryan or Nordic or really valuable in the population of other countries, and that, therefore, the Aryan Nordic Germans were the salt of the earth. This view, which grew up insensibly from the hypothesis of Penka and others, was caught hold of by those who were wishing to transform the peaceful Alpine German into an aggressive militarist, and in its full absurdity was given to the world by a renegade Englishman, Herr Houston Chamberlain.[432]

Now, as we have seen, the original Wiros, though they had their good points, had by no means a monopoly of the virtues, and were enabled to spread their tongues largely by their incapacity and unwillingness to learn the speech of others. The Nordic is a picturesque and romantic figure, with many admirable qualities, but is seldom clever, skilful with his hands or patient in research. Lastly, an examination of the physical types, as they exist to-day in Germany, shows us that outside the former kingdom of Hanover, the Nordic type is rare.[433] There are probably as many pure Nordics in France, distributed over the northern departments from Dunkirk almost to the west of Brittany, as will be found in the German empire. There is this difference only between the populations of the two countries. In Germany the fair colouring of the Nordic element seems to be a dominant character over the relatively dark pigmentation of the Alpine; so we meet with a majority of people having broad Alpine heads but fair Nordic colouration. In France, on the other hand, there is a large Mediterranean element, surviving from neolithic days, and the brunette colouring of this race is more dominant than the blondness of the Nordic. As all three types have mingled in France, fair hair is less frequently found among those with broad heads.

The use made of the Aryan Nordic equation by German political propagandists has inclined, French and, to some extent, English writers, to reject this view. This objection has been in a large measure due to misunderstandings, and in any case it is unscientific to allow national and political prejudices to influence our opinions on such questions.

If, then, we agree with Penka that there must have been an original Aryan race, or, as we shall call them, Wiros, it is important to ascertain what part of the world it was, from which these languages spread to Ireland and Bengal. This is the problem of the Aryan cradle.

In the early days of the hypothesis students noted that Sanskrit was the most archaic of the languages, and forgetting that the Vedic hymns were composed 1000 or 1500 /B.C./, while the earliest Greek literature dated from 800 or 900 /B.C./, there was a tendency to derive the whole group from North India.[434] Subsequently, when the close connection between Sanskrit and Zend, the ancient Persian tongue, was recognised, and it was realised that the Vedic folk were recent arrivals in the Punjab when the Vedic hymns were being composed, the Aryan cradle was removed to the region watered by the Oxus and the Jaxartes, and the slopes of the Hindu Kush.[435]

Here the cradle remained for a long time. Pott, hypnotised by his aphorism _ex oriente lux_, drew a wonderful picture of the westward advance of the Wiros from their eastern home. Others filled in, largely from their own imaginations, the remaining details. And so we get the mid-nineteenth century view of these Aryan super-men, with a language containing potentialities of all that is fine in literature, with a social organisation and morality which was to reform benighted Europe, worshipping deities which were the products either of solar or chthonic myths or of diseases of language, setting forth from the western slopes of the Himalayan _massif_, urged on “by an irresistible impulse” towards the setting sun, migrating westward and ever westward, carrying their wives and families in the famous Aryan cart provided for them by a distinguished anthropologist.[436] Such was the view unanimously held by all Europe, and which figures still in too many text-books. One man only was left crying in the wilderness, or at least in the steppe, and he was an Englishman. As Hehn[437] wrote in 1874, “so it came to pass that in England, the native land of fads, there chanced to enter into the head of an eccentric individual the notion of placing the cradle of the Aryan race in Europe.”

Those of us who live “in that land of fads” may well be proud of Dr. Latham, who advanced these views in 1851, and subsequently enlarged upon them.[438] In due course nearly all other philologists followed suit, and Max-Müller alone was unrepentent, and as late as 1887 wrote “I should still say, as I said forty years ago, ‘Somewhere in Asia,’ and no more.”[439] But by then the Asiatic cradle had gone to the limbo of exploded hypotheses.

In 1868 Benfey, in a preface to Fick’s work,[440] acknowledged the value of Latham’s protests, and, arguing for the first time from the type of evidence known as linguistic palæontology, advocated a European as distinguished from an Asiatic cradle, and suggested, as Latham had done earlier, the region north of the Black Sea. He was followed in 1871 by Geiger,[441] who with national pride wished to prove that the super-man had always lived in the plain of North Germany, to which, some years later, Piètrement[442] retorted by suggesting that Geiger’s arguments would apply equally well to the neighbourhood of Lake Balkash and the Ala-tau mountains.

