Chapter XII: The Coming of the Indo-Europeans

Said Max Müller in his _Biographies of Words_: "I have declared again and again that, if I say Aryan, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language. The same applies to Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts, and Slavs. When I speak of them I commit myself to no anatomical characteristics. The blue-eyed and fair-haired Scandinavians may have been conquerors or conquered, they may have adopted the language of their darker lords or their subjects, or vice versa. I assert nothing beyond their language.... To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar."

We may well take this warning to heart, and remember that the first and most noticeable, if not the one essential, characteristic of the Aryans was their language. For the sake of convenience and clearness, and of avoiding misunderstanding or prejudice, we will use the word Indo-European for the whole group of languages to which Müller applied the word Aryan. These languages fall into two great divisions or branches: (1) the Indian and Iranian (Persian), which we will call Aryan; and (2) the European branch, including Greek, Latin, German, Slavic, and others. Our first question is: what inferences can we safely draw from a study and comparison of these different European and Asiatic languages? Evidently they have all sprung from a parent language no longer adequately represented by any one of them. They have all been considerably or greatly modified during the lapse of time. They, and others whose names we have omitted, are all sister languages descended or developed from a parent language which must once have been spoken by a people, very probably representing a mixture of races, having a definite local habitation, cradle, or home. Here the language originated as the expression of a certain culture or civilization, and from this region, large or small, it spread into Persia and India and throughout Europe. The wide spread of the language testifies to the superiority in some important respects of either language, culture, people, or all three. We may well recognize two homes, the first, original cradle of the language and culture, and the second homeland, far more extensive, over which the original language, probably with well-marked dialects, was used just before the final separation and dispersal.

In its distribution from India to western Europe it must often have wandered far from its original home. Its introducers must often have been few compared with the large and dense populations among which they came. The Aryans could have been hardly more than a handful among the peoples of India. Something similar may be said of its introduction into Europe about the close of the Neolithic period. Middle Europe was at this time fairly well populated, at least in its more fertile regions. The bearers of the new language must have represented a ruling, conquering, or otherwise very influential class, else it would never have been accepted by the mass of the people.

When the original or modified Indo-European language, perhaps in several distinct dialects, was introduced into Europe, it was carried to peoples of several or many stocks and languages. These had to learn and acquire it as we acquire a foreign language, but only as a spoken, unwritten language. Probably no one of them acquired it exactly in its original form. It was almost impossible for them to pronounce all its consonants or combinations, its "shibboleths." They retained much of the stress and accent and more of the cadence of their own tongue. Similarly at a far later date Latin developed into the various Romance Languages of modern Europe.

Under the new conditions content and meanings changed as well as forms of language. Words little used in the new home, especially names of objects, might easily be lost, while others would be replaced by favorite apt words from the aboriginal language. A name might be applied to a new object and thus change its meaning. To cite a familiar modern instance, the robin redbreast of America is quite a different bird from that of England. For a long time it was supposed that the occurrence of the root of the word "beech" in the European languages proved beyond doubt that the language must have originated in a region where the beech-tree was common. But the Greek word derived from the same root means oak; a similar, perhaps not the same, root word in Kurdish means elm. Our knowledge of the original meaning of the word is very uncertain. Through all the languages there runs a single word for weaving or plaiting, but whether the original word referred to the weaving of cloth or to the plaiting of mats or baskets we do not know.

The work of discovering and restoring the original language is difficult and far from finished. But the comparative philologists or "linguistic paleontologists" have established certain facts, or at least theories, on which we may rely with a fair degree of confidence. We find names for all the most important domestic animals, including the horse. There are words for the wagon, its wheels, and various other parts. Words for tillage and land cultivation agree in the Western branch, but are far less noticeable in the Aryan languages. Here the vocabulary is rather that of the herdsman. This seems to allow us to conclude that, when Eastern and Western branches separated, and probably long before that time, the Eastern people were herdsmen paying slight attention to agriculture: the Western predominantly tillers of the ground.

The linguist, as we have already seen, is frequently or usually unable to discover the exact meaning of the word in the original language, and hence is uncertain as to the degree of development of any art or technique. But the culture, as far as discovered, seems to be that of the average of Neolithic peoples, perhaps fairly well represented by that of the Swiss lake-dwellers. It may have varied in different areas or provinces. The language seems to represent most clearly features of the undivided life and settlement of the people or peoples when it had spread over a wide territory and become the property of a large population, otherwise it would be impossible to explain the successive great waves of Indo-European migration. The cradle where the language originated and took form must have been far more limited and the culture simpler.

The original language contains words for summer and winter, ice and snow; it tells of a fairly cold climate. They had a common word for metal, probably copper, hence they were living together after the introduction of this metal. They lived in villages apparently surrounded by a hedge or wall, or some sort of fortification.

The family was decidedly patriarchal. Of the older mother-right scarcely more than traces remain, survivals from an older alien culture. The goddess is no longer supreme. A new divinity, a sky-god, or sun-god, or manifestation of light or brightness had already appeared--the Greek Zeus, Latin Ju-piter, with the same root appearing in all the languages. The earth-goddess is not banished, but remains as consort of the male divinity. The supreme divinity of the religious cult is no longer local. There is in it an element or germ of universality overleaping all provincial boundaries, in many respects a vast improvement over the old Neolithic religions. It generally held its own, but only by adopting much from the older native religions on which it was superimposed, as was the case in Greece.

Indo-Europeanism must have had something to recommend it and make it highly attractive to enable it to spread so fast and far. The language itself, while apparently somewhat clumsy, was certainly rich in conceptions and shades of expression. The clearness and beauty of the religious cult may have attracted some, though this seems doubtful. All these features are inadequate to explain the rapidity and extent of its spread. We must leave this problem for the present.

