Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/366

326 Western Finns in pre- and proto-historic times. How closely his evidences have been brought up to date may be instanced from the archæological chapter, which contains a full account of the important excavations conducted by Mr. Novokreščennikh at Gliadénova, near Perm, in 1896 and 1897, and the book contains twelve excellent reproductions of photographs of interesting finds taken by Mr. Novokreščennikh and given by him to the author.

Mr. Abercromby discriminates seven epochs of civilisation in the early history of the Finns. Two of these periods are prehis- toric, the first covering the time during which the Finns and Ugrians lived in close contact before the settlement of the Finnish peoples in Europe. It was towards the end of this period, perhaps about 1 800-1 500 B.C., and during the Neolithic Age in Russia, that the undivided Finns entered Europe. From evidences col- lected in the craniological and archaeological chapters it appears probable that these Asiatic wanderers settled in the valley of the River Oka, in the Volga region of Central Russia, and their sub- sequent movements were westward towards Lake Ladoga and the Upper Volkhov, where important prehistoric remains have been found. These movements took place during the second period, which embraces the time between the first settlement of Finns in Europe and their first contact with an Iranian civilisation. During the earlier part of this second period the Finns and Ugrians remained undivided ; during the latter part they began to split into different linguistic groups. The reasons given for supposing that the undivided Finns passed this first part of the second period in Europe are based upon the facts that they had learnt the use of spelt and had a name for the oak — neither of which, the author thinks, they could have known beyond the Urals. During this epoch the Finns were at a stage of pure Neolithic culture, without the knowledge of any domestic animals except the dog. In the third period the Finns and Ugrians, " emerging from their sombre, impenetrable forests and trackless swamps," came in contact with Scythian nomads, an event which Mr. Abercromby places about 600 B.C. He concludes, however, that the separation of the Magyars from the rest of the Ugrians had taken place at a still earlier date. The third, or Iranian period, may have lasted for the Western Finns about 200 years, but for the Eastern Finns it continued, through intercourse with Persia, down to the overthrow of the Sa'ssanide dynasty in the seventh