In the same year in which Geiger’s work appeared Cuno made a notable contribution to the hypothesis.[443] He contended that the original undivided Wiros were not a small clan, but must have been a numerous, nomad pastoral people, inhabiting an extensive steppe region. For the evolution of the parent tongue with its elaborate grammar a long period, several thousands of years, must have been needed, and during this time the Wiros must have moved freely over the area of the cradle, having frequent intercourse with one another, but little or none with outsiders. These conditions, he thought, could only be obtained on a vast plain, undivided by lofty mountain barriers or impassable forests; this cradle must have been in a temperate climate, tolerably uniform in character, where there would have been ample room for the growth of a numerous people. Such an area can only be found in the great plain of Northern Europe, stretching from the north of France to the Ural mountains.

Further investigation has shown that much of this plain was filled with dense forests and impassable morasses, but that the open steppe begins in Russia, and extends uninterruptedly to the slopes of the Hindu Kush, with certain westward prolongations, especially the sandy heaths to the north of the Carpathians, stretching from the Russian steppe, across Galicia, to the neighbourhood of Breslau. North of this, too, is a belt of parkland, opening on to the steppe, where nomad herdsmen could drive their cattle when the grass of the steppe became burnt up. Here, it would seem, was an area which would meet the needs of the linguistic palæontologist, and it was in this region that the Aryan cradle was placed by Dr. Schrader in 1883,[444] and here it has remained without opposition until quite recently.

During the last few months there has appeared the first volume of the Cambridge History of India, to which Dr. Peter Giles had contributed a chapter on the Aryans.[445] In this, in which he has repeated his suggestion that these people should in future be called Wiros, he has put forward views which differ in material respects from those hitherto held. His suggestion is, in fact, that the Aryan cradle is to be sought for in the plain of Hungary.

In contradistinction to views previously advanced, he believes that the original Wiros were settled agriculturists and not nomad herdsmen.[446] He bases this conclusion, apparently, on the fact that they knew of corn. A careful study of all the evidence on this subject collected by Schrader[447] convinces me, however, that it is far from certain that the undivided Wiros were acquainted with cultivated grain, for the terms used, few if any of which run through all the languages, may well apply to wild grain, and oats grow wild on the Russian steppe,[448] and may well have been used as food for man and beast. Moreover it is not an unknown thing for nomad people to grow scratch crops of grain. Such crops of barley I have myself seen grown by nomad Bedawin in the clay deserts behind Alexandria. The steppe-folk, too, like most nomads, were probably in the habit of making occasional raids on the settled lands on their margin, and we have actual evidence that this occurred. We know also that settled cultivators were living both at Tripolje and at Anau on the edge of the steppe. The original Wiro word for grain might well be the name they used for this kind of booty, nor need we exclude the possibility that when times were hard they acquired grain by trade from their settled neighbours, as Abraham, a nomad steppe-man, purchased corn from Egypt. The argument from the words for grain seems indecisive, and the balance of the evidence cited by Schrader seems in favour of a nomad existence.

Dr. Giles feels that “the close similarity between the various languages spoken by them would lead us to infer that they must have lived for long in a severely circumscribed area, so that their peculiarities developed for many generations in common.”[449] This, as we have seen, was Cuno’s idea, and is an eminently sound conclusion. But Dr. Giles would see in this circumscribed area one surrounded with a ring of mountains, while Cuno thought that it demanded an extensive steppe. The difference between the two views seems to depend upon whether the Wiros were nomad or settled, and I have already given reasons for believing them to have been nomads.

Dr. Giles objects to the steppe-cradle. He gives as his reason that this region has not on the whole the characteristics required by the conclusions drawn from linguistic palæontology;[450] on the other hand Schrader, who has studied this side of philology more exhaustively than most inquirers, believes that the conditions are fulfilled.[451] Neither argument is perhaps conclusive, and both deserve serious attention; the decision must rest upon evidence drawn from those other sciences which deal with the far past.