Even the original language frequently describes the same object or even action by words having very different roots. It shows great variety in synonyms and inflections. Feist compares it with English and considers it a "mixed language" almost from the start, and many facts seem to favor this view. This does not surprise us when we remember that its growth and development were late, during the latter half of Neolithic time, when great movements and minglings of people were taking place and long routes of trade and communication had opened.

The date of the earliest migrations of Indo-European peoples is roughly indicated by the presence of a word for metal, probably copper, in the original undivided language. Aryan names appear in western Asia about 1400 or 1500 B. C. Meyer says that the Achæans had arrived in the southern Balkans as early as 2000 B. C. and reached Greece about 1200 or 1300 B. C.; the Dorians followed about 1100 B. C. We can hardly be far from the truth if we consider that they were in their original home until about 2000 B. C., and that the separation began very soon after. Their development was a product of the Neolithic period, their spread was the striking event of earliest historic times.

Inasmuch as their migrations are so recent, especially when compared with those of the Semites, it ought to be possible for us to discover certain traits which they brought with them from the homeland. The Achæans had apparently marched southward from Hungary or thereabouts through the Balkans into Greece, arriving there not far from 1200 B. C. They did not come in one invading horde but in successive waves, each crowding the other before it. Behind the Achæans came the Dorians, behind them were the Thracians and other wayfarers. Their unit of organization was the band, brotherhood, or clan, each with its own leader, reminding us of the Scotch clans of a century or two ago. They came with their horses and carts, perhaps with war-chariots. They were the "horse-taming" Achæans. They were youthful, red-blooded, irresponsible and irresistible, careless, untamed barbarians, swaggering in from hard battles and long campaigns, having seen the manners and tested the might of many peoples. They came in contact with ancient, settled, staid, conservative Pelasgic wealth and culture. They were the rough riders of their day. They were hard drinkers and fighters; loud, boastful talkers, good-natured if not opposed; good "mixers."

Their chieftains married the princesses of the old régime, who seem to have held the right of succession in the kingdom or city-state. The wooing was rough and more or less forceful; but I suspect that the princesses yielded not altogether unwillingly, even if the course of true love did not always continue to run smooth in after years. They married their gods to the goddesses of the land, and made little further interference with the old Ægean religion or popular life.

In comparison with the native peoples who had builded Tiryns and Mycenæ the Achæans were probably few, scattered over Greece. They probably robbed the subject peoples with one hand, but with the other they defended them against the forays of sea-pirates and other enemies. They were no worse than former native rulers, far better watch-dogs of the city, attractive leaders of an admiring crowd, the best possible missionaries of a new culture and language. They turned the old Neolithic world upside down. Evolution had brought revolution: old things passed away and, for a time, all things became new. We cannot easily overestimate the extent and importance of the change.

The leaders, and naturally their followers to a less degree, show clearly the characteristics of the new era, which Wundt has called the Age of Heroes in distinction from the Age of Totemism and the iron supremacy of tribal custom. The chief feature was the rise, development, and dominance of individual personality in the leaders and the enthusiastic, individual loyalty of the members of the brotherhood or clan. Up to this time the individual has been entirely submerged in the customs and culture of the tribe, whose control has been mostly in the hands of the old men and the priests; now the young warrior and champion has grasped the reins. In all Homer's pictures the ranks of the common people, however firm, count for little. The battle is won in single, hand-to-hand combat by the leader--a dour giant of an Ajax, a dashing Menelaus, "good at the rescue," a crafty Ulysses, a heroic Hector. The wisdom of old Nestor is endured with kindly tolerance, hardly with enthusiasm. It is an age of young men with all their virtues and vices. But every leader is a distinctly marked individual; no two are alike.

City-states are beginning to appear, but their success depends very largely on the wisdom and power of the ruler, who seems at first to be largely irresponsible, a despot in the ancient sense of the word. It is anything but a true democracy, but it is government by the élite of their day and world. The new era or _Zeitgeist_ is putting its stamp on all its peoples. Homer's description of the Achæans would apply almost equally well to the Celts when they first appear in history; and kindred spirits are marching and fighting in India and Persia. All seem to represent a new type which all brought from the common homeland.

The chieftains, with this clan or brotherhood of warlike followers, came into a country occupied by agriculturists or peasants unused and untrained to war, such as we have found in the Mediterranean region and in most of northern Europe. Conquest was usually easy and left little bitterness. There was no national consciousness or pride to arouse resistance. It was a totally different kind of invasion from that of nomadic Semites in Asia, or of Mongols into Europe. It came almost as a new movement, a renaissance for which the people were ready. Celt and Greek alike were usually absorbed and lost in the masses of the people to whom they came. Physically they produced little permanent change in the people with whom they mingled. They seem to have accepted fully as much as they contributed, and may often have received credit for many improvements which they really had little share in bringing about.

We have already seen that Greek philosophy and religion, while retaining much of the Olympian or Indo-European form, sprang essentially from the old Pelasgic cults with their greater vitality. How far were Achæans and Dorians responsible for the glory of Greek art, especially in "Pelasgic Athens"? The answer can hardly be as obvious and sure as it has appeared to some.

How far was Roman government and law due to Indo-European influence? Neither Greeks nor Celts seem to have been very successful in founding great or permanent states. Italy was far less easy of access from the north than from Greece, and Rome lay well southward beyond the Apennines. Some of its most important political features seem to have sprung from uprisings of the _Plebs_, the common people, probably mostly of native stock; others, perhaps, from the Etruscans. I cannot attempt to answer this question or any one of many similar ones. The Indo-Europeans brought in a new era and started a new world; but just what was their definite and permanent contribution to European culture?

