October i, 1896J 



NA TURE 



529 



«ilhin quite recent years, the glamour of the Orient pervaded all 

 inquiries as to the genesis of European civilisation. The Biblical 

 training of the northern nations prepared the ground. The 

 imperfect reali.sation of the antiquity of European art ; on the 

 other hand, the imposing chronolog)- of Egypt and Babylonia ; 

 the abitling force of classical tradition, which found in the 

 Phcenician a deus ex machiiiA for exotic importations ; finally, 

 the " .\ryan Hypothesis," which brought in the dominant 

 European races as immigrant wanderers from Central Asia, 

 with a ready-made stock of culture in their wallets — these and 

 other causes combined to create an exaggerated estimate of the 

 ixirt played by the East as the illuminator of the benighted 

 West. 



More recent investigations have resulted in a natural reaction. 

 The primitive "Aryan" can be no longer invoked as a kind of 

 patriarchal missionary of Central .\sian culture. From d'Halloy 

 and Latham onwards to Penka and .Schrader an array of eminent 

 names has assigned to him an European origin. The means by 

 which a kindreil tongue difiused itself among the most hetero- 

 geneous ethnic factors still remain obscure ; but the stricter 

 application of i>honetic laws and the increased detection of loan- 

 words has cut down the original " Aryan" stock of culture to 

 very narrow limits, and entirely stripped the members of this 

 linguistic family of any trace of a common Pantheon. 



Whatever the character of the original "Aryan" stage, we 

 may be very sure that it lies far back in the mists of the European 

 Stone .-Vge. The supposed common names for metals prove to 

 be either a vanishing quantity or strikingly irrelevant. It may 

 be interesting to learn on unimpeachable authority that the Celtic 

 words for "g(»Id" are due to comparatively recent borrowing 

 from the Latin ; but nothing is more certain than that gold was 

 one of the earliest metals known to the Celtic races, its know- 

 ledge going back to the limits of the pure .Stone Age. We are 

 told that the Latin "ensis," "a sword," is identical with the 

 Sanskrit " asi " and Iranian " ahi," but the gradual evolution of 

 the sword from the dagger, only completed at a late jieriod of 

 the Bronze .-Kge, is a commonplace of prehistoric archa:ology. 

 If "ensis," then, in historical times an iron sword, originally 

 meant a bronze dagger, may not the bronze dagger in its turn 

 resolve itself into a flint knife? 



The truth is that the attempts to father on a common Aryan 

 stock the beginnings of metallurg)' argue an astonishing inability 

 to realise the vast antiquity of languages and their groups. Vet 

 we know that, as far back as we have any written records, the 

 leading branches of the Aryan family of speech stood almost as 

 far apart as they do to-day, and the example of the Egyptian 

 and Semitic groups, which Maspero and others consider to have 

 been originally connected, leads to still more striking results. 

 From the earliest Egyptian stela to the latest Coptic liturgy we 

 find the main outlines of what is substantially the same language 

 preserved for a period of some six thousaml years. The Semitic 

 languages in their characteristic shape show a continuous history 

 almost as extensive. For the date of the diverging point of the 

 two groups we must have recourse to a chronology more familiar 

 to the geologist than the antiquary. 



As importer of exotic arts into primitive Europe the Phoenician 

 has met the fate of the immigrants from the Central Asian 

 " -Arya." The days are gone past when it could be seriously 

 maintained that the Phoenician merchant landed on the coast 

 of Cornwall, or built the dolmens of the North and West. 

 A truer view of primitive trade as passing on by inter-tribal 

 barter has superseded the idea of a direct commerce between 

 remote localities. The science of prehistoric arch:eology, 

 following the lead of the Scandinavian School, has established 

 the existence in every province of local centres of early metal- 

 lurgy, and it is no longer believed that the implements and 

 utensils of the European Bronze Age were imported wholesale 

 by Semites or "Etruscans." 



Il is, however, the less necessary for me to trace in detail the 

 course of (his reaction against the exaggerated claims of Eastern 

 influence that the case for the Independent position of primitive 

 Europe has been recently sunmied up with fresh arguments, and 

 in his tisual brilliant and incisive style, by M. Salomon Reinach, 

 in his " Mirage Orientale." For many ancient prejudices as to 

 the early relations of East and West it is the trumpet sound 

 before the walls of Jericho. It may, indeed, be doubted whether, 

 in the impetuousness of his attack, M. Reinach, though he has 

 rapidly brought up his reserves in his more recent work on 

 primitive European sculpture, has not been tempted to occujiy 

 outlying ))osilions in the enemy's country which will hardly be 



NO. 1405, VOL. 54] 



found tenable in the long run. I cannot myself, for instance, 

 be brought to believe that the rude marble "idols" of the 

 primitive ^Egean population were copied on Chald;T:an cylinders. 