We have found reason for believing that in neolithic days the Russian steppe east of the Dnieper was inhabited by a nomad steppe-folk, who had domesticated horses and cattle, and perhaps sheep. As they lived on a plain they had probably not met with the goat, which is a mountain beast, and it is to be noted that the name for goat varies in nearly all the Wiro languages.[452] These nomad steppe-folk, who buried their dead in a contracted position covered with red ochre under kurgans or barrows, were, we believe, Nordic or proto-Nordic in type, and some, at least, of their skeletons remind us of the Brünn-Brux-Combe Capelle type,[453] who hunted horses in late Aurignacian and Solutrean times.

The state of civilisation and the area of distribution of those nomad steppe-folk exactly corresponds with the requirements of the early Wiros as postulated by Schrader, though it differs in some respects from those demanded by Giles. On the other hand, in Magdalenian and Azilian times, and perhaps during the earlier phases of the neolithic age, the ancestors of these people may well have lived in the Hungarian plain, and we have seen how some of them survived in Switzerland, at Chamblandes, well into neolithic times.[454]

It is possible, then, that the circumscribed area, though not the settled agricultural condition, demanded by Dr. Giles, may have been true in the later phases of the upper palæolithic age. This, however, he will not agree to, for he is persuaded that the _hiatus_, assumed by the earlier archæologists, still exists, and that the upper palæolithic age, as well as the lower, preceded the last ice age and belongs to a very remote past.

Some archæologists, it is true, still hold to these views, and this inflated chronology has not yet been abandoned by all. During the last few years, however, the shorter dating[455] has become more generally accepted, and this brings the whole of the neanthropic period into relatively recent times, and gives us a continuous history from the Aurignacian period to the present day. If Dr. Giles could be persuaded to accept these more modern views on palæolithic chronology, many of his difficulties would be removed, and he might agree to place the Hungarian cradle of the Wiros in the latter part of the upper palæolithic age.

Dr. Giles raises objections also to the continuity of the Russio-Turkestan steppe, and maintains that a connection between South Russia and the east, north of the Black Sea, would have been impossible.[456] He is, therefore, disposed to take the Wiros to Persia and India by way of Asia Minor.

The great objection which he cites to the northern passage is the existence of the barren Ust Urt desert. Also the fact that the Caspian has steadily been becoming more shallow and contracting in area. These two points, if true, to some extent contradict one another. It is true, doubtless, that at one time the Caspian had covered a greatly extended area, but it is not so clear that its contraction has been a steady progress. We have already seen, from the evidence cited by Ellsworth Huntington,[457] that this contraction and expansion has probably been intermittent. In any case, the contraction has been due to light rainfall, and it is this light rainfall which has produced the desert condition of the Ust Urt. When the Caspian expanded, it was because of increased precipitation, when such parts of the Ust Urt as were not inundated would have been a grassy steppe.

Dr. Giles suggests that at one time the Caspian and Aral seas were one great inland sea, and that such was at one time the case is implied by extracts from the writings of Herodotus.[458] But though this was almost certainly the case during periods of relatively heavy rainfall, the level would have to have risen well above the 200 metre contour to have obstructed the passage between the Russian and Turkestan steppes. Such a rise is quite unthinkable during the last 6000 years, for had the surface been raised 220 feet above the present sea level the Caspio-Aral Sea would have been connected with the Euxine.[459] Even had the impossible occurred and the 200 metre contour been reached it would have been quite easy to pass from one steppe area to another, by crossing the southern slopes of the Urals, which are raised very little above the plain and would form no obstacle to nomad tribes.

The Anatolian passage was by no means an easy route to the east, for had the Wiros kept to the north they would have found difficulty in crossing the Armenian mountains; further south they would have come into contact with the peoples of Mesopotamia, and we should have found evidence of their presence. That some of them passed this way about 2200 /B.C./ we have already seen, but others had passed eastwards earlier, apparently by a different route, for otherwise it is difficult to account for the presence of the Kassites on the Iranian plateau in the time of Hammurabi. The complete absence of any evidence of a movement eastward from the Hungarian plain in neolithic days, and the fact that any such movement would have been compelled to cross the area occupied by the settled Tripolje-folk, seem to be fatal to the literal acceptance of this hypothesis.

Taking all factors, anthropological and archæological, geographical and linguistic, into consideration, and in spite of the difference in opinion expressed by Dr. Giles, whose authority to pronounce on the linguistic data all must acknowledge, I am venturing to identify the nomad steppe-folk with the primitive Wiros, while admitting the possibility that the beginnings of their language may date back to Magdalenian and Azilian times, when they may have been living surrounded by the Carpathian ring.

