Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/474

448 Western congeners. That, however, may be owing to other circumstances than age, and cannot be used as an argument either way till we know more about them. It would be extremely interesting if some one would make a special study of this group, as Circassia lies exactly halfway between India and Scandinavia, and if we adopt a migration theory, this is exactly the central resting-place where we would expect to find traces of the passage of the dolmen-builders. Their route probably would be through Bactria, down the Oxus to the Caspian, across Circassia, and round the head of the Sea of Azof to the Dnieper, and up that river and down the banks of the Niemen or Vistula to the Baltic.

If, on the other hand, we adopt a missionary theory, and are content to believe in an Eastern influence only, without insisting on a great displacement of peoples, this would equally be the trade route along which such influence might be supposed to extend, and so connect the north with the east, just as we may suppose a southern route to have extended through Arabia and Syria to the southern shores of the Mediterranean.

Even more important for our present purpose, however, than an examination of these Caucasian regions would be an exploration of the Steppes to the northward of the route just indicated. If there is any foundation for the theory that the dolmens are of Turanian origin, it is here that we should expect to find the germs of the system. It is one of the best-established facts of ethnology that the original seat of the Aryans was somewhere in Upper and Central Asia, whence they migrated eastward into India, southward into Persia, and westward into Europe. In like manner, the original seat of the Turanians is assumed to be somewhat farther north, and thence at an earlier period it is believed that they spread themselves at some very early prehistoric time over the whole face of the Old World. When we turn to the Steppes, whence this great family of mankind are supposed to have migrated, we find it covered with tumuli. As Haxthausen expresses it, the Kurgans, as they are there called, are counted "non par des milliers, c'est centaines de milliers qu'il faudrait dire;" and Pallas equally gives an account of their astonishing