Europe had been long enough in the school of Neolithic discipline. Agriculture and settled home life had trained peasants to do many things which they disliked to do, to observe taboo and to obey ancient custom, to march in rank and file, and even in lock-step. It was a hard school in which savage man had been tamed, home-broken, and socialized, and he had learned its lessons thoroughly. It was high time that men should be promoted to a higher grade of education the aim of whose training should be the development of free and vigorous personality. The crust or cake of custom must yield or be broken and allow the individual to enter upon the possession of his rights.

It was a critical and revolutionary change. It had been rendered easier by the accumulation of wealth, and of a certain amount of personal property in cattle and other goods. In centres of trade the individual was thrown more and more on his own resources and initiative. With exchange of goods came exchange of knowledge, ideas, and methods undermining the ancient customs and traditions. Movements or migrations of peoples or smaller bands called for leadership by the most capable. And those became more and more numerous about the close of the Neolithic period. Neolithic culture had been largely the product of peace and isolation; it was inadequate to the new conditions. Matriarchy and the cult of the goddess were unsuited to times of struggle and migration; with the rise of the chieftain comes the worship of the war-god.

Where did this change or revolution and the rise of this new language and culture and remarkable people take place? All agree that the cradle or original homeland must have been somewhere on our third route of migration, the great zone of steppe and parkland stretching from western Turkestan westward along the Caspian and Black Seas into the valley of the Danube, and from the Hungarian extension of the Asiatic steppe northward to the great plain of North Germany and to Scandinavia. In our study of racial migrations we found that the great Mongoloid branch went eastward from the neighborhood of the Iranian plateau, while successive waves of migration turned westward into Europe, both following a zone of steppe and parkland enjoying unusually favorable climatic conditions in early Post-glacial times.

The discovery of Sanskrit and the belief that it represented the parent of the Indo-European languages led students to place the original centre of their dispersal far toward the eastern end of this zone. When it became evident that this view of Sanskrit was untenable, they began to locate the centre in Europe. Finally some or many students have sought it in the extreme west and north in Germany or also in Scandinavia. When careful and thorough scholars have arrived at so many and so different conclusions, we may well be cautious and remember that new discoveries may necessitate a change in our own views.

The chief argument in favor of the North German homeland is anthropological. The earliest Indo-Europeans both in Europe and Asia were apparently blonds, with light hair and eyes; and such people have lived along the shore of the Baltic since early Neolithic times.

The claim that the ancient Celts and Achæans were physically more like Germans and Scandinavians than any other European people is certainly not without foundation. It has been urged that the Indo-Europeans were acquainted with the sea and with the eel, which is said to be unknown in the tributaries of the Black and Caspian Seas, as also their acquaintance with the beech. Other arguments can be found in special articles. We have seen that arguments based on the meaning of words like beech, eel, and sea, rest on a very insecure foundation. The Finns are almost as blond as the Germans, and Kossina[178] places them with the Germans as ancestors of the Indo-Europeans. There are in Europe also blond brachycephals, generally acknowledged to have been of western Asiatic origin. The arguments for a Germanic origin are attractive, but hardly convincing, and anything but conclusive.

The objections to this view are weighty. One marked feature of Indo-European culture was the use of the horse, which held the highest rank among their domestic animals. But the domestic horse seems to have been introduced into Europe from the East. The few traces of its presence in northern Europe during Neolithic times are usually explained as remains of wild animals killed in the hunt. If they played so large a part in Indo-European culture, it is strange that they have left so few remains.

Kossina, in one of his studies, places the cradle of Indo-European culture in "Scandinavia, Denmark, and northwest Germany, wherever megalithic monuments with their characteristic pottery occur." Wherever such monuments occur we find incineration coming in late in Neolithic time, or more exactly with the Bronze period, except in Brittany and England, of which later. But incineration seems to accompany the progress of the European branch, and must have come into use among these peoples well back in their history to explain its wide occurrence.

The word town, in the original language, seems to signify a settlement surrounded by a hedge or wall, or some sort of defense. But fortified towns are hardly known in North Germany at this time. All these cultural features seem to appear somewhat or considerably too late in North Germany to suit Kossina's theory.

A second feature of Indo-European culture is the rise of the chieftain. But the Germans seem to have borrowed the name for king and other expressions for military organizations, as well as many culture-words, from the Celts. This fact has led some good authorities to declare that the Germans received their Indo-European language from the Celts.

The homeland of the Indo-Europeans must have supported a large population to send out all the tribes which went out from it. Only such a region can satisfy our requirements, and such was Germany, an _Officina gentium_, some 2,000 years later. But we notice that the migrations of peoples have always set westward into Europe, not in the reverse direction. Similarly the new discovery or idea has come westward or northward from western Asia or from the Mediterranean region. The north has almost never been a centre of origination of new ideas and movements. It has borrowed from the richer south. We would not expect that the Indo-European movement would form an exception to this rule. Moreover, the peoples of the banded pottery who had filled southeastern Europe, coming in, as is generally acknowledged, from the East, had brought with them a good knowledge of agriculture which could support a large population.

Now Kossina finds evidence of the spread of the corded pottery southward at the close of the Neolithic period, and infers that it was carried by a migration from the north. I am inclined to think that his conclusion is correct, though it may be doubtful whether the invasion went so far into the province of the banded pottery as he thinks. He sees in this the first stage of the Indo-European movement which was to sweep eastward as far as India. The people of the banded pottery apparently retreated eastward before this movement, and thus tended still further to increase the density and power of resistance in these regions. Furthermore, had this southeastward movement continued, it would have met the first of a series of waves of invasion which would surely have turned it backward.

