THE HUMAN SPECIES. 439 



prevailed among the Hellenes before their historical 

 era. They came from Thrace, from Asia Minor ; and 

 in the quality of marine swarmers down the Euxine, 

 occupied portions of the coast, or passed on to the 

 Mediterranean, to the Adriatic, Gaul, and Spain, 

 where the fabulous Gerion is again represented to 

 have been a fair haired giant.* All these legends 

 have a singular alliance in consistent uniformity, 

 reaching to Egypt, and going round and beyond the 

 Mediterranean Sea. Under the names of Scythians 

 and Tauranians, we find, in Asiatic history, that they 

 were dreaded by all southern nations, even to a single 

 individual coming amongst them. Kindred nations 

 of this stem reached Europe without distinct accounts 

 of their origin and progress ; but the movements of 

 others, at later periods, substantiated by Chinese 

 writers, by Indian documents, and by Greek and Latin 

 authors, who record their arrival in the west, attest 

 that they all came from the same region, in Mongolia, 

 Thibet, and the lakes of Central Asia. Being coerced 

 by the pressure of the beardless stock behind, they 

 forced a passage towards Europe through innumerable 



* In Asia Minor they appear to have constituted the 

 Lydian, Pelasgian, and Carian nations ; and Tyrhenian or 

 Torubian, and Phoenician, farther on, were probably more 

 Finnic, but all allied, as is shown by Hesiod and Herodo- 

 tus, in Lydian records ; and Ovid, quoting a Naxian legend, 

 where tribes are personified, the Tyrhenian theft of the 

 god Bacchus, indicates that these pirate rovers carried the 

 vine to Italy. 



