I IO 



NA TURE 



\_Dec. 4, 1879 



ever may have been the case in the past, it will not have 

 to contend against that love for ' the thing which has 

 been ' which in all periods of history has afforded a dis- 

 tinguishing characteristic of the average official intelli- 

 gence. In a nation of sailors and yachtsmen a suggestion 

 for the improvement of lighthouses and for the greater 

 safety of shipping ought to be certain of speedy and 

 complete consideration upon its merits alone." 



THE TURKOMANS 

 A T the meeting of the Anthropological Institute on 

 **- November 23, there was read a short but suggestive 

 paper on these wayward children of the desert, contributed 

 by Prof. Arminius Vambe'ry. The learned writer, who 

 has perhaps as great a personal knowledge of Eastern 

 nations as any man living, regarded the Turkomans as 

 on the whole the purest and most representative branch 

 of the widespread Turki family and described their out- 

 ward features as quite distinct from the Mongolian. His 

 account was somewhat vague, but the inference evidently 

 was that they belonged in his opinion ethnically to the 

 Caucasian rather than to the Mongolian group. Nor did 

 he attribute this to the gradual absorption of Iranian 

 elements, but, on the contrary, stated that intermarriages 

 with Persian women were much less frequent than is 

 usually supposed, and that the Turkomans are now what 

 they always have been, men of medium stature, like the 

 Kirghizes and unlike the Usbegs and Osmanlis, amongst 

 whom tall individuals are far from rare, with straight or 

 but very slightly oblique ("almond-shaped") eyes, hand- 

 some regular features and fair complexion. He further 

 stated that the Turkoman language was also one of the 

 very purest Turki tongues still spoken, so much so, that 

 an ordinary Seljukian Turk of Asia Minor would have 

 less difficulty in conversing with a Tekke or Yomut 

 Turkoman than with his nearer neighbours the Turki 

 nomads of Azarbijan and other parts of Persia. In 

 fact, such is the purity of their speech, that the Rev. 

 James Bassett, of the American Mission at Tehran, 

 is now putting through the press in London his trans- 

 lation of St. Matthew's Gospel in the Jagatai Turki 

 for the special use of the Tekke Turkomans. Jagatai, it 

 need scarcely be remarked, is one of the most cultivated 

 of all the Tartar tongues and is still current in Bokhara, 

 Khiva, Ferghana, and parts of Kashgaria. In it are 

 written the Emperor Baber's memoirs, and being less 

 affected by Arabic and Persian elements than the Osmanli 

 of Constantinople, it may be taken as, on the whole, the 

 most representative of Tiirki idioms. Cn the other hand, 

 the Turki belongs undoubtedly to the same great linguistic 

 connection as the Mongolian, both being recogni-.ed by 

 modern philologists as collateral, though independent, 

 members of the so-called Finno-Tataric or Ural-Altaic 

 family of languages. Hence Vambery's description of 

 the physical characteristics of the Turkoman race places 

 them in a sufficiently anomalous position from the anthro- 

 pological point of view, in so far as they would seem to 

 belong ethnically to the Caucasian, but linguistically to 

 the Mongol stock. Such anomalies are, no doubt, common 

 enough, and instances abound of peoples having changed 

 t'-.cir language and adopted that of the races by whom 

 they may have been subdued or otherwise influenced. 

 But in the present case the difficulty cannot be got over 

 in this way, nor is it pretended that' the Turkomans have 

 adopted a Mongolian form of speech, or indeed that they 

 ever spoke any other language than Turki. But Tiirki 

 and Mongolian being otishoots of the same organic 

 tongue, it follows that both races must have had a 

 common origin, and that the Turkomans have since be- 

 come differentiated from the ethnical, -while retaining the 

 linguistic connection. Now this is entirely at variance 

 with the commonly-accepted doctrine that physical traits 

 are always more persistent than speech, in other words 



that, assuming absolute isolation, the process of linguistic 

 will always be more rapid than that of racial evolution. 