We have seen that all through the Neolithic period brachycephals of the Furfooz or Grenelle race have been spreading from Belgium and the rough eastern part of France. At the end of the Neolithic period they are being crowded by the long-heads. During the Bronze Age the cephalic index rises all over middle and western Europe. At its very beginning we find a new people in England--tall, rugged, heavy-faced round-heads, who burned their dead and deposited the ashes in round barrows. They seem to have come from the Rhine valley, and may well have introduced incineration into Brittany, where it appears early. They differ markedly in stature and features from the Furfooz people. They have quite certainly come from the east, perhaps from the region of the Armenian highlands. They have crossed Europe in sufficient numbers and compactness to retain their anthropological characters until they strike England and crowd back the old Iberian or Mediterranean peoples. The movement looks like an invasion in mass, not like a quiet, slow infiltration. They were the forerunners of a general advance and spread of the broad-heads.

Were these people Celts or at least partially celticized? To express an opinion on a Celtic question is to accept an invitation to a Donnybrook fair. Anthropologically they differ markedly from the later Celtic invaders. But their custom of incineration is certainly suggestive, and it is not at all impossible that they spoke a Celtic dialect. They certainly seem to prove that the westward migration from the region of the Black Sea or from farther eastward had not ceased or been turned backward at this time. The spread of North German people southward at this time would have brought them where they would mingle with Celts coming westward and receive their first lesson in Indo-European language and culture, if it came from the east.

There is at present a strong tendency to seek the original Indo-European homeland neither in the extreme east or extreme west or north, but somewhere in the open country of southern Russia lying to the north of the Black Sea or farther eastward toward the Caspian. Here they locate them mainly in a long zone of parkland extending along the southern edge of the forest zone and in the valleys of the great rivers. Here at a much later date Scythians were settled who raised large quantities of wheat, while others were nomadic. We remember that Neolithic trade-routes followed mainly rivers and seashore. The islands of the Mediterranean were occupied early and sea commerce found a centre in Crete. A great centre of trade arose very early at Troy (Hissarlik), on the highway between the Ægean and the settlements along the shores of the Black Sea and in the valleys of the rivers descending from the interior.

Déchellette has called attention to the striking analogies in form of settlement, in primitive idols, in pottery with painting and spiral ornament between the villages of the Balkans, Troy (Hissarlik) and of the Troad and Phrygia, and of the pre-Mycenæan culture of Crete and Greece. "Between Butmir and Hissarlik these discoveries mark the routes which already undoubtedly connected pre-Hellenic peoples and pre-Celtic tribes."

Meyer tells us that the banded pottery shows the same motives in ornament in Butmir and Tordos as in Troy and the Ægean, and spreads thence northward and westward; and that painted pottery in Europe starts at the end of the Neolithic (2500-2000 B. C.) in the great plain east of the Carpathians in the region of the Dniester and Dnieper, a region of high culture in other respects. "Here the connection with the Ægean world is evident (_augenfällig_)." This people was agricultural. They burned their dead, and Meyer thinks that incineration spread northward and westward from this centre. They show no use of metal. Their culture breaks off suddenly at the end of the Neolithic period.

Here is a region which stands in free communication with the agricultural population of the parkland zone, open to influences from the steppe, accepting the higher civilization of Phrygia and the Ægean. It is a people of advanced agriculture, hence probably of rapidly increasing population, open to trade and commerce. Here wide and free communications would be likely to prevent the formation of an unyielding cake or crust of custom. People meeting from all lands and cultures might well make and use a language capable of expressing a great variety of shades of thought peculiar to a variety of peoples and cultures; we might safely call it a mixed language springing from a mixture of peoples. Here, as in the Ægean region, the more or less fortified town or village would be a necessity. Here the horse and wagon would be early introduced from the east. Here the patriarchate, so characteristic of nomadic tribes, would be early imported from the steppe, or may have been developed independently.

There is a universality in the Indo-European religion, a sanity and proportion in their whole mode of thought, a broad sympathy, a willingness to accept new ideas and conditions--in general, a breadth of mind which could hardly be the product of isolation but rather of men who had "seen the customs of many men and many cities," and could look with tolerance and charity on alien cultures and fully appreciate their worth and advantages. Our Teutonic ancestors carried their mental and cultural environment with them wherever they went. They were apostles of purity of blood and hence of isolation. They were never good mixers, as were Celt and Achæan. All three migrated and conquered far and wide, and both usually disappeared in the alien population. But the Teuton left little impression on the alien culture, while Achæan and Celt leavened the whole mass. Here, as in other respects, Celt and Teuton show an incompatibility and oppositeness which strongly suggest difference of origin.

But we must carefully avoid too great certainty and definiteness of assertion. The weight of probability seems to be against any theory which locates the first, original homeland in the far east or in the far northwest. But we deal only with probabilities, and may well "carry our theories on our finger-tips." If the cradle was somewhere in southern Russia north of the Black Sea, or somewhat farther east or west, its second homeland just before the great dispersal was vastly larger. Myres thinks that it extended far to the eastward of the Volga, which perhaps was the boundary between the eastern and western branches, and whose upper waters drained a very early home of the Finns.

The Indo-Europeans were settled in a goodly land capable with their improved agriculture of supporting a very large population. Why did they migrate in all directions? Here, again, we are left much in the dark. But Pumpelly, in his explorations at Anau, found the settlement deserted during the Bronze period about the same time when we find the Indo-Europeans leaving the homeland. At Anau there are signs that the desertion was due primarily to aridity or to disturbances accompanying such a change. It seems highly probable that climatic changes may have played a most important part in this movement, as they seem to have done in the later historical migrations from this region or from farther eastward.