/Chapter XIII/

P’S AND Q’S

We have seen that with one notable exception, little attempt has been made to explain the early history of the Wiros since 1889, and the position of the Aryan hypothesis has remained stationary.[460] It is true that fresh evidences of such languages have been discovered in the uplands of Asia, and a new group, known as Tocharian,[461] have been identified. Certain affinities to the group have also been noted in the Hittite language, which has been claimed by some writers to be a true Wiro tongue.[462] But this view has not received general acceptance. Little use, however, has been made of this fresh evidence towards solving the problem of the Aryan cradle.

But early in 1891 an important communication was made to the Philological Society by Professor, afterwards Sir, John Rhys.[463] This paper raised a storm of hostile criticism, especially in Germany,[464] and its conclusions have not found favour in philological circles. As, however, some of Sir John’s conclusions coincide in certain particulars with the reconstruction offered in the previous pages, based on other evidence, the thesis demands reconsideration.

To summarise briefly, Rhys pointed out that the Celtic languages, now confined to the north-western fringe of Europe, fell naturally into two well-defined groups. One of these, the Gaelic, or as he preferred to call it the Goidelic, was spoken in Ireland, North-West Scotland and the Isle of Man. The other, formerly called Cymric, but by Rhys styled Brythonic, was spoken in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. There are several marked differences between these two groups of languages, the most important being that the C in the Goidelic, which represents an earlier Q or Qu, is replaced in Brythonic by a P or perhaps a B. Thus the Celtic languages fall into two well-defined groups which may be called the Q and P dialects.

Rhys pointed out, too, that in the Italian peninsula the same phenomenon appeared. In Latin, and the dialects most closely allied to it, Q or Qu was found, while in the Umbrian forms of speech, used over the greater part of the peninsula this sound was replaced by P. Thus there were Q and P dialects in Italy also.

He further pointed out that the Greek language, with certain exceptions, was a true P dialect, for the Latin _equus_ corresponded to the Greek ἱππὁς. He suggested, however, that the Ionic dialect used by Herodotus and Hippocrates, which frequently had a κ where the standard Greek had a π,[465] was a descendant of a form of Q speech, but that the Qu had degenerated into κ, as it had into C in Goidelic.

Further, he pointed out that the Q dialects, Goidelic, Latin and Ionic Greek, formed so to speak an outer ring, while Brythonic, Umbrian and standard Greek lay within them. He argued from this that these tongues had spread in two waves from a common centre, which he fixed in the mountain zone of Central Europe, and thence the Q tongues had spread by invasion, to be followed some few centuries later by a second invasion of P people, who had driven the Q people further from the original home.

He suggested that the change of Q into P had been effected by a conquering group of aliens, who had adopted the Wiro tongue from their subjects, but retained some details of the phonological laws of their original language, which accounted for this labialisation. He further suggested that these alien invaders were the Alpine inhabitants of the Swiss lake-dwellings.[466]

This paper was received with hostile criticism and derision, especially by some German students of Celtic tongues.[467] It had little better reception in France, and the British and Irish Celtic scholars, with a few exceptions, treated the idea with contempt. The theory has never received the consideration and fair criticism which a paper from so eminent an authority on Celtic languages deserved.

The main facts as to the Celtic and Italic dialects are not in dispute. There can be no question that in both of those areas both Q and P groups are or were in existence, and that the Q are in the outer and the P in the inner ring. With regard to Greek however, the case is different, and it is generally considered that the dialect of Herodotus and Hippocrates is purely local and not necessarily primitive, and it has been pointed out that had the original Ionic dialect been a Q tongue, signs of this would have been apparent in Homer. It is also becoming more common to consider Greek as having closer affinities with Persian than with Italic or Celtic, though one wonders whether this connection is not being exaggerated as the pendulum swings from the over-estimated resemblance formerly recognised between the two languages of the Classical world.

We must, however, agree that the Greek part of Rhys’ hypothesis will not stand, at least without considerable emendation, nor have we found from our archæological investigations any reasons for believing that the Alpine inhabitants of the Swiss lake-dwellings over-ran as conquerors the surrounding regions. The evidence, in fact, points in an opposite direction. The deletion of these two points is not fatal to the hypothesis, and we may still consider that there is, on philological evidence, a _prima-facie_ reason for believing that from somewhere in Central Europe, from the area which we have termed the Celtic cradle, two waves of invaders, of Wiro speech if not of Wiro race, set out in various directions, that the Q was the earlier and the P the later, and that both entered Italy and the Celtic lands.

