552 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



neighbours, and denies that the Ossets are the last remnants of 

 Germanic immigrants into Caucasia. 



We have therefore in the Caucasus a very curious and puzzling 



phenomenon several somewhat distinct groups of 

 Aborigines^ aborigines, mainly of de Lapouge's Alpine type, but 



all except the Ossets speaking an amazing number 

 of non-Aryan stock-languages. Philologists have been for some 

 time hard at work in this linguistic wilderness, the " Mountain of 

 Languages " of the early Arabo-Persian writers, without greatly 

 reducing the number of independent groups, while many idioms 

 traceable to a single stem still differ so profoundly from each 

 other that they are practically so many stocks. Of the really 

 distinct families the more important are : the Kartwcli of the 

 southern slopes, comprising the historical Georgian, cultivated 

 since the 5th century, the Mingrelian, Imeritian, Laz of Lazistan, 

 and many others ; the Cherkess (Circassian), the Abkhazian and 

 Kabard of the Western and Central Caucasus ; the Cheche?iz and 

 Lesghian, the Andi, the Ude^ the Kubachi and Duodez of Daghestan, 

 i.e. the Eastern Caucasus. Where did this babel of tongues 

 come from? We know that 2500 years ago the relations were 

 much the same as at present, because the Greeks speak of 

 scores of languages current in the port of Dioscurias in their 

 time. If therefore the aborigines are the "sweepings of the 

 plains," they must have been swept up long before the historic 

 period. Did they bring their different languages with them, or 

 were these specialised in their new upland homes? The con- 

 sideration that an open environment makes for uniformity, 

 secluded upland valleys for diversity, seems greatly to favour the 

 latter assumption, which is further strengthened by the now 

 established fact that, although there are few traces of the Palaeo- 

 lithic epoch, the Caucasus was somewhat thickly inhabited in 

 the New Stone Age. These highlanders need not therefore be 

 regarded as sweepings, but rather as true aborigines, the direct 

 descendants of the round-headed race of Alpine Caucasic type, 

 who had spread from North Africa in Neolithic times into Europe 

 and Western Asia. Bearing in mind the immensely long duration 

 of the New Stone Age. we see at once that this would give ample 

 time for the development of these non-Aryan agglutinating forms 



