Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/44

34 unknown. What can Penka say to this in his positive affirmation that the original Aryans got up into Scandinavia, having followed the reindeer from central Europe north after the retreat of the ice sheet? The fact is, archæologically speaking, from the evidence furnished by the kitchen middens, that if they ever did this "they left a fine country, where deer were plenty, to subsist upon shellfish on the foggy coasts of Denmark." The entire absence of economic motive for such a migration is at once apparent. Men seldom travel far under such conditions. Quite early, however, even in the stone age, do evidences of domestic animals occur, to the dog being added the ox, horse, swine, and sheep. Pottery in a rude form also follows. Finally, and in apparent coincidence with the bronze culture, comes a new custom of incineration. The dead are no longer buried, but burned. A profound modification of religious ideas is hereby implied. It seems to have been at about this time also that our Alpine racial type entered Scandinavia from Denmark, although, as we have already observed, it is yet far from certain that the new race was the active agent in introducing the new elements of culture. All that we know is that they both came from the south, and reached this remote region at about the same time.

That the origins of culture in Europe are certainly mixed would seem to be about the main conclusion to be drawn from our extended discussion. It has an iconoclastic tone. Yet we would not leave the matter entirely in the air, nor would we agree with Mantegazza (1884) in his conclusion that "Ignoramus" sums up our entire knowledge of the subject. There is some comfort to be drawn even from this mass of conflicting opinions. Our final destructive aim has been achieved if we have emphasized the danger of correlating data drawn from several distinct sciences, whose only bond of unity is that they are all concerned with the same object—man. The positive contribution which we would seek to make is that the whole matter of European origins is by no means so simple as it has too often been made to appear. It is not imperative that conclusions from all the contributory sciences of physical anthropology, philology, and cultural history should be susceptible of interweaving into a simple scheme of common origins for all. The order of races, for example, need mean nothing as respects priority of culture. Nor do the two sciences, philology and archæology, involve one another's conclusions so far as civilization is concerned. Language and industrial culture may have had very different sources; their migrations need stand in no relation to