We may further admit the possibility or even the probability, that an alien element, not necessarily non-Wiro, had entered the Celtic cradle before the departure of the second wave, and that it was to this alien element that the labialisation was due. Lastly, we may admit that, though evidence of the Q wave into Greece is non-proven, there is no doubt of the arrival of the P people, but these P people spoke a tongue showing greater affinities with Iranian speech, especially in their names for weapons and other warlike paraphernalia,[468] than is to be recognised in the other P tongues.

Now we have seen from the study of archæological evidence that the men of the leaf-shaped sword passed at one time into Italy, where they settled near Lake Fucino, and a little later some entered the Celtic lands of the west, while earlier a few adventurers reached Greek lands. Later some refugees from the mountain zone reached many parts of France and the British Isles. All these seem to have come from the same Celtic cradle and to have been of the same racial type or, to speak more accurately, types. Later still, we have seen that the Koban folk, who had learned the use of iron in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus, returned to the Danube valley, after which some of them entered Greece as Dorians, while others entered Italy with the Villa-nova culture and a third group pursued their predecessors over all parts of France except the Seine valley. It seems possible, if not probable, that these two waves of invasions may have been those which brought Q and P speech respectively into these different parts of Europe. If this equation be accepted, the main features of Sir John Rhys’ hypothesis have been proved. But it will not be wise to jump too hastily to a conclusion, for the fact that there were two waves of invaders and two of Wiro dialects may be only a coincidence. We must attempt to apply a confirmatory test.

In Greece we have seen that Casson has shown good cause why we should believe that the advance of the men with the iron sword should be equated with the Dorian invasion. The Dorians spoke a P dialect and may well have been the first to introduce such a tongue into Greece. We have seen how Rhys’ view that Q dialects survive in the writings of Herodotus and Hippocrates is open to question, but we have also noted that Wace had equally questioned the “Achæan” invasion proposed by Ridgeway. I have already put forward an amended scheme for the latter, and suggested the arrival of only a few Nordic adventurers. Had these been Wiros of Q speech, they could not, owing to the paucity of their numbers, have imposed their tongue upon their subjects. If, therefore, we accept the equation for Greek lands, we need not expect to find evidence of the survival of Q speech in Greece in the fifth century.

But I have suggested that these “Achæan” adventurers were stragglers from the band of Nordics who were responsible for the Phrygian invasion of Asia Minor. If the equation, which we are endeavouring to prove, were true, we should expect that the Phrygian language was of the Q form. Unfortunately we know little of the Phrygian tongue even in the palmy days of Athens, still less of its form in the thirteenth century.

All philologists are agreed that with the language of Thrace it formed the Thraco-Phrygian group, from which, according to some philologists, modern Albanian is derived. Dacian is also believed to have belonged to the same group. Some years ago Dr. Tomaschek collected together, from Greek and Latin sources, all the words which might be considered as belonging to this group, but most of these are place-names or names of plants. This is not very satisfactory material for our purpose, for place-names may have been inherited from the previous inhabitants, while names of plants may be loan words. Further than this most of the words have been preserved by Greek writers, and there is no Q in the Greek language. Still I have thought it well to search through the lists compiled by Tomaschek, and though the result is, perhaps, not very convincing, the presence of such words as καναρος, κενθος, Quimedava or κουιμε-δαβα, Coila or Cuila, κερκινη, and several others certainly hints that the Thraco-Phrygian tongues may have been Q dialects.[469]

The arguments from the east, while they do not in any way contradict our equation, and may even be said to give it some support, are not quite decisive; at any rate something more conclusive is desirable. It is useless to look for this in the west, in Celtic lands, for our documentary evidence scarcely antedates the time of Julius Cæsar, or, at any rate, such earlier evidence as we possess is both meagre and uncertain. Finally all the evidence has been the subject of dispute, on almost every item differences of opinion have been expressed, and we have no sure or unquestioned data on which to depend. The controversy has also, unhappily, become associated with other differences of opinion.

It will be well, then, to leave for a time the consideration of the Celtic evidence, and to endeavour to test our equation without reference to the linguistic data of the west. There remains, then, only one other area in which to search for our confirmatory test, the Italian peninsula.

