XIV.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 543 



is chronologically fixed at 1149 B.C.; the beginning of the 

 Hellenic migrations may be dated back to the i3th century. 

 When the Hellenes migrated from Central Europe to Greece, the 

 period of the general ethnic dispersion was already closed, 

 and the migratory period which next followed began with the 

 Hellenes, and was continued by the Itali, Gauls, Germans, etc. 

 The difficulties created by this view are insurmountable. Thus 

 we should have to suppose that from this relatively contracted 

 Aryan cradle countless tribes swarmed over Europe since the 

 i3th century B.C., speaking profoundly different languages (Greek, 

 Keltic, Latin, etc.), all differentiated since that time on the shores 

 of the Baltic. The proto-Aryans with their already specialised 

 tongues had reached the shores of the Mediterranean long before 

 that time, and according to Maspero 1 , were known to the Egyptians 

 of the 5th dynasty (3990 3804 B.C.) if not earlier. Allowing that 

 these may have rather been pre-Hellenes (Pelasgians), we still 

 know that the Achseans had traditionally arrived about 1250 B.C. 

 and they were already speaking the language of Homer. As far 

 as can be judged from their respective languages, a most valuable 

 criterion in questions of origins, the proto-Hellenes were in closer 

 contact with the proto-Iranians before the dispersion than with 

 the European Aryans. Hence they probably reached the Balkan 

 peninsula and Greece, not from North or Central Europe, but 

 from the Iranian uplands through Asia Minor, where Hommel 

 finds blond and blue-eyed Aryans referred to in the Tell el- 

 Amarna tablets. 



Indeed I think we may safely say that no Acheeans, or any 

 other proto-Hellenes, could have come from the Baltic lands. 

 The farther back the migration is dated, the nearer will their 

 speech approximate to the Aryan mother tongue, and consequently 

 be the farther removed from the Teutonic, which nevertheless 

 according to Mullenhoff was already highly specialised about 

 1000 B.C. Hence the Greek of that period must have differed 

 profoundly from the Germanic. And even if we go further back 

 to the migration period (i3th century B.C. as is assumed), then the 

 difference will still be great, the two branches having all along 



1 Dawn of Civilization, p. 391. 



