1895.] C>1 [Brinton. 



thoroughly Asiatic animals, the camel and the ass, and had lived 

 long enough in their Asian home to develop many local culture- 

 words, which each branch preserved after their division.* Years 

 ago the acute student of antiquit}^, Vivien de St. Martin, 

 pointed out that throughout the Avesta there is not an instance 

 of a word, proper name or culture-reference which distinctly 

 iiklicates association with any Turanian or Dravidian national- 

 ity.f This significant statement has borne the test of criticism, 

 and is well-nigh conclusive in its bearing on the question at 

 issue. 



We may now proceed to scrutinize more closely each of the 

 three great divisions of the white race who dwelt in western 

 Asia in prehistoric and protohistoric times. 



The first to arrive, as I have intimated, I take to have been 



The Caucasic Stock. 



The clear definition of this stock is one of the most recei.t 

 conquests of anthropologic science, and is due chiefly to the un- 

 tiring studies of Gen. R. von Erckert, of the Russian army.|; 

 He has proved the fundamental unity of the three great groups 

 of the Caucasic languages, the Georgian, the Circassian and the 

 Lesghian. In these groups there are about thirty dialects or 

 languages, and they have not j'et been sufficiently analyzed to 

 decide which is nearest to the original tongue, the common 

 Ursprache. 



The morphology of the stock is strictly its own, severing it 

 as widely from the Ural-Altaic tongues as from those of Aryan 

 or Semitic complexion. It is an entirelj* independent linguistic 

 family. 



The Georgian is the southernmost group, being spoken in 

 Trans-Caucasia about Tiflis. It is divided into several branches, 

 which are scarcely more than dialects, the Grusinian, the Imeri- 

 an, the Mingrelian, the Lasian and the Svanian. The structure 

 of these is not agglutinative in the proper sense of the word. 



* Schrader aud Jevons, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, p. 2G7, etc. (Londou , 

 1890). 



t Oeographie dii Veda, Paris, 1859, etc., quoted by L. Sehiaparelli in his article already 

 quoted, '" SuU 'Etnografia della Persia autica aateriore alle invasione ariaae." 



X Die Sprachcn <lcs Kaukasischcn Stammes (Vienna, 1895). The grouping of the Caucasic 

 languages is not yet settled. Eicliert incline:* to a provisional, geographical one. 



PfiOC. A.MEB. PHlLOS. SOC. XXXIV. 147. K. PRIKTED MAY 10, 1895. 



