402 THE ORIGIN OF THE SLAVS. 



their prodigious strength. Their customs and dress are nearly the 

 same as those of the Gauls, while speaking a different language." 

 This language, which Polybius says was neither Latin nor Gallic, 

 could only have been a Slavic dialect. The funeral inscriptions from 

 the Venetian village of Aquila contemporary with Strabo are Slavic, 

 and the people of the extreme northeast of Italy still have a particu- 

 lar Slavic dialect, the Rhesian. 



In the time of Herodotus the Veneti were associated with the 

 Sigynnse, wdio settled north of the Danube and were connected with 

 the Gauls. For while the Veneti called themselves a Median colony, 

 the SigynnfB, on their j)art, had '' habits resembling those of the 

 Medes." (Herodotus V, 9.) 



For another passage in Strabo (XII, 3, 12, and 25) we learn that 

 the traditional origin of the Veneti was that they came to the Adriatic 

 shortly after the fall of Troy (1183 B. C), from Paphlagonia, Avhere 

 they were associated Avith the Capj^adocians, after having partici- 

 pated in the Trojan war with the Thracians. Traversing Thracia 

 and Illyria, they reached the Adriatic, bringing with them elements 

 of their civilization, their large Asiatic horses, and the custom of 

 burning their dead. 



PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND ACQUIRED LANGUAGE OF THE VENETI. 



An unexpected light is thus thrown on the prehistoric past of 

 central Europe. As stated above, there was at Glasinac, to the south- 

 east of Serajevo, a warlike Ill3anan people, their customs identical 

 with the Thracians, who mingled with a foreign race that incinerated 

 their dead. Now, according to their number and their material, the 

 Glasinac sepulchers date between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries 

 B. C., and some belong to the time "when the Veneti, after the Trojan 

 war (1183 B. C.), gradually crossed Thracia to reach the country 

 north of the Adriatic. 



We know nothing directly of the physical traits of the Paphla- 

 gonians. Of the Cappadocians, however, something is knoAA'n, for 

 the Assyrians fought against them before the end of the twelfth 

 century B. C, and they formed part of the Empire of the Medes. 

 They had racial and linguistic affinities with the Turanian element of 

 Hither Asia, with the Sumerians, the proto-Armenians, and the 

 Medes. The same was probably the case AAdth the Paphlagonians, 

 for the ancients depicted them as very different both from the Thra- 

 cians and the Gauls of Galatia. As to the Veneti, the figures on the 

 famous stele of Watsch all show their type, Avith the nose concave or 

 short and depressed at the root. Short-headed and broAvn, they 

 introduced brachycephaly into the northeast of Italy, profoundly 

 modifying the Umbro-Latins and the Gauls; and likewise from 

 them came all the characteristics since knoAvn as C^Uo-Slavic, a term 