We may close this chapter of uncertainties with one deduction which seems fairly evident. If the Germans were the first and original Indo-Europeans, the movement developed here directly out of preceding Neolithic conditions. If, as seems more probable, it originated farther to the southeast, and was introduced by the Celts, or in connection with the amber trade, it made little marked interruption in the development of the Germans. They and the Scandinavians continued to take from the south whatever they would, but their development was largely independent. A complete conquest of Germany and Scandinavia by the Celts seems very improbable.

The Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples were not precocious, and appear in history very late. But here apart, in the misty northland, a people was very slowly developing who, after the decadence and fall of Rome, could come forward and slowly and wearily rebuild a civilization better than that which had fallen, and a government of, by, and for the people, guaranteeing to the individual the right of free action and development, the grandest feature of Indo-European culture. This, rather than any precocity, is the glory of the northern peoples. Once again we find history in the making in an inconspicuous people during an apparently dormant period.

He that believeth will not despise the day of small things, neither will he make haste. If the vision tarries long, he will wait for it. "It shall come and shall not tarry." It will probably come by the way which he least suspects.

There seems to be a wide-spread opinion that the rise of the Indo-Europeans was the first dawn of day in a benighted world. Their migrations were a missionary movement on a grand scale. They dispelled darkness, ignorance, and superstitions, broke the crust of a stagnant conservatism, overthrew outworn customs, brought an entirely new culture, and revolutionized life and the world. We might call attention to the fact that Indo-European culture and life were a product of Neolithic experience, that it was the blossoming of Neolithic growth, that it represented only one part or phase of Neolithic attainment. "The best traditions make the best rebels."[179] The question remains: Was Neolithic thought and feeling destroyed by their coming, or did it still persist, like a river flowing underground, and is most of our deepest life to-day a fairly direct continuation of the older current only somewhat modified by the revolution?

We notice first of all the commonness or community of Neolithic feeling and life, its almost monotonous uniformity, over Europe, eastern Asia, and probably even far wider areas. We may easily exaggerate this. The cultures of the Mediterranean basin, of Spain and France, of the Danube valley, of northern Germany and Scandinavia, not to mention smaller, more isolated provinces, showed well-marked differences. There was probably more diversity in the people of every one of these provinces, especially at centres of trade, even in every larger village, than our hasty study would lead us to suspect. But in fundamental characters there was wide-spread and marked similarity; and this, like the wide range of dominant genera and species of animals, is a sign of vitality and fitness.

The Neolithic period coincides roughly with the latter part of Wundt's Totem Age: the Bronze period ushered in his Age of Heroes.?[180] During the first period the individual counted for very little, everything was tribal. In the second period the great leaders of popular migrations emerge, young, vigorous, hot-blooded. With the appearance of these "kings of men" comes the rise of nations. Tribal control wanes, and the slow development of individual, personal judgment and conscience, self-control, and responsibility replaces it to a great extent.

We read in the history of Israel that the long Egyptian bondage of a stiff-necked nomad people, being broken to the rudiments of order and civilization, was followed by an exodus and a period of judges or popular leaders, when "there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." It was a period of lawlessness and anarchy; recovery was slow and painful, and finally only partially attained by the appointment of a king. A similar education, on a vastly larger scale both of area and time, was going on all over Europe.

Prehistoric man was guided and controlled by feelings usually expressing the dictates of a long experience out of which instincts had crystallized. His feelings were his instinctive responses to new emergencies. He could not analyze them, reason or argue about them; he was spared the "malady of thought." He had little or no logic or science; his philosophy, as we have seen, was a _way_ smoothed by the feet of his ancestors. He was a man of taste in the literal sense of the word. He knew what he liked and what he disliked; probably he could not have explained the reason for either feeling. He was wise in following these instinctive feelings and tastes; they represented the accumulated and assimilated experience of millennia.

Of course the experience had been that of individuals. Neolithic man's school and laboratory of education was mostly the family and the neighborhood. Here he had to learn to get on with other individuals, to live and let live, to practise co-operation and mutual aid. Here he learned the first and grandest lessons in morals; that he would be done by as he did, and hence that it was best to do as he would be done by. He has never lost or forgotten the lessons learned in this excellent "dame's school."

Most of his higher education--and hence of his feeling, conscience, religion, and life--was tribal. Laws, or rather customs, were propounded by the elders of the tribe or priests, an exceedingly conservative court. The chief aim was not rapidity of progress, but confirming and practising that which long experience had proved to be good. Slowly but surely the fund of wisdom increased. "It is the three-per-cent man who gets all the money in the end."

Responsibility was tribal. The man who tried experiments or "fooled" with the forbidden thing was a common nuisance summarily and thoroughly abated by the tribe.

Land was common property, though the individual had probably gained some rights of use. It is doubtful whether he could use the whole or any part of it entirely as he would. Even at a much later date his use was largely limited and controlled by ancient custom.

The ritual which still made up most of his religion was also tribal.[181] Dance and song were practised by the whole community. His creed, so far as he had one, was a belief in spiritual beings, dæmons, of great power and marvellous efficiency. Some or many were beneficent; more were probably maleficent; but those might be appeased, mollified, bribed, won over, or controlled, if rightly approached through magical rites or ceremonies.

