Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

collective geographical expression Ural-Altaic, to which corresponds the ethnical designation Mongolo-Tatar, or more properly Mongolo-Turki[569]. Their domain is roughly separated from that of the Southern Mongols (Chap. VI.) by the Great Wall and the Kuen-lun range, beyond which it spreads out westwards over most of Western Asia, and a considerable part of North Europe, with many scattered groups in Central and South Russia, the Balkan Peninsula, and the Middle Danube basin. In the extreme north their territory stretches from the shores of the Pacific with Japan and parts of Sakhalin continually westwards across Korea, Siberia, Central and North Russia to Finland and Lapland. But its southern limits can be indicated only approximately by a line drawn from the Kuen-lun range westwards along the northern escarpments of the Iranian plateau, and round the southern shores of the Caspian to the Mediterranean. This line, however, must be drawn in such a way as to include Afghan Turkestan, much of the North Persian and Caucasian steppes, and nearly the whole of Asia Minor, while excluding Armenia, Kurdestan, and Syria.

Nor is it to be supposed that even within these limits the North Mongol territory is everywhere continuous. In East Europe especially, where they are for the most part comparatively recent intruders, the Mongols are found only in isolated and vanishing groups in the Lower and Middle Volga basin, the Crimea, and the North Caucasian steppe, and in more compact bodies in Rumelia, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Throughout all these districts, however, the process of absorption or assimilation to the normal European physical type is so far completed that many of the Nogai and other Russian "Tartars," as they are called, the Volga and Baltic Finns, the Magyars, and Osmanli Turks, would scarcely be recognised as members of the North Mongol family but for their common Finno-Turki speech, and the historic evidence by which their original connection with this division is established beyond all question.

In Central Asia also (North Irania, the Aralo-Caspian and Tarim basins) the Mongols have been in close contact with Caucasic peoples probably since the New Stone Age, and here intermediate types have been developed, by which an almost unbroken transition has been brought about between the yellow and the white races.

During recent years much light has been shed on the physiographical conditions of Central Asia in early times. Stein's[570] explorations in 1900-1 and 1906-8 in Chinese Turkestan, the Pumpelly Expeditions[571] in 1903 and 1904 in Russian Turkestan, the travels of Sven Hedin[572] in 1899-1902, and 1906-8, of Carruthers[573] in N.W. Mongolia, and the researches of Ellsworth Huntington[574] (a member of the first Pumpelly Expedition) in 1905-7 all bear testimony to the variation in climate which the districts of Central Asia have undergone since glacial times. There has been a general trend towards arid conditions, alternating with periods of greater humidity, when tracts, now deserted, were capable of maintaining a dense population. Abundant evidence of man's occupation has been found in delta oases formed by snow-fed mountain streams, or on the banks of vanished rivers, where now-a-days all is desolation, though, as T. Peisker[575] points out, climate was not the sole or even the main factor in many areas. In some places, as at Merv, the earliest occupation was only a few centuries before the Christian era, but at Anau near Askhabad some 300 miles east of the Caspian, explored by the Pumpelly Expedition, the earliest strata contained remains of Stone Age culture. The North Kurgan or tumulus, rising some 40 or 50 feet above the plain, showed a definite stratification of structures in sun-dried bricks, raised by successive generations of occupants. H. Schmidt, who was in charge of the excavations, was able to collect a valuable series of potsherds, showing a gradual evolution in form, technique and ornamentation, from the earliest to the latest periods. One point of great significance for establishing cultural if not physical relationships in this obscure region is the resemblance between the geometrical designs on pots of the early period and similar pottery found by MM. Gautier and Lampre[576] at Mussian, and by M. J. de Morgan[576] at Susa, while clay figurines from the South Kurgan (copper culture) are clearly of Babylonian type, the influence of which is seen much later in terra-cotta figurines discovered by Stein[577] at Yotkan.

With the progress of archaeological research, it becomes daily more evident that the whole of the North Mongol domain, from Finland to Japan, has passed through the Stone and Metal Ages, like most other habitable parts of the globe. During his wanderings in Siberia and Mongolia in the early nineties, Hans Leder[578] came upon countless prehistoric stations, kurgans (barrows), stone circles, and many megalithic monuments of various types. In West Siberia the barrows, which consist solely of earth without any stone-work, are by the present inhabitants called Chudskiye Kurgani, "Chudish Graves," and, as in North Russia, this term "Chude" is ascribed to a now vanished unknown race which formerly inhabited the land. To them, as to the "Toltecs" in Central America, all ancient monuments are credited, and while some regard them as prehistoric Finns, others identify them with the historic Scythians, the Scythians of Herodotus.

There are reasons, however, for thinking that the Chudes may represent an earlier race, the men of the Stone Age, who, migrating from north Europe eastwards, had reached the Tom valley (which drains to the Obi) before the extinction of the mammoth, and later spread over the whole of northern Asia, leaving everywhere evidence of their presence in the megalithic monuments now being daily brought to light in East Siberia, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. This view receives support from the characters of two skulls found in 1895 by A. P. Mostitz in one of the five prehistoric stations on the left bank of the Sava affluent of the Selenga river, near Ust-Kiakta in Trans-Baikalia. They differ markedly from the normal Buryat (Siberian Mongol) type, recalling rather the long-shaped skulls of the South Russian kurgans, with cephalic indices 73.2 and 73.5, as measured by M. J. D. Talko-Hryncewicz[579]. Thus, in the very heart of the Mongol domain, the characteristically round-headed race would appear to have been preceded, as in Europe, by a long-headed type.

