294 THE ARYAN QUESTION VI 



to enter. In regard to the first, however, there 

 are a few tolerably satisfactory data. The ancient 

 Thracians were proverbially blue-eyed and fair- 

 haired. Tall blonds were common among the 

 ancient Greeks, who were a long-headed people ; 

 and the Sphakiots of Crete, probably the purest 

 representatives of the old Hellenes in existence, 

 are tall and blond. But considering that Greek 

 colonisation was taking place on a great scale in 

 the eighth century B.C., and that, centuries earlier 

 and later, the restless Hellene had been fighting^ 

 trading, plundering and kidnapping, on both sides 

 of the ^Egean, and perhaps as far as the shores of 

 Syria and of Egypt, it is probable that, even at the 

 dawn of history, the maritime Greeks were a very 

 mixed race. On the other hand, the Dorians may 

 well have preserved the original type ; and their 

 famous migration may be the earliest known ex- 

 ample of those movements of the Aryan race 

 which were, in later times, to change the face of 

 Europe. Analogy perhaps justifies a guess, that 

 those ethnological shadows, the Pelasgi, may have 

 been an earlier mixed population, like that of 

 Western Gaul and of Britain before the Teutonic 

 invasion. At any rate, the tall blond long-heads 

 are so well represented in the oldest history 

 of the Balkan peninsula, that they may be 

 credited with the Aryan languages spoken there. 

 And it may be that the tradition which peopled 

 Phrygia with Thracians represents a real move- 