These dæmons seem to have been supposed to be almost innumerable. No one was supreme, but some were more important than others. Here then was room for variety of opinion, of ritual, of the spirit occupying the most important place; hence also of change and development. The gods in one country were those of the hills; in another, those of the plains; in a third, of the forest. Fishing and agricultural tribes had different dæmons. The wandering trader, passing from tribe to tribe, in his own heart respected or neglected all alike. Every land had its own gods or goddesses. When a man migrated to another country he usually left his old gods at home. If he was adopted into the brotherhood of another tribe, he changed his religious allegiance also.

A religious hierarchy seems to have grown up during the Neolithic period headed by the goddess-mother of life. Her rise seems to have accompanied the introduction of agriculture, which must have brought great changes in religious ritual and belief. Dæmons who had heretofore held a high place in the fear or affection of hunting tribes gradually lost their supremacy or were neglected.

The dethronement of gods or dæmons was usually not sudden or revolutionary. The new mode of life and its accompanying cult gained ground slowly. Probably it was at first an extension or modification of some older one. The dethroned divinity long retained his hold on the fears or affections of many of the tribe. Finally he was remembered only by certain old wives in remote or isolated settlements. With the rest of the people he, or she, was fast becoming an imp, kobold, or fairy--the subject of fascinating stories, still tinged with mystery, joy, or fear, but not to be taken too seriously.

Here, apparently, is one, by no means the only, source of folk-lore and fairy-tale. Folk-lore is an exceedingly wide field and our path leads through only a little corner of it. It was the growth of millennia. It preserves for us remnants of ancient beliefs and practices, whose original meaning had been forgotten long before the birth of the story-teller. Fossil beliefs of the most widely separated ages may be found jumbled together in the same story.

It was always intended to be told to a group of sympathetic listeners or to the whole community. It is genuine literature, but when reduced to writing or cold print it chills and dies. The story-teller must feel at once the sympathy or coldness of his listeners. The substance may remain unchanged, but the shading and emphasis must vary with the feeling and temper of the audience. Thus in a very true sense it was moulded by the people. If a story survived with certain forms and content, it was because it was essentially common and human, appealing to that which is not individual but at least tribal or racial.

Says Mr. Chesterton: "Our modern novels, which deal with men as they are, are chiefly produced by a small and educated section of the society. But this other literature (the kind now called folk-lore, the literature of the people) deals with men greater than they are--with demigods and heroes--and that is far too important a matter to be trusted to the educated classes. The fashioning of these portents is a popular trade, like ploughing or bricklaying; the men who made bridges, the men who made ditches, were the men who made deities. Men could not elect their kings, but they could elect their gods. So we find ourselves faced with a fundamental contrast between what is called fiction and what is called folk-lore. The one exhibits an abnormal degree of dexterity, operating within our daily limitations; the other exhibits quite normal desires extended beyond those limitations. Fiction means the common things as seen by the uncommon people. Fairy-tales mean the uncommon things as seen by the common people.

"As our world advances through history toward its present epoch, its becomes more specialist, less democratic, and folk-lore turns gradually into fiction. But it is only slowly that the old elfin fire fades into the light of common realism. For ages after our characters have dressed up in the clothes of mortals they betray the blood of the gods."[182]

The charm and wisdom of folk-lore and fairy-tale are mostly due to the commonness, in the best sense, of their subject, thought, and feeling. They suit all times and places, and are immortal and timeless like their heroes. When we attempt to reclothe them in modern form or language to suit "private interpretation" their strength is departed from them.

Neolithic feeling, belief, ritual, religion; its music, art, and literature; its customs, institutions, morals, ways, and life--all these sprang from the life and experience of the tribe or community. They were essentially growths in and from the mass of the people, usually owing comparatively little to the genius of any individual inventor or discoverer. We have called them Neolithic, but some or many of them were old far back in Paleolithic time. Like the tree Ygdrasil their roots lay hold on the foundations of the world.

So deeply rooted a growth or culture is almost ineradicable, though it has a marvellous adaptability and possibilities of growth and modification. It could never have been destroyed by its own Indo-European children, however rebellious. It must survive somewhere though probably changed for the better. We have found reasons to doubt whether Roman capacity for discipline and government, Roman laws and institutions, were predominantly of Indo-European origin. We were still more doubtful whether the glory of Teutonic or Scandinavian history is due to its being Indo-European, or whether it was the result of a continuous, unbroken development from Neolithic times. If ever any culture seems largely native and indigenous, responsive to outside influences but always retaining its independent self-determination and power of selection and choice as to what and how far it will assimilate, that culture is to be found in northern Germany and Scandinavia.

We have seen the fate of Olympian religion and Achæan thought in Greece. The Achæans were a small minority completely outnumbered by an exceedingly conservative native population. They were absorbed and became a part of the Greek people, and their contribution must not be underestimated. We have noted the marvellous vitality of the old Neolithic thought, its re-emergence, its influence on Greek philosophy. We remember that the great seat of progress was not in Dorian Sparta but in "Pelasgic Athens," almost unknown to Homer.

The Celt was, if anything, a better "mixer" and more adaptable than even the Achæan. His prejudices and zeal in regard to morals and religion seem not to have been deep or strong. The Celts were finally absorbed, affecting the temper of the people far more than their daily life.

Through all these revolutions, as well as those which were to follow, family and neighborhood retained their compact unity, perhaps with all its mutual attractions strengthened by the pressure of the conquerors. They were still the controlling influence in the life and education of the individual, as they probably remain to this day. The power of these smaller communities may have waxed, as tribal control waned. What they had lost in the mutual support within the tribe they made good by leaning more closely on their neighbors.

