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

of the Balkan peninsula shows the "Greek contingent closely confined to the sea-coast[1094]." Ripley, however, though carefully avoiding any dragging of "Pelasgians" into the question, assumes a primitive substratum of Mediterranean type all over Greece. "The testimony of these ancient Greek crania is perfectly harmonious. All authorities agree that the ancient Hellenes were decidedly long-headed, betraying in this respect their affinity to the Mediterranean Race.... Whether from Attica, from Schliemann's successive cities excavated upon the site of Troy, or from the coast of Asia Minor[1095]; at all times from 400 B.C. to the third century of our era, it would seem proved that the Greeks were of this dolichocephalic type.... Every characteristic of their modern descendants and every analogy with the neighbouring populations, leads us to the conclusion that the classical Hellenes were distinctly of the Mediterranean racial type, little different from the Phoenicians, the Romans or the Iberians[1096]." Nevertheless Doerpfeld[1097] claims that there were, from the first, two races in Greece, a Southern, or Aegean, and a Northern, who were the Aryan Achaeans of history, and recent archaeological discoveries certainly support this view.

Another attempt to solve the Pelasgian problem is that of E. Meyer[1098]. After enumerating the various areas said to have been occupied by the Pelasgians "ein grosses Urvolk" who ranged from Asia Minor to Italy, he pricks the bubble by saying that in reality there were no Pelasgians save in Thessaly, in the fruitful plain of Peneus, hence called "Pelasgic Argos[1099]," and later Pelasgiotis. They, like the Dorians, invaded Crete from Thessaly and at the beginning of the first millennium were defeated and enslaved by the incoming Thessalians. These are the only true Pelasgians. The other so-called Pelasgians are the descendants of an eponymous Pelasgos who in genealogical poetry becomes the ancestor of mankind. Since the Arcadians were regarded as the earliest of the indigenous peoples, Pelasgos was made the ancestor of the Arcadians. The name "Pelasgic Argos" was transferred from Thessaly to the Peloponnesian city. Attic Pelasgians were derived from a mistake of Hecataeus[1100]. So the legend grew. The only real Pelasgian problem, concludes Meyer, is whether the Thessalian Pelasgians were a Greek or pre-Greek people, and he is inclined to favour the latter view. The identity of "the most mysterious people of antiquity" is further obscured by philology, for, as P. Giles points out, their name appears merely to mean "the people of the sea," so that "they do not seem to be in all cases the same stock[1101]."

Whether we call them Pelasgians or no, there would seem to be little doubt that the splendours of Aegean civilisation which have been and still are being gradually revealed by the researches of British, Italian, American and German archaeologists are to be attributed to an indigenous people of Mediterranean type, occupying an area of which Crete was the centre, from the Stone Age, right through the Bronze Age, down to the Northern invasions of the second millennium and the introduction of iron. In range this culture included Greece with its islands, Cyprus, and Western Anatolia, and its influence extended westwards to Sicily, Italy, Sardinia and Spain, and eastwards to Syria and Egypt. Its chief characteristics are (1) an indigenous script both pictographic and linear, with possible affinities in Hittite, Cypriote and South-west Anatolian scripts, but hitherto indecipherable; (2) a characteristic art attempting "to express an ideal in forms more and more closely approaching to realities[1102]," exhibited in frescoes, pottery, reliefs, sculptures, jewelry etc.; (3) a distinctive architectural style, and (4) type of tomb, which have no parallels elsewhere. Excavations at Cnossos go far towards establishing a chronology for the Aegean area. At the base is an immensely thick neolithic deposit, above which come pottery and other objects of Minoan Period I. 1, which are correlated by Petrie with objects found at Abydos, referred by him to the 1st Dynasty (4000 B.C.). Minoan Period II. 2 corresponds with the Egyptian XII Dynasty (2500 B.C.), characteristic Cretan pottery of this period being found in the Fayum. Minoan Period III. 1 and 2 synchronises with Dynasty XVIII (1600 to 1400 B.C.). Iron begins to be used for weapons after Period III. 3, and is commonly attributed to incursions from the north, the Dorian invasion of the Greek authors, about 1000 B.C. which led to the destruction of the palace of Cnossos and the substitution of "Geometric" for "Mykenaean" art.

Turning to the African branch of the Mediterranean type, we find it forming not merely the substratum, but the great bulk of the inhabitants throughout all recorded time from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, and from the Mediterranean to Sudan, although since Muhammadan times largely intermingled with the kindred Semitic stock (mainly Arabs) in the north and west, and in the east (Abyssinia) with the same stock since prehistoric times. All are comprised by Sergi[1103] in two main divisions:--

EASTERN HAMITES, answering to the Ethiopic Branch of some writers, of somewhat variable type, comprising the Old and Modern Egyptiansnow mixed with Semitic (Arab) elements; the Nubians, the Bejas, the Abyssinians, collective name of all the peoples between Khor Barka and Shoa (with, in some places, a considerable infusion of Himyaritic or early Semitic blood from South Arabia); the Gallas (Gallas proper, Somals, and Afars or Danakils); the Masai and Ba-Hima. NORTHERN HAMITES, the Libyan Race or Berber (Western) Branch of some writers, comprising the Mediterranean Berbers of Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli; the Atlantic Berbers (Shluhs and others) of Morocco; the West Saharan Berbers commonly called Tuaregs; the Tibus of the East Sahara; the Fulahs, dispersed amongst the Sudanese Negroes; the Guanches of the Canary Islands.

