XII.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 459 



With that part of Sergi's view which traces the first inhabitants 

 of the northern shores of the Mediterranean (Iberians, TheMediter- 

 Ligurians, Messapians, Siculi and other Itali, Pelas- raneans: 



Iberians, 



gians), to North Africa, I am in full accord. I agree Ligurians; 

 also that all or most of these were primarily of a 

 dark (brown), short, dolicho type, which still persists both in South 

 Europe and North Africa, and in fact is the race which Ripley 

 properly calls " Mediterranean," although in the west they almost 

 certainly ranged into Brittany and the British Isles. 



For the Basques and Iberians we have now the independent 

 testimony of Dr R. Collignon \ perhaps the first living authority on 

 this race. " The physical traits characteristic of the Basques attach 

 them unquestionably ('indiscutablement ') to the great Hamitic 

 branch of the white races, that is to say, to the ancient Egyptians 

 and to the various groups commonly comprised under the col- 

 lective name of Berbers. Their brachycephaly, slight as it is, 

 cannot outweigh the aggregate of the other characters which they 

 present.... It is therefore in this direction and not amongst Finns 

 or Esthonians that is to be sought the parent stem of this para- 

 doxical race. It is North African or European, assuredly not 

 Asiatic." 



To this and the archaeological evidences of identity derived 

 from their common megalithic monuments may now be added a 

 linguistic proof, which seems all but conclusive. On the African 

 side we have the Hamitic (Berber) language still in its full vigour ; 

 and apparently but little changed for thousands of years. But in 

 Europe the corresponding primitive tongues have everywhere been 

 swept away by the Aryan (Hellenic, Italic, Keltic) except in Italy 

 and Iberia. Of Pelasgic, if a member of this family, nothing 

 survives except the statement of Herodotus, a dangerous guide 

 in this matter, that it was a barbaric tongue like the people them- 

 selves 2 . Of Messapian also there remain but a few fragments, 

 just enough to show that it was not a member of the Italic branch 

 of the Aryan family, if we even allow with Mommsen that it was 

 Aryan at all. 



1 La Race Basque, L* Anthropologie, 1894, pp. 270-87. 

 57- 