This solidarity makes the common people very stiff-necked, in an excellent sense of the word. Like the Neolithic folk of Scandinavia, they select and accept from their more cultured neighbors only that which they can assimilate to the stores of experience and instincts which they already possess. The fickleness, of which they are often accused, is characteristic of a very different class or stratum of the population, and of far later origin and development. Their own development is naturally slow, gradual, and continuous.

We have ventured the opinion that the essentials of Neolithic culture survived the conquests of the Indo-Europeans in a but slightly modified form. If this is granted, we have every reason to think that the effects of all succeeding invasions and conquests, changes of dynasties and governments, international or national policies, internal legislation and reforms, have been even more temporary, slight, and superficial. Modern revolutions have been more and more uprisings of the people asserting the inalienable rights and privileges of their dignity as men. The trend of popular life and feeling has resembled the flow of a river or the incoming of the tide. It turns or winds as it meets obstacles in its path, but keeps in the main to a fairly clear course and direction. The people may not be against the government, they merely go their way regardless of it. But we must not trespass on the field of the historian.

During the Neolithic period everybody, except perhaps certain priests and elders, belonged to the common people. But accumulation of wealth, the rise of leaders, the conquest of new lands developed a distinct aristocracy of birth, wealth, prowess, leadership, and genius. The common people of to-day, whom, as Mr. Lincoln said, "God must have loved or he never would have made so many of them," seem to be the whole population minus the uncommon aristocracy. It is not easy to see just where we ought to draw the line between mass and class.

All the virtues, brains, and possibilities of progress can hardly be confined to this upper stratum. Can we define or describe our common people? They are a very mixed multitude. There is probably more individual variety than among the conventional refined and cultured, and this makes them more original and interesting. Hence any composite picture is usually a blur; a definite picture of any group or part would be partial and one-sided, very possibly a caricature of the whole. We dare not try to offer one.

Men and women like Mr. Robert Woods, of Boston, and Miss Jane Addams, of Chicago, have set themselves patiently, persistently, sympathetically, respectfully, and wisely to study and help these people. They can and will describe them, if we will listen. Their faith in the people seems to be deep and strong.

We all recognize that in times of trial and emergency, when great testing moral issues are at stake, the people are practically unanimous in recognizing and supporting the cause of justice and right, unless befogged, divided, or misled by statesmen. Their taste for right ends is keen and reliable. Their feelings ring true, and they act accordingly, whatever the cost.

They are not inarticulate, though their speech is often interjectory. They are only beginning to produce a large number of spokesmen. Now and then their demands are voiced by a prophet, asserting that what Jehovah demands is "to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God"; or the prophecy is sung by a poet, like Burns. They may sometimes or often be misled; but if their heart and feeling is not healthy we may well despair of the republic.

But the true prophet is very rarely a statesman. His feeling and taste for ends is marvellously good. Here his word, like the feeling of the people from whom he sprang, is almost infallible. But the choice of means and policy, the selection of the next step toward the attainment of the end, is the real business of the statesman.

The _élite_ of wealth, learning, and culture to-day have generally given up the search for ends in life. The old question: "What is man's chief end?" sounds archaic. We are doubtful as to the existence or desirability of such a thing. We are, in the language of the broker, very "long" on means, but terribly "short" on ends, for which there is no market. Some day we shall again find a place for end and purpose in our philosophy and science, as in the systems of Paul, Plato, and especially of Aristotle, with his "passion for the obvious," but at present these thinkers are back numbers. Yet we must have ends of life beyond mere survival, comfort, or luxury, and getting a living. Some scale of values, not solely and purely mercantile, would also be useful.

If the aristocracy of wealth, learning, and culture can provide us no adequate system of ends and values in life, would it not be well for us to borrow temporarily a few from the people? Might we not to good advantage even go into partnership with them, cordially accepting their ends, and loyally and honestly attempting to find the means of attaining them? The result might be a solidarity of thought, feeling, action, and final attainment superior even to those of our Neolithic ancestors.

You may possibly say: "We in America are already living under a democratic form of government--'of the people, by the people, and for the people.'" Is this the statement of an accomplished fact or the definition of a dim, far-off event toward which we hope we are moving?

How far did the framers of our Constitution desire or intend that the will of the people should govern? Was the method of choosing and electing the President of the United States, as originally devised, intended to make that election popular or not? We have changed that. Did they intend that the Senate of the United States should be a means of carrying out the will of the people, or rather that it should defer or check its becoming the law of the land? Does our governmental action to-day represent the will of the people? Is it truly representative?

Perhaps our ancestors were wise in their caution. Perhaps a change has become advisable. We are asking how far government changes or modifies the people; how far governmental action, change of President or controlling party, their legislation and policies, affect the deeper currents of character and life. The people seem to me to be still continuing to go their own way and to follow quietly but firmly their own line of development, largely regardless of the votes of national Congress or State legislature, perhaps sometimes with a slight sigh of relief at their adjournment. It may be best that it is so. The independence and continuity of popular development is still maintained to-day as throughout prehistoric times.

How far do our vast accumulations of learning and discovery, our deep or superficial systems of philosophy, our splendid or decadent _fin de siècle_ art and literature reach and affect these people? Their chief characteristic is an attempt at distinction, an artificial uncommonness, a self-consciousness entirely foreign to the thinker of the common mind.

The institution which has the widest and deepest influence on their feeling, thought, and life is the church. They generally love it, for they are "incurably religious." It is conservative in the best sense of the word. It represents, of course imperfectly, the feelings, aspirations, and hopes of all men everywhere in all ages--in one word, of humanity. It stands for the worth, dignity, and brotherhood of man, and the fatherhood of God. It is almost alone to-day in recognizing that there are ends in life. It offers a way of progress and a reasonable ground of hope in a somewhat weary age inclined to indulge in criticism, fault-finding, and pessimism. The fact that it is generally roundly abused for its defects, mistakes, and sins of omission, for its inability to accomplish the impossible, is a sign of the great hope and confidence which we have rightly reposed in it.