In East Siberia, and especially in the Lake Baikal region, Leder found extensive tracts strewn with kurgans, many of which have already been explored, and their contents deposited in the Irkutsk museum. Amongst these are great numbers of stone implements, and objects made of bone and mammoth tusks, besides carefully worked copper ware, betraying technical skill and some artistic taste in the designs. In Trans-Baikalia, still farther east, with the kurgans are associated the so-called Kameni Babi, "Stone Women," monoliths rough-hewn in the form of human figures. Many of these monoliths bear inscriptions, which, however, appear to be of recent date (mostly Buddhist prayers and formularies), and are not to be confounded with the much older rock inscriptions deciphered by W. Thomsen through the Turki language.

Continuing his investigations in Mongolia proper, Leder here also discovered earthen kurgans, which, however, differed from those of Siberia by being for the most part surmounted either with circular or rectangular stone structures, or else with monoliths. They are called Kueruektsur by the present inhabitants, who hold them in great awe, and never venture to touch them. Unfortunately strangers also are unable to examine their contents, all disturbance of the ground with spade or shovel being forbidden under pain of death by the Chinese officials, for fear of awakening the evil spirits, now slumbering peacefully below the surface. The Siberian burial mounds have yielded no bronze, a fact which indicates considerable antiquity, although no date can be set for its introduction into these regions. Better evidence of antiquity is found in the climatic changes resulting in recent desiccation, which must have taken place here as elsewhere, for the burials bear witness to the existence of a denser population than could be supported at the present time[580].

Such an antiquity is indeed required to explain the spread of neolithic remains to the Pacific seaboard, and especially to Korea and Japan. In Korea W. Gowland examined a dolmen 30 miles from Seul, which he describes and figures[581], and which is remarkable especially for the disproportionate size of the capstone, a huge undressed megalith 14-1/2 by over 13 feet. He refers to four or five others, all in the northern part of the peninsula, and regards them as "intermediate in form between a cist and a dolmen." But he thinks it probable that they were never covered by mounds, but always stood as monuments above ground, in this respect differing from the Japanese, the majority of which are all buried in tumuli. In some of their features these present a curious resemblance to the Brittany structures, but no stone implements appear to have been found in any of the burial mounds, and the Japanese chambered tombs, according to Hamada, Professor of Archaeology in Kyoto University, are usually attributed to the Iron Age (fifth to seventh centuries A.D.[582]).

In many districts Japan contains memorials of a remote past--shell mounds, cave-dwellings, and in Yezo certain pits, which are not occupied by the present Ainu population, but are by them attributed to the Koro-pok-guru, "People of the Hollows," who occupied the land before their arrival, and lived in huts built over these pits. Similar remains on an islet near Nemuro on the north-east coast of Yezo are said by the Japanese to have belonged to the Kobito, a dwarfish race exterminated by the Ainu, hence apparently identical with the Koro-pok-guru. They are associated by John Milne with some primitive peoples of the Kurile Islands, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka, who, like the Eskimo of the American coast, had extended formerly much farther south than at present.

In a kitchen-midden, 330 by 200 feet, near Shiidzuka in the province of Ibaraki, the Japanese antiquaries S. Yagi and M. Shinomura[583] have found numerous objects belonging to the Stone Age of Japan. Amongst them were flint implements, worked bones, ashes, pottery, and a whole series of clay figures of human beings. The finders suggest that these remains may have belonged to a homogeneous race of the Stone Period, who, however, were not the ancestors of the Ainu--hitherto generally regarded as the first inhabitants of Japan. In the national records vague reference is made to other aborigines, such as the "Long Legs," and the "Eight Wild Tribes," described as the enemies of the first Japanese settlers in Kiu-shiu, and reduced by Jimmu Tenno, the semi-mythical founder of the present dynasty; the Ebisu, who are probably to be identified with the Ainu; and the Seki-Manzi, "Stone-Men," also located in the southern island of Kiu-shiu. The last-mentioned, of whom, however, little further is known, seem to have some claim to be associated with the above described remains of early man in Japan[584].

In the extreme west the present Mongol peoples, being quite recent intruders, can in no way be connected with the abundant prehistoric relics daily brought to light in that region (South Russia, the Balkan Peninsula, Hungary). The same remark applies even to Finland itself, which was at one time supposed to be the cradle of the Finnish people, but is now shown to have been first occupied by Germanic tribes. From an exhaustive study of the bronze-yielding tumuli A. Hackman[585] concludes that the population of the Bronze Period was Teutonic, and in this he agrees both with Montelius and with W. Thomsen. The latter holds on linguistic grounds that at the beginning of the new era the Finns still dwelt east of the Gulf of Finland, whence they moved west in later times.

It is unfortunate that, owing probably to the character of the country, remains of the Stone Age in Babylonia are wanting so that no comparison can yet be made with the neolithic cultures of Egypt and the Aegean. The constant floods to which Babylonia was ever subject swept away all traces of early occupations until the advent of the Sumerians, who built their cities on artificial mounds. The question of Akkado-Sumerian[586] origins is