305 MARTIN P. NILSSON 


stricts of Greece were isolated from each other. This is shown by the 
geometrical style of vase-painting which belongs to the ninth and 
eighth centuries B. C. The Mycenaean style of vase-painting is the 
same wherever Mycenaean vases are found, in or outside of Greece. 
The geometrical style, on the contrary, has very characteristic diffe- 
rences: it is quite easy to say in which island or province a vase or 
even a sherd has been made. The ancient towns were small, the 
district was very limited, and the inhabitants were not very numerous. 
Each of these towns was wholly independent and sovereign, compo- 
sing a state with its own rights. The bitterest enemy was usually 
the neighbour. In this narrow frame the people lived and — married. 
Consequently inbreeding was the rule and was strongly accentuated 
by the smallness of the population. In Athens at a somewhat later age 
the law enforced it; nobody could become a citizen if both his parents 
were not citizens of the town. This isolation and inbreeding created 
the race to which ancient culture and the foundations of our own 
culture are due. Italy, which at last conquered the world and orga- 
nized the Empire, underwent much the same process. 
The process was repeated, but on a larger scale, after the decay 
of the ancient culture and the fall of the Roman Empire and the 
settling down of the foreign conquerors in its provinces. Letters and 
education, as far as they survived at all, were limited to very few. 
The decay of the material civilization changed and fettered the lives 
even of the poorest classes. We may compare the ages e. g. of 
Haprian and of the Merovingians in order to perceive this. Inter- 
course ceased. The old Roman roads, on which the peoples of the 
Empire had penetrated into all parts of it, fell into disuse, were broken 
up, treated as quarries, or became overgrown by herbs and woods. 
Society was split up into small independent and self-supporting uni- 
ties, — this is the feudal system — the inhabitants were rooted fast 
in the soil. So there reappeared the primitive conditions under which 
every man takes his wife at his own doors. In this isolation of the 
small groups new races and new peoples developed out of the mixed 
human chaos of the Empire during the Middle Ages. These are the 
peoples of modern Europe, and the outcome of their racial instincts 
is seen in the national states of modern Europe, whose frontiers form 
lo some degree an effective barrier against a race-blending of such a 
destructive character as that which was the most active cause of the 
decay of ancient culture and the fall of the Roman Empire. The 
Nemesis of history has caused the consequences of victory to be 