The discordant chorus of mutually destructive criticisms arising from the cultured and intellectual classes seems to show that it is following fairly well a straight, right, and wise course, as Mr. Lincoln is said to have suggested concerning his own experience, plans, and leadership in a similar situation. "Wisdom is justified of her children," but the families of the elect are small. That the church does not conform to all the theories--not to say vagaries and fads--of to-day is no discredit. Most of them will be very unfashionable to-morrow. "The fashion of this age passeth away."

The existence of our nation evidently depends far more upon the fundamental and essential, nay obvious, old and common human virtues of very common people than upon our art and learning, the shrewdness of our politicians and profiteers, the amount of our wealth and exports, our inventions or luxuries, the winning of an election, or the defeat of any party. In one word, which we have already repeated _ad nauseam_, our chief business to-day is to continue the line of development clearly marked out by our benighted ancestors of prehistoric days--to exercise, develop, and strengthen the best instincts and feelings crystallized out of millennia of experience; to see to it that they are expressed in the law and practices of the land and commonwealth; and that they are not smothered under a mass of inventions of yesterday and of conventions of to-day. The fact that all this is entirely obvious should not conceal its importance.

The old message comes to us: "If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed; and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"

In the northern ocean we see icebergs moving slowly southward. They are not driven by the winds which to-day are blowing against their broad fronts. The most conspicuous feature of our field of vision is the white foam capping the waves. To-morrow it will be blown away, evaporate, and disappear in the shifting winds which have tossed it into view. The berg is carried by the great polar current, silent, inconspicuous, irresistible, unchanging in its course, guided by still deeper and more ancient and permanent cosmic forces.

We know something about oceanic currents. Of the current of the evolution of life we know almost nothing; but hope that our theories are no more inadequate than the feelings of our Neolithic ancestors. Certainly the current has not yet been charted. We catch glimpses of the direction of its sweep. Over what stormy and dangerous seas and to what undiscovered island or continent it is carrying us we do not know. It seems to set toward fairer climes beyond our vision. We set sail millions of years ago; we shall not arrive to-morrow.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A FEW SUGGESTIONS

The first series of books referred to in the following lists (A-O) are general, and every one covers a large field. The works of Déchelette and Hoernes (A and B) contain a very rich bibliography down to 1907 or 1908. They should be carefully studied first of all; afterward the remainder of the list. I have omitted from the following list many excellent articles to which they refer. This list will satisfy the needs of the ordinary reader.

The second list (1-378) contains references to articles or books on special subjects which I have been obliged to treat very briefly in this small book. These will introduce the reader to other writers on the same subject. He is urged to make his own bibliography, and will find that he has started on an endless chain of most fascinating research, for which I hope he may form an insatiable appetite.

The following list of abbreviations and corresponding complete titles may save the reader some inconvenience. In this connection he may well consult the Introduction to Déchelette's _Manuel_ (A) I, pp. xv-xix.

_Amer. Nat._ _American Naturalist._
_Amer. Anth._ _American Anthropologist._
_Sci. Mo._ _Science Monthly._ (Continuation of
_Popular Science Monthly_.)
_A. f. A. (Arch. f. Anth.)_ _Archiv für Anthropologie._
_Zts. f. Eth._ _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie._
_L'Anth._ _L'Anthropologie._
_R. E. A._ _Revue d'école d'Anthropologie_, Paris.
_Rev. Arch._ _Revue Archéologique._
_Korr.-bl. d. d. Ges._ _Korrespondenz-blatt der deutschen_
_Gesellschaft für Anthropologie._
_Cong. Int._ _Congrès international d'Anthropologie_
_et d'Archéologie._

GENERAL

A. Déchelette, J. _Manuel d'Archéologie Préhistorique._ Paris,
1908. 3 vols. Vol. I. _Archéologie Préhistorique._

B. Hoernes, M. _Natur-und Urgeschichte des Menschen._ Vienna,
1909. 2 vols.

C. ---- _Urgeschichte des Menschen_, Vienna, 1892.

D. Obermaier, H. _Der Mensch aller Zeiten._ Berlin, 1911-12.
Vol. I. _Der Mensch der Vorzeit._

E. Forrer, R. _Urgeschichte des Europäers._ Stuttgart, 1908.

F. ---- _Reallexikon der prähistorischen, klassichen und
frühchristlichen Alterthümer._ Stuttgart, 1907-08.

G. Müller, S. _Nordische Älterthumskunde_ (trans. Jiriczek).
Strassburg, 1897. Vol. I. Steinzeit-Bronzezeit.

H. ---- _Urgeschichte Europas_ (trans. Jiriczek). Strassburg,
1905.

I. ---- _L'Europe préhistorique_ (trans. Philipot). Paris, 1907.

J. Montelius, O. _Kulturgeschichte Schwedens._ Leipsic, 1906.

K. ---- _Les Temps préhistoriques en Suède_ (trans. Reinach).
Paris, 1895.

L. Avebury, Lord (Sir John Lubbock). _Prehistoric Times._ New
York, 1913.

M. Elliot, G. F. S. _Prehistoric Man and His Story._ London,
1915.

N. Schwantes, G. _Aus Deutschland's Urzeit._ Leipsic, 1913.

O. Wundt, W. _Elements of Folk Psychology_ (trans. Schaub,
E. L.). London, 1915.