332 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. ix. 



only of social contact. We cannot argue from the 

 exceptional phenomena of the stereotyped families of 

 Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian speech. Savage and 

 barbarous dialects are in a constant state of flux and 

 change, while conquest, migration, and other causes, 

 occasion the borrowing of new languages, and the loss 

 of old ones. . . . The Basques, physically and linguist- 

 ically, are the representatives of a race which preceded 

 the Kelts, and were driven by them into the mountain 

 fastnesses of the extreme West, just as the Finns were 

 by other Aryan tribes in the North. Just as the exist- 

 nce of light-haired persons among the Basques shows 

 only that mixture of blood which was to be expected, 

 so, from the present state of the Basque language, we 

 cannot draw any conclusion against the view that the 

 primitive population with whom the Aryan Kelts came 

 into contact spoke older but cognate dialects. The 

 oldest Basque with which we are acquainted does not 

 date back beyond three or four centuries ; before that 

 time there was no literature, and the changes undergone 

 by languages other than literary are astonishingly rapid 

 and extensive. The few native inscriptions of early 

 date found in northern Spain, so far as they can be 

 deciphered, show little resemblance to modern Basque, 

 while Strabo 1 states that not only had the Iberians 

 many different dialects, but several different alphabets 

 as well. This points to want of intercourse, bringing 

 with it a great diversity of language. Numerous as 

 these languages were, however, they must have had a 

 general resemblance to one another, since Strabo (Book 

 iv.) says they were like the idioms of Aquitania, in 

 contradistinction to those of Celtic Gaul. The modern 



Mil. p. 139. 