Professor Conway[470] has given us to understand that the Osco-Umbrian dialects, which were P languages, were spoken throughout Italy from Umbria southwards, and doubtless, if we may judge from the statement of Herodotus already quoted, as far north as the foot-hills of the Alps, before the Gauls had invaded the valley of the Po. The only exceptions to this spread of these dialects were Etruria, or the greater portion of it, and a part of Latium, in which Latin dialects of the Q type were spoken. These Latin dialects, Conway tells us, were spoken by the Latini, the Marsi, the Æqui, the Hernici, the Falisci, who dwelt within the borders of Etruria, and to some extent by the Sabini.[471]

The linguistic position of the Sabines seems uncertain. In the passage quoted Conway enumerates them among the tribes who spoke Q dialects, but later on, when mentioning some of those who had P speech, he adds in a footnote that perhaps Sabine should be included among these. The position of the Sabine tongue is then uncertain. If this were so, the same uncertainty may apply to the Faliscans, for little if anything is known directly of their dialect, but Conway states that it is “certain that they were akin to the Sabines across the Tiber, and that their city was subdued and governed by the Etruscans.”[472]

This leaves us with four tribes, who undoubtedly spoke Q languages, the Latini, Marsi, Æqui, and Hernici. The area occupied by them is only roughly indicated by Conway, but I gather that he agrees with the boundaries delineated by Kiepert.[473] The map given in Fig. 26 gives these bounds, and it will be seen that in many respects the region they occupy agrees with the area in which all the Italian leaf-shaped swords have been found. There are, however, certain marked differences.

Out of nine swords of Type D, four are found within the area of Q speech, and one at Sulmona, only just outside and within the area of Sabine speech. One is a stray, found somewhere in Apulia, and three, together with one of Type C, have been found not far from Lake Trasimene. The solitary sword of Type B, found at Ascoli, seems only to indicate that the line of approach was from the east.

Thus it seems that there is a fair equation between the swords and Q speech, but the latter must have been driven from the Trasimene region, and pushed westward in the Sabine area. Of the former presence and subsequent disappearances of the Q speech from the Trasimene region we have no evidence, but we have seen that the Etruscans arrived later than the leaf-shaped sword people and with a superior culture. We have also found reason for suspecting that the Villa-nova folk, who arrived still later, had made themselves a military aristocracy over the Etruscans, and the conquest or expulsion may have been due to them. We have seen that the Falisci, a tribe with Sabine affinities, were absorbed by the Etruscans. There is nothing inherently impossible in the same fate having overtaken the leaf-shaped sword people who had settled in the region around Lake Trasimene.

But with regard to the westward move of the Q peoples, and to the suggestion that they were driven from what was later Sabine territory, we are not dependent wholly upon conjecture, for Dionysius of Halicarnassus tells us that the tribes who occupied the region around Rome, after the barbarian Siculi, were the Aborigines.[474] Whether this term conveyed to Dionysius the same meaning as it does to us, or whether it was a corruption of a tribal name as some have thought,[475] does not concern us here. It is sufficient for our purpose that he mentions that their original home lay to the east, in the valley of the Velino and its tributary the Salto, which drains Lake Fucino. He mentions by name many of their cities, and describes the position of most of them. The sites of the majority have been identified, though some yet remain unknown. Judging by what can be ascertained of their position, we gather that the Aborigines occupied the Salto valley from Marruvium, on the shores of Lake Fucino, as far as Reatæ, where it joins the Velino, and thence to the junction of the latter with the Nera. One of their cities, Batia, lay considerably to the north, across the Apennines, in the direction of Ascoli, where the Type B sword was found. How far the territory of the Aborigines stretched towards Lake Trasimene is uncertain, as the sites of some of their towns remain unidentified, but several of them lay in that direction, outside the later area of Q speech, but in Sabine territory.

Dionysius tells us that one night the Sabines issued from Amiternum and seized Liste, the capital of the Aborigines, who retired to Reatæ, whence they endeavoured to recapture it.[476] They appear to have been successful eventually in recovering the land around Lake Fucino, but would seem to have lost the territory to the north-west around Reatæ. About the same time many of them migrated south-westwards to the lands around Rome.[477] As one of their original cities had been called Palatium it seems likely that it was they who gave its name to the Palatine Hill.

