400 THE ORIGIN OP THE SLAVS. 



It now remains to determine the fatherland of the Slavs. This is 

 the most difficult task, for the first historic information concerning 

 them discovers them already spread over vast and widely separated 

 territories. The hypothesis that they came from Asia, or were iden- 

 tical with the Sarmatians, is the least tenable, being based on fanciful 

 theories, while best-informed authors have derived them from the 

 region of the Danube.'^ Their language, of the Satem group, could 

 have originated only in the eastern zone of the proto- Aryan territory. 

 The linguistic ancestors of the Slavs spread over the western part of 

 the valley of the Danube only after the Umbro-Latins and Greeks, 

 on the one hand, and the Gauls and Germans on the other, were either 

 drawing away or had left that region. The Slavs came later, without 

 being in direct contact with any of those peoples. We know that the 

 Illyrians came from the east to occupy the Adriatic littoral, and sub- 

 sequently came the Thracians, from whom the former separated. We 

 know also that the Pannonians were the parents of the Dacians, and 

 that the Moesians, Illyrians, Dacians, Getes, and Pannonians were 

 all Slavs. 



The principal promoter of this westward movement, the oldest 

 constituent element of the Slavic peoples, notably north of the 

 Danube, from Pannonia to the Baltic, and from the Elbe to the Vis- 

 tula, was the people that, spreading over central and northern Europe, 

 exclusively practiced cremation of the dead. This people was like- 

 wise the propagator of brachycephaly or short-headedness. They 

 became known in history as the Veneti, one of the most ancient 

 political groupings of central Europe, and in the days of Herodotus 

 they occupied all the western districts from the Adriatic to the 

 Danube. A close study of the Veneti has proved beyond doubt that 

 the Slavs of the western zone of central Europe, from the Adriatic 

 to the Elbe and the Baltic, are their descendants. 



FORMATION OF THE SLAVIC TYPE ON THE DANUBE BY MODIFICATION OF PROTO-AKY'AN 



AND THRACIAN TYPES. 



If we examine the region of the Danube basin from the Alps to the 

 Black Sea, we find the Slavs there as autochthons. If there are dis- 

 tricts where at present none or but few Slavs live, nevertheless we 

 always find them in proximity thereto, in places where they sought 

 natural protection against invaders or into which they were driven. 

 There is no other ethnic element in the Danube basin that could dis- 

 pute their indigenous origin, for all other occupants are either con- 

 querors or immigrants of later times. We know that the Dacians, 

 the Pannonians, and the Moesians of the Roman period were ancestors 

 of the Slavs, and there is substantial proof that those Illyrians, with 



a Revue de rEcole, January, 1905. 



