Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/728

Rh 698 EUROPE borrow another analogy from geology), that if all are more or less obviously conglomerates, the materials have pro bably been derived for the most part from strata of the same formation. If the Frenchman is partly German, partly Celtic, German and Celt do not differ from each other more than limestone, marble, and chalk. From recent researches it is now familiarly known that Europe had its human inhabitants in the Pleistocene period. They are distinguished by the name of the Palaeolithic or Old Stone people, in contrast to a later population still in the same stage of civilization. Their remains have been dis covered in England, Belgium, France, Germany, and Switzerland ; and some investigators are disposed to recog nize two varieties, distinguished as the men of the caves and the men of the river-beds. 1 Having possibly entered Europe before the first glacial period, they were certainly there at the final transition to the present conditions of climate. They lived by hunting and fishing, and in general charac teristics appear to have been similar to the Eskimo, with whom soni3 are disposed to identify them. If this iden tification be a mistake (and at best it is very problema tical), they have left no distinct representatives behind them. What progress they had made in the arts, necessi tated by their mode of life, may be in some measure esti mated by the remarkable relics of their implements and weapons still recognizable; but there are no sufficient data to decide whether they were in a state of advance or decline ; the difference of finish in different specimens of the same handiwork may be due to different degrees of care or skill possessed by contemporaneous workmen. As far as can be judged, the continent of Europe again ceased for a time to be a human habitation; and when light breaks in once more it is found in possession apparently of two races both in the Stone stage of civilization, and known by the common name of the Neolithic or New Stone peoples. In the meantime the fauna of Europe had changed and become in the main what it still is. The chief point of interest attaching to these Neolithians is how far the brachy cephalic, and pre sumably the older, variety is still traceable in our modern population. There are several peoples, most of them of small numeri cal importance, which are undoubtedly aliens from the commonwealth of the Aryan race now dominant through out the greater part of the continent, the Turks, the Magyars, the Finns, Esthonians, and Lapps, the Votiaks, and the Basques; and we know that in the Roman period of the historic epoch the Iberians, the Ligurians, and possibly the Etruscans and the Rhastians, occupied a similar position. The Turks and the Magyars are at once put out of the question by the fact that there is documentary evidence of their arrival in Europe long after the Christian era; and the dubiety which attaches to the affinity of the Etruscans and the Rhsetians renders their classification im practicable. The Votiaks may be left out of account, from their almost Asiatic localization ; so that there only remain four actual and two historical peoples to bo considered. Three of the four the Finns, Esthonians, and the Lapps may be bracketed together as Ugrians or Uralians&quot; or under any other convenient name (though the Lapps may possibly be more distinct than this would make them), so that practically we have two actual and two historical. Arranged geographically, the Ugrians constitute a north eastern or Baltic group ; and the Basques, the Iberians, and the Ligurians a southern or Mediterranean group. Of ths Ligurians little further is certainly known than that in historic times they occupied the north-western slopes of the Apennines, or the modern Piedmont, and extended west 1 See, among other works, Dawkin s Cave Hunting and Troyou s L, hom ine fossite. to the mouth of the Rhone ; but probable traces of their presence have been collected as far south as the mouth of the Tiber and as far north as the Loire or Liger. Of theii language we are absolutely ignorant, and their classification is almost purely hypothetical. They evidently lost ground at a very early period from the encroachments of various peoples, and among others from the inroads of the Iberians, whom we have now to consider. This people is specially connected with the Spanish peninsula, which derived from them the popular name of Iberia; but they appear also to have occupied Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, may possibly, as some maintain, have been one of the primitive elements of the population of Italy, and, according to a hint of Tacitus, probably extended as far north as Brittany. At the time of the Roman conquest of Spain they were already largely mingled with Celtic blood, a fact which was indicated by the name of Celtiberians. There is no reason to suppose that they have died out or been exterminated, and consequently it is presumably possible to discover them more or less distinctly among the mingled population of modern Spain. Here the Basques at once present them selves, a peculiar people speaking a peculiar language, and occupying the very part of the country where from analogy we might expect to find the remains of an ancient race. In what respect do the Basques agree with our knowledge about the Iberians? The Iberians, as has just been stated, were no longer homogeneous at the time of the Roman con quest; and the Basques, according to cranial data, exhibit an interfusion of blood : &quot; they possess a moderate brachy - cephalism and a strongly marked dolichocephalism.&quot; The Iberians, however, were clearly distinguishable from the Celts; and the same is true of the Basques. The Iberians are described as of short stature, slight build, and dark complexion; and a similar account may be given of the Basques. The identification of the two peoples is con sequently accepted by a large number of anthropologists ; but the unanimity is hardly so great in regard to their further identification with the Ugrians of the north-east. In favour of the generalization, there is a certain simi larity of physical type, and the probability, as it appears to a large school of investigators, that the Finns and Esthonians are, like the Basques, the remains of a popu lation which formerly extended to the south and west over a much wider area ; against the generalization is the fact that no closer connexion lies between the Basque language and the Finnish than that they both belong to the agglu tinative family, and it is quite as probable that the Ugrians have come in from the north and east at a com paratively modern period. If we adopt the bolder hypothesis in its full extent, and it is adopted by many investigators, the continent of Europe was originally inhabited by a small, swarthy, brachycephalic race, who were formerly represented in historic times by Iberians, Ligurians, and other less known peoples, and in modern times are still partially represented by the Basques, the Esthonians, and the Finns, who have retained their non- Aryan speech, and by smaller groups in England, Brittany, Prussia, and Spain, who have adopted the alien languages spoken in their vicinity. By some a still further identi fication is ventured with the Berbers of North Africa ; and a few, as Hyde Clarke and Homalius d Hulloy, maintain that the so-called Aryan immigration was only in a com paratively small degree an introduction of a new race, and ought rather to be viewed as the diffusion of a civilization. Whatever dispute, however, such ethnological innovators may raise, there can be no question as to the almost universal predominance of the Aryan influences in the historic times ; and though anything like chronology is for the most part out of the question, the general features of the great move ment to which these influences are due can be stated with