The general agreement between the area in which we find the leaf-shaped swords, the area occupied by the Aborigines before the Sabine expedition, and the area of Q speech, suggests that these three are one especially as there is a progressive abandonment of the north-western portion and a movement towards the south-west near the mouth of the Tiber. My suggestion is that the Aborigines were the descendants of the leaf-shaped sword people and the ancestors of the Q speaking Latin peoples of later days.

Umbrian speech, though it extended towards the south-east and surrounded the Latin tongues, is found mainly on the north-east of the Apennines, and seems to have come from that direction; before the advent of the Gauls it reached, as we have seen, to the foot of the Alps. This is the region in which we find the chief remains of the Villa-nova culture, which is not unlike that of the Dorians, so that it seems reasonable to equate this culture with the Osco-Umbrian or P dialects.

The Sabines, as we have seen, are said to have come from Amiternum, which is on the north-eastern slope of the Apennines, or rather in a valley which opens out on that side. We should, therefore, expect them to have been a P people. But, according to Dionysius, they over-ran a region peopled by the Aborigines, who we have found reason for thinking were a Q people, and, though doubtless they expelled the fighting men, a good number are likely to have remained behind. It is not surprising, therefore, that there should be some uncertainty as to whether the original Sabines spoke a P or a Q dialect.

All the Italian evidence is consistent with the view that the men of the leaf-shaped sword were Q speaking, while the men with the iron sword spoke P tongues, but before we come finally to a decision, it might be well to make a further test elsewhere. We have seen that the refugees from the mountain zone, armed with Type G swords, fled down the Rhone, the Loire, and the Seine, and that, while the men with the iron swords pursued them down the two former valleys, they left the Seine valley alone. Sir John Rhys and his supporters have suggested that Q speech was at one time spoken in Gaul, and have cited certain place-names in support of their case.[478] The value of this evidence has been disputed, but there is one name, in two forms, which so obviously belongs to Q speech, that its value cannot well be denied, and this is _Sequana_, the ancient name for the Seine, and _Sequani_, the tribe who lived by its banks. It cannot be merely a coincidence that the best attested Q names have been noted just where Type G swords are found not followed by iron swords, and this case, bearing out as it does the general tenour of the Italian evidence, seems to me to be conclusive.

I would submit, therefore, that the archæological evidence, which I have given in this and in previous chapters, proves, as conclusively as the circumstances of the case are likely to admit, that the thesis of Sir John Rhys that two waves of people left Central Europe for Italy and the west, the first speaking a Q and the second a P tongue, is absolutely correct, though modifications need to be made in the application of this theory to Greek lands. His view that the P Folk were the people of the Swiss lake-dwellings we have seen good reason to reject.

/Chapter XIV/

THE WANDERINGS OF THE WIROS

I have now cited almost all the evidence which I have collected to solve the question of the Aryan cradle and the dispersal of the Wiros from Central Europe, especially of their raids into the Celtic lands of the west. Except for a few details I have found myself in agreement with other writers, sometimes with this, at others with that authority. This is not surprising, for so many shots have been made, often at random, and without sufficient evidence, that it would be strange if some of them had not hit the mark.

Thus with Penka I have argued for an Aryan race, which was Nordic in type, with Cuno that the primitive Wiro language developed on an open plain, which, with Latham and Schrader, I have placed on the Russian steppe. I have found myself in agreement with Sir John Rhys on the main features of his thesis that the Q and P Wiros left Central Europe in two successive waves, and I have argued that the Q Wiros were armed with bronze leaf-shaped swords. This last suggestion has already been hazarded in this country by Crawford,[479] though backed up with inadequate evidence, and in France by M. Hubert,[480] with whose evidence I am unacquainted, as his work dealing with the subject has not appeared as I write.

But in all these cases I have endeavoured to support my argument, not merely with philological data, as has been the case with most of my predecessors, but with evidence drawn from anthropology and archæology. The evidence from the Italian swords, backed up as it is by the absence of Hallstatt iron swords from the Seine valley, seems so decisive that I feel that the equation of the Q peoples with the spread of the bronze swords is beyond dispute.

But if this general reconstruction of the early history of the Wiro movements is to be considered correct, in outline at least, it must be shown that it will fit in with all the linguistic evidence available; at any rate that it is not incompatible with it. For that reason I propose in this chapter to summarise briefly, as I conceive them, the wanderings of the Wiros over Europe and Asia, from their first departure from south-east Europe.