XIV.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 513 



their structure was disturbed by the conflict, so that there were 

 often great losses and reconstructions, as is plainly seen in the 

 Italic (Latin, Umbrian, Oscan) verbal system. The organic 

 Aryan future in j disappears in many verbs, and is replaced by 

 an analytical form, which in course of time again becomes 

 synthetic 1 . 



In this way the various members of the Aryan linguistic 

 family became specialised in their new homes, and it is reasonable 

 to suppose that such specialisation took place under local in- 

 fluences, Ligurian in Italy, Pelasgian in Greece, and so on. But 

 this is very different from saying that the Aryans, of Asiatic origin, 

 had on reaching Europe only one language divided into three 

 main branches, which are now well differentiated under the names 

 of Keltic, Germanic, and Slav, just as they had only one funda- 

 mental physical type ; also that the other so-called Aryan languages, 

 especially those of Greece and Italy, were never originally Aryan 

 ( u non furono mai arie d' origine"), but became transformed to 

 Aryan tongues, under the influence especially of the proto-Kelts 

 and the proto-Slavs, the two branches which invaded those regions. 



The same phenomena, Sergi contends, must have taken place 

 amongst the long-headed people who first occupied North Europe. 

 They also came from Africa, are represented in the German 

 Reihengraber, and are wrongly supposed to be 

 typical Teutonic Aryans from Asia. But they are R^tion^in 

 only Mediterraneans who, like the others in Italv, North Ger - 



many. 



Greece, and elsewhere, were Aryanised in speech, 



and generally yielded to the sway and cultural influences of 



the round-headed Aryans arriving much later from Asia 2 . 



This extension of the Mediterranean stock to north Europe and 

 Scandinavia is based by Sergi on what he claims to be an absolute 

 identity in the forms of the crania from the Reihengraber with 

 those of Ligurian graves in Italy. But too much seems to be 

 built on the common characters of these dolicho skulls, the two 

 races being in most other respects quite different, the northerners 



] Cf. Lat. habebii, where the Umbrian still has habiest (R. S. Conway, The 

 Italic Dialects, etc., Cambridge University Press, 1897, vol. I. p. 428). 



Ami e Italici, pp. 166-7; Ueber den sogenannten Reihengrabertypus, p. 7, 

 and elsewhere. 



K. 



33 