 I may have occasion to point out that the oriental elements in 

 the typical higher cultures of primitive Europe, such as those of 

 Mycena;, of Hallstatt, and La Tene, are more deeply rooted 

 than M. Reinach will admit. But the very considerable extent 

 to which the early European civilisation was of independent 

 evolution has been nowhere so skilfully focussed into light as in 

 these comprehensive essays of M. Reinach. It is always a great 

 gain to have the extreme European claims so clearly formulated, 

 but we must still remember that the " Sick Man" is not dead. 



The proofs of a highly developed metallurgic industry of home 

 growth accumulated by prehistoric AwAiinVs, pari passu over the 

 greater part of Europe, and the considerable cultural equipment 

 of its eariy population — illustrated, for example, in the Swiss 

 Lake settlements — had already prepared the way for the more 

 startling revelations as to the prehistoric civilisation of the ^Egean 

 world which have resulted from Dr. Schliemann's diggings at 

 Troy, Tiryns, and Mycen^, so admirably followed up by Dr. 

 Tsountas. 



This later civilisation, to which the general name of " ^Egean " 

 has been given, shows several stages, marked in succession by 

 typical groups of finds, such as those from the Second City of 

 Troy, from the cist-graves of Amorgos, from beneath the vol- 

 canic stratum of Thera, from the shaft-graves of Mycenoe, and 

 again from the tombs of the lower town. Roughly, it falls into 

 two divisions, for the earlier of which the culture illustrated bj- 

 the remains of Amorgos may be taken as the culminating point, 

 while the later is inseparably connected with the name of 

 Mycence. 



The early "^gean" culture rises in the midst of a vast 

 province extending from Switzerland and Northern Italy 

 through the Danubian basin and the Balkan peninsula, 

 and continued through a large part of Anatolia, till it 

 finally reaches Cyprus. It should never be left out of 

 sight that, so far as the earliest historical tradition and 

 geographical nomenclature reach back, a great tract of Asia 

 Minor is found in the occupation of men of European race, of 

 whom the Phrygians and their kin— closely allied to the 

 Thracians on the other side of the Bosphorus — stand forth as 

 the leading representatives. On the other hand, the great 

 antiquity of the Armenoid type in Lycia and other easterly 

 parts of Asia Minor, and its priority to the Semites in these 

 regions, has been demonstrated by the craniological researches 

 of Dr. von Luschan. This ethnographic connection with the 

 European stock, the antiquity of which is carried back by 

 Egyptian records to the second millennium before our era, is 

 fully borne out by the archaeological evidence. Very similar 

 examples of ceramic manufactures recur over the whole of this 

 vast region. The resemblances extend even to minutix of 

 ornament, as is well shown by the examples compared by Dr. 

 Much from the Mondsee, in Upper .'Austria, from the earliest 

 stratum of Hissarlik, and from Cyprus. It is in the same 

 Anatolo Danubian area — as M. Reinach has well pointed out — 

 that we find the original centre of diffusion of the " Svastika" 

 motive in the Old World. Copper implements, and weapons, 

 too, of primitive types, some reproducing Neolithic forms, are 

 also a common characteristic, though it must always be remem- 

 bered that the mere fact that an implement is of copper does 

 not of itself necessitate its belonging to the earliest metal age, 

 and that the freedom from alloy was often simply due to a tem- 

 porary deficiency of tin. Cyprus, the land of copper, played, 

 no doubt, a leading part in the dissemination of this early 

 metallurgy, and certain typical pins and other objects found 

 in the Alpine and Danubian regions have been traced back by 

 Dr. Naue and others to Cypriote prototypes. The same 

 ])arallelism throughout this vast area comes out again in the 

 appearance of a class of primitive "idols" of clay, marble, and 

 other materials, extending from Cyprus to the Troad and the 

 -Egean islands, and thence to the pile settlements of the Alps 

 and the Danubian basin, while kindred forms can be traced 

 beyond the Carpathians to a vast northern Neolithic province 

 that stretches to the shores of Lake Ladoga. 



It is from the centre of this old Anatolo-Danubian area of 

 primitive culture, in which ."Vsia Minor appears as a part of 

 Europe, that the new .Egean civilisation rises from the sea. 

 " Life was stirring in the waters." The notion that the maritime 

 enterprise of the Eastern Mediterranean began on the exposed 

 and comparatively harbourless coast of Syria and Palestine can 