Of the Eastern Hamites he remarks generally that they do not form a homogeneous division, but rather a number of different peoples either crowded together in separate areas, or dispersed in the territories of other peoples. They agree more in their inner than in their outer characters, without constituting a single ethnical type. The cranial forms are variable, though converging, and evidently to be regarded as very old varieties of an original stock. The features are also variable, converging and characteristic, with straight or arched (aquiloid) nose quite different from the Negro; lips rather thick, but never everted as in the Negro; hair usually frizzled, not wavy; beard thin; skin very variable, brown, red-brown, black-brown, ruddy black, chocolate and coffee-brown, reddish or yellowish, these variations being due to crossings and the outward physical conditions.

In this assumption Sergi is supported by the analogous case of the western Berbers between the Senegal and Morocco, to whom Collignon and Deniker[1104] restrict the term "Moor," as an ethnical name. The chief groups, which range from the Atlantic coast east to the camping grounds of the true Tuaregs[1105], are the Trarsas and Braknas of the Senegal river, and farther north the Dwaish (Idoesh), Uled-Bella, Uled-Embark, and Uled-en-Nasur. From a study of four of these Moors, who visited Paris in 1895, it appears that they are not an Arabo-Berber cross, as commonly supposed, but true Hamites, with a distinct Negro strain, shown especially in their frizzly hair, bronze colour, short broad nose, and thickish lips, their general appearance showing an astonishing likeness to the Bejas, Afars, Somals, Abyssinians, and other Eastern Hamites. This is not due to direct descent, and it is more reasonable to suppose "that at the two extremities of the continent the same causes have produced the same effects, and that from the infusion of a certain proportion of black blood in the Egyptian [eastern] and Berber branches of the Hamites, there have sprung closely analogous mixed groups[1106]." From the true Negro they are also distinguished by their grave and dignified bearing, and still more by their far greater intelligence.

Both divisions of the Hamites, continues Sergi, agree substantially in their bony structure, and thus form a single anthropological group with variable skull--pentagonoid, ovoid, ellipsoid, sphenoid, etc., as expressed in his terminology--but constant, that is, each variety recurring in all the branches; face also variable (tetragonal, ellipsoid, etc.), but similarly identical in all the branches; profile non-prognathous; eyes dark, straight, not prominent; nose straight or arched; hair smooth, curly, long, black or chestnut; beard full, also scant; lips thin or slightly tumid, never protruding; skin of various brown shades; stature medium or tall.

Such is the great anthropological division, which was diffused continuously over the greater part of Africa, and round the northern shores of the Mediterranean. According to Stuhlmann[1107] it had its origin in South Arabia, if not further east, and entered Africa in the region of Erythrea. He regards the Red Sea as offering no obstacle to migrations, but suggests a possible land connection between the opposite shores.

Nothing is more astonishing than the strange persistence not merely of the Berber type, but of the Berber temperament and nationality since the Stone Ages, despite the successive invasions of foreign peoples during the historic period. First came the Sidonian Phoenicians, founders of Carthage and Utica probably about 1500 B.C. The Greek occupation of Cyrenaica (628 B.C.) was followed by the advent of the Romans on the ruins of the Carthaginian empire. The Romans have certainly left distinct traces of their presence, and some of the Aures highlanders still proudly call themselves Rumaniya. These Shawias ("Pastors") form a numerous group, all claiming Roman descent, and even still keeping certain Roman and Christian feasts, such as Bu Ini, i.e.Christmas; Innar or January (New Year's Day); Spring (Easter), etc. A few Latin words also survive such as urtho = hortus; kerrush = quercus (evergreen oak); milli = milliarium (milestone).

After the temporary Vandal occupation came the great Arab invasions of the seventh and later centuries, and even these had been preceded by the kindred Ruadites, who had in pre-Moslem times already reached Mauretania from Arabia. With the Jews, some of whom had also reached Tripolitana before the New Era, a steady infiltration of Negroes from Sudan, and the recent French, Spanish, Italian, and Maltese settlers, we have all the elements that go to make up the cosmopolitan population of Mauretania.

But amid them all the Berbers and the Arabs stand out as the immensely predominant factors, still distinct despite a probably common origin in the far distant past and later interminglings. The Arab remains above all a nomad herdsman, dwelling in tents, without house or hamlet, a good stock-breeder, but a bad husbandman, and that only on compulsion. "The ploughshare and shame enter hand in hand into the family," says the national proverb. To find space for his flocks and herds he continues the destructive work of Carthaginian and Roman, who ages ago cleared vast wooded tracts for their fleets and commercial navies, and thus rendered large areas barren and desolate.

The Berber on the contrary loves the sheltering woodlands; he is essentially a highlander who carefully tills the forest glades, settles in permanent homes, and often develops flourishing industries. Arab society is feudal and theocratic, ruled by a despotic Sheikh, while the Berber with his Jemaa, or "Witenagemot," and his Kanun or unwritten code, feels himself a freeman; and it may well have been this democratic spirit, inherited by his European descendants, that enabled the western nations to take the lead in the onward movement of humanity. The Arab again is a fanatic, ever to be feared, because he blindly obeys the will of Allah proclaimed by his prophets, marabouts, and mahdis[1108]. But the Berber, a born sceptic, looks askance at theological dogmas; an unconscious philosopher, he is far less of a fatalist than his Semitic neighbour, who associates with Allah countless demons and jins in the government of the world.

In their physical characters the two races also present some striking contrasts, the Arab having the regular oval brain-cap and face of the true Semite, whereas the Berber head is more angular, less finely moulded, with more prominent cheekbones, shorter and less aquiline nose, which combined with a slight degree of sub-nasal prognathism, imparts to the features coarser and less harmonious outlines. He is at the same time distinctly taller and more muscular, with less uniformity in