The Ethnology of Europe. R. G. Latham
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undoubted similarity of physical form. The dissimilarities that are inferred from peculiarities of physical form are neutralised by undeniable affinities of speech. Looking to his size and colour, the Laplander is far, very far, removed from the Fin. Yet the languages belong to one and the same class. Looking to their tongues, the Basque of the Pyrenees, and the Skipetar (or Albanian of Albania) are each isolated populations. Yet their form is but slightly different from those of the other Europeans.
Now the physical condition of our continent makes the intermixture of blood, and the diffusion of ideas easy: and, I believe, that the effects of both are more notable in Europe than elsewhere.
2. The families, stocks, or races, which occupy Europe will be taken in the order which is most convenient; so that it will be practical rather than scientific.
a. In Malta the language is Arabic, and, of course, to a certain extent, the blood also. But Malta is European only in respect to its political relations. Still its population requires notice.
b. The Osmanlis, or Turks of Turkey, are Asiatic rather than European; an intrusive population whose introduction is within its historical period. I will not say, however, that in the parts between the Dnieper and Don, members of the same great stock may not have been settled in the times anterior to history. In the following pages, the Turks of Europe will be called Osmanlis, or Ottomans: since the word Turk is a generic name applied to the family to which they, along with the Independent Tartars, the Uzbeks, the Turcomans, the Turks of Asia Minor, the Yakuts on the borders of the Icy Sea, and several other great branches, extending to the frontier of China, and the mouth of the Lena, belong. The Turk is European, as the New Englander is American; i.e., not strictly so.
c. To a certain extent this foreign origin must be attributed to a member of the next family—the Majiar of Hungary. He conquered his present occupancy in the tenth century. He differs, however, from the Turk, in belonging to a class, group, or stock of populations which, although Asiatic to a great extent, is European as well. This is the stock which is called—
The Ugrian, a stock which is the only one common to both Europe and Asia, and contains the Lapps, the Finlanders, the Esthonians, and some other smaller populations on the European feeders of the Volga. The particular branch, however, from which the Majiars were derived is Asiatic.
The next two stocks consist of a single family each, and they are mentioned together because they are so isolated as to have no known affinities either with each, or with any other population. These are—
d. The Basques of Biscay and Gascony, i.e., the Western Pyrenees; once spread over the whole of the Spanish peninsula, and for that reason commonly called Iberian—
e. The Skipetar, or Albanians of Albania.
I am taking, as aforesaid, the populations in the order of convenience, and the next is
f. The Keltic.[1] This stock was indigenous to the water-systems of the Loire, the Seine, and the Rhone, in other words, to the whole of France north of the Garonne; to the south of which river lay the Iberians. From Gaul it spread to Great Britain. Its present representatives are the Bretons of Brittany, the Welsh, the Gaels of Ireland and Scotland, and the Manxmen of the Isle of Man—
g. The Gothic or German—
h. The Sarmatian, or Slavono-Lithuanic, containing the Slavonians and Lithuanians of Russia, Poland, Bohemia, Servia, Carinthia, Lithuania, with other less important areas, and lastly—
i. The classical or Greco-Latin stock of Italy and Greece, completing the list of the European stocks.
These three are more closely allied to each other than any of the previous ones. They are also nearer the Keltic; so much so, that a single class has been made out of the four, a class called Indo-European. The study, however, of the value of classes is in its infancy. The real fact that they are allied to an extent to which the others are not, is important.
Such are the existing groups; but when we consider how small is the number of the Basques, the only present representatives of the great Iberian class, and that their preservation to the present time is mainly due to the accidental circumstances of their occupancy of a stronghold in the Pyrenees, a new series of facts is suggested. The likelihood of stocks now extinct having once existed, presents itself; and with it, a fresh question.
The same suggestion arises when we look at the country occupied by the intrusive families of the Osmanlis and the Majiars of Rumelia and Hungary. The populations here are comparatively new-comers; yet it was no uninhabited tracts that they appropriated. Who was there before them? Perhaps some members of one of the stocks now existing. Perhaps, a wholly different family now extinct.
Again—the displacements effected by the different European populations, one with another, have been enormous. See how the Saxons over-ran England, the Romans Spain and Gaul. How do we know that some small stock was not annihilated here? History, it may be said, tells us the contrary. From history we learn that all the ancient Spaniards were allied to the ancestors of the Basques, all Gaul to those of the Bretons, all England to those of the Welsh. Granted. But what does history tell us about Bavaria, Styria, the Valley of the Po, or Ancient Thrace? In all these parts the present population is known to be recent, and the older known next to not at all. The reconstruction of the original populations of such areas as these is one of the highest problems in ethnology. To what did they belong, an existing stock more widely extended than now, or a fresh stock altogether?
My own belief is, that the number of European stocks for which there is an amount of evidence sufficient to make their extinction a reasonable doctrine, is two—two and no more; and, even with these, the doctrine of their extinction is only reasonable.
a. The old Etruscans are the first of these;
b. The Pelasgi the second.
Each will be noticed in its proper place.
I have used the word extinction. I must now qualify it; reminding the reader that this very qualification introduces a new and difficult subject. Extinction often means no more than the abolition of the outward and visible signs of ethnological difference. A negro marries a white. In the fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh generation, as the case may be, his descendant is, to all intents and purposes, a white man. Yet the negro blood is not extinguished. It exists, though in a small proportion.
Again—a Cornishman loses his native language and speaks English as his mother tongue. Many generations before he did this he differed from the Englishman in speech only. Is his British blood extinguished? No. The chief sign of it has been lost. That is all.
So that—
Stocks may intermix, and—
Stocks may lose their characteristics.
Now both these phenomena are eminently common in European ethnology; and this is what we expect from history. Two populations, the Roman and the German, have more than doubled their original areas. Were all the old inhabitants, male and female, old and young, in the countries that they appropriated, put to the sword? We hope and believe the contrary. In most cases we know they were not. Sometimes there was intermarriage. This produced intermixture. Sometimes the language, religion, laws, and habits of the conquerors were adopted by the conquered. This was a loss of characteristics. So far greater than the influences of all the other populations of Europe have been those of the Germans and the Romans (to which, for the eastern part of the continent, we must add the Turks), that for nearly half Europe, whenever the question will be one of great intermixture, the basis will be Keltic, Iberic, or Sarmatian as the case may be, with Romans or Germans for the source of the superadded elements.
3. The chief problems of the present volume will, for the present, only be stated; the results being reserved for the conclusion. They are two—
a. The extent to which what is commonly called Race is the result of circumstances, or whether circumstances be the effect of race, i.e. whether Race (so called) is a cause or an effect?
b.