282 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION H. 



The following Papers were then read : — 



1. Some Notes on the Finnic Problem. By Harold Peake.^ 



It was formerly believed that the Suomi or Finns, who speak a language with 

 Asiatic rather than European affinities, were a Mongoloid people who had arrived 

 from Siberia. More recently the view has been advanced that they are a people 

 of Nordio type, who have imposed their language upon their Mongoloid neigh- 

 bours. There is no doubt that the modern inhabitants of Finland contain both 

 Nordic and Mongoloid elements, but the balance of evidence tends to show 

 that the language and tradition are derived from the Asiatic element. 



A fresh examination of the archseological evidence seems to show that the 

 first -wave of these Mongoloid people arrived in the Baltic region on the retreat 

 of the Ice Sheet, and were responsible for the Maglemose culture, which 

 developed later into that known as East Scan.dinavian or Arctic. Towards the 

 close of the Neolithic Age the Nordic people arrived in Denmark from the 

 Russian steppes, and there mingled with a remnant of the kitchen-midden 

 people, and perhaps learnt the custom of erecting megalithic tombs from 

 ' Prospectors,' whom they found there searching for amber. The evidence 

 deducible from the skulls of the passage-graves seems to show that these people 

 advanced into Scania and Westergotland, driving before them the Maglemose- 

 Arctic folk, who retreated to the north, where they survive as Lapps. 



Meanwhile further Mongoloid tribes were crossing the Urals and advancing 

 up the Volga as far as its junction with the Oka, and were well established 

 there early in the Bronze Age. In the middle of that period they were occupy- 

 ing the margins of the Finnish lakes, and at the same time Nordics from 

 Sweden were occupying the Baltic seaboard. 



In the fifth century B.C. the Nordics took to the fjords and to piracy, and 

 there was a general movement to the south and west. Meanwhile the Mon- 

 goloid tribes occupied the whole of Finland, the Baltic provinces, and East 

 Prussia. When, about a.d. 1000, the period of piracy ceased, fresh Nordic 

 immigrants arrived from Sweden, who were the ancestors of the present Nordic 

 population of Finland. 



2. History and Ethnology in Central Asia. By Miss M. A. 



CZAPLICKA." 



The object of this paper is to discuss the relation between history and 

 ethnology, with reference to the special area of North Central Asia. The 

 modern teaching of history has suffered from an inadequate treatment of its 

 etlmological background : we learn a catalogue of events relating to a branch 

 of mankind, without understanding the racial peculiarities of the mind of that 

 branch. iFor Central Asia the historians have given us, on the one hand, a list 

 of wars and invasions ; on the other, a collection of artistic productions. So 

 far so good ; but to each of these the name of a people has been attached, 

 and these names have found their way into handbooks of ethnology as racial 

 terms. Thus such expressions as ' the Mongol race ' and ' the Tatar culture ' 

 have been popularised, though they rest on nothing more than the names of 

 chiefs, or of clans successful in imposing their chiefs on other clans. 



Only by sifting Central Asian history by ethnological methods shall we 

 solve the problems, not only of Indo-European origins, but also of the relation 

 between Asiatic races, and especially between the two great branches, Iranian 

 and Turanian. To work out the ethnology of that earliest and richest history 

 of Central Asia found in the Chinese annals ought to be as much our aim as 

 the working out of the ethnology of ancient Egypt or of Babylon. In the 

 meantime, in order to understand the present racial composition of the greater 

 part of Europe and Asia, it may suffice to analyse the invasions and mixtures 

 ■which took place from the time of Attila's Huns to the ' Mongols ' of Jinghis 



1 Probably, to be published in Journ. Anthropological Inst. 



2 To be published in Jonrn. Anthropological Inst. : see also M. A. Czaplicka, 

 Tvrks of Central A.?ia (Oxford, 1918). 



