Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/367

Rh and later, the restless Hellene had been fighting, trading, plundering, and kidnapping, on both sides of the Ægean, and perhaps as far as the shores of Syria and of Egypt, it is probable that, even at the dawn of history, the maritime Greeks were a very mixed race. On the other hand, the Dorians may well have preserved the original type; and their famous migration may be the earliest known example of those movements of the Aryan race which were, in later times, to change the face of Europe. Analogy perhaps justifies a guess that those ethnological shadows, the Pelasgi, may have been an earlier mixed population, like that of western Gaul and of Britain before the Teutonic invasion. At any rate, the tall blond long-heads are so well represented in the oldest history of the Balkan Peninsula that they may be credited with the Aryan languages spoken there. And it may be that the tradition which peopled Phrygia with Thracians represents a real movement of the Aryan race into Asia Minor, such as that which in after-years carried the Gauls thither.

The difficulties in the way of a probable identification of the people among whom the various dialects of the Latin group developed themselves, with any race traceable in Italy in historical times, are very great. In addition to the ItaMc "aborigines" northern Italy was peopled by Ligurian brunet broad-heads; with Gauls, probably, to a large extent, blond long-heads; with Illyrians, about whom nothing is known. Besides these, there were those perplexing people the Etruscans, who. seem to have been, originally, brunet long-heads. South Italy and Sicily present a contingent of "Sikels," Phœnicians and Greeks; while over all, in comparatively modern times, follows a wash of Teutonic blood. The Latin dialects arose, no one knows how, among the tribes of central Italy, encompassed on all sides by people of the most various physical characters, who were gradually absorbed into the eternally widening maw of Rome, and there, by dint of using the same speech, became the first example of that wonderful ethnological hotch-potch miscalled the Latin race. The only trustworthy guide here is archæological investigation. A great advance will have been made when the race characters of the prehistoric people of the terremare (who are identified by Helbig

with the primitive Umbrians) become fully known.

I can not learn that the ancient literatures of India and of Persia give any definite information about the complexion of the Lido-Iranians, beyond conveying the impression that they were what we vaguely call white men. But it is important to note