In the abstract this is no doubt true enough, but practi- 

 cally there is no such thing as absolute isolation in the 

 present stage of the world's history. Least of all can it 

 be predicated of the Turkomans, who are intruders from 

 the east or north-east in their present habitat, who 

 must have absorbed far more Iranian blood than Vambe'ry 

 is inclined to admit, and who, instead of being the purest 

 representatives of the Turki race, seem really to be a 

 mongrel people, the outcome of fusion of Mongolian and 

 Caucasian elements in Hyrcania, Bactriana, and the 

 Lower Oxus basin. It must be remembered that the 

 whole of this region, as far north at least as the 40th 

 parallel, formed an integral part of the ancient Persian 

 Empire, and the presence of numerous Iranian communi- 

 ties still speaking Persian dialects both in the lowlands 

 and highknds of Turkestan (Tajiks and Galchas) suffi- 

 ciently proves that this region was fairly occupied by 

 peoples of Iranian stock, if, indeed, it was not their 

 primitive home, before the arrival of the Turki race 

 driven still westwards by the Mongolians of the Gobi. 

 When the Persian power was finally broken by the Arabs, 

 Turki hordes easily took permanent possession of the 

 A trek and Murghab Valleys, as well as of the Lower 

 Oxus ; but in so doing they gradually absorbed as much 

 Iranian blood as to have in course of time become largely 

 assimilated to the Caucasian type. The same fate over- 

 took their Seljukian brethren in Asia Minor and the 

 Balkan peninsula, all of whom have everywhere become 

 largely Aryanised, and have thus collectively contributed 

 to produce the impression, shared by Vambe'ry with many 

 ethnologists, that the Turki and Mongol types were 

 originally distinct. They themseves have always rightly 

 looked on each other as brethren, and although no im- 

 portance can be attached to the tradition of a legendary 

 Turk, son of Japhet, whence both sprang through the 

 twin brothers Tatar and Mongol, it nevertheless points, 

 like so many other national myths, at a fundamental 

 truth. 



Nor are the Mongolian traits so far effaced from the 

 Turkoman race as Vambe'ry would have us suppose. In 

 " Clouds in the East" Valentine Baker, an equally careful 

 observer, describes them as " muscular, heavy-limbed 

 men. with large hands, rather flat, broad faces, and small 

 eyes, thus showing much of the Tatar type" (p. 212). He 

 even expresses his surprise that it should still be so dis- 

 tinctly marked, " as they constantly capture Persian girls, 

 who become their wives, and so must bring a strong 

 infusion of Persian blood into the race " (t'6.). 



The genuine Turki type, however, is still best exhibited 

 in the Kazaks, or, as they are more frequently called, the 

 Kirghizes and Kara- Kirghizes of the West Siberian 

 steppes and Pamir table-land. These Kirghizes speak a 

 pure Turki dialect, and because of their distinctly Mon- 

 golian features — square, flat face, high cheek bones, 

 oblique eyes, large mouth, &c. — they are supposed to be 

 Mongolised Tatars by those who hold the two types to be 

 originally distinct. But the supposition is entirely gra- 

 tuitous, and although they may have been to some extent 

 affected by Mongolian elements during the incessant 

 migrations of the Central and Eastern Asiatic nations, 

 there is nothing in their appearance to imply any pro- 

 found modification of their outward features, while their 

 Turki speech militates against the assumption. They 

 resemble the Mongolians because both were originally 

 one, and because in their present homes between Kulja 

 and the Ural Mountains they came in contact with no 

 foreign elements by which the race could be seriously 

 affected. In the Kirghizes we therefore recognise a living 

 proof of the primordial identity of Turk and Mongol. 



The transition between the Kirghizes and Turkomans 

 is formed by the Kipchaks of Khokand and other parts 

 of Eastern Turkestan, who, though often classed with the 



