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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIX. No. 477 



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CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. — II. 



[Edited by D. G. Brinton, M.D., LL.D.'\ 

 Prehistoric European Migrations. 



Little by little the seemingly impenetrable veil which 

 shrouded the wars and wanderings of European nations be- 

 fore history began is lifting. Scientific methods undreamed 

 of half a century ago now reveal, the secrets of ages too re- 

 mote to date. We can trace man in western Europe steadily 

 advancing through the development of a continuous culture 

 from the rudest period of chipped implements of stone to an 

 epoch when he learned to polish and bore that material, and 

 finally threw it aside to arm his hand with a blade of glitter- 

 ing bronze. 



The continuity of this development is one of the master 

 generalizations from the long labors of Worsaae, Mortillet, 

 and others. It has recently received further solid support in 

 an excellent critical study by Dr. Sophus Muller, entitled 

 "Instruments Tranchants de I'Ancien Age de Pierre," pub- 

 lished in the MSmoires de la SocieU Royale des Antiquaries 

 du Nord. It is especially devoted to the use of the triangular 

 stone celts found abundantly in Denmark. They are shown 

 to be tools, and to belong to the earliest stone age of that 

 portion of the continent. 



Neither they nor any of the relics from northern Europe 

 carry us so far back in the past as some from France and 

 the Iberian Peninsula. This fact leaves little room for doubt 

 but that these latter regions were inhabited first. Eyen 

 there the advent of man must be placed as a post-tertiary 

 event. This is the mature opinion of such authorities as 

 Topinard, Cartailhac, and especially of M. Alexandre Ber- 

 trand, whose excellent book, " Nos Origines," has recently 

 appeared in a new edition. M. Bertrand is director of the 

 National Archseological Museum at St. Germain-en-Laye, 

 and a most conscientious student. From his and others' ob- 

 servations it appears that matters went smoothly enough in 

 Europe down to Neolithic times; but then widespread migra- 



tions began. More than 1200 years B.C., thinks M. Bertrand, 

 the Ligurians came down from somewhere up north, and 

 conquered portions of the littoral of Spain, Gaul, Italy, and 

 Sicily. The interior of France and the Iberian Peninsula 

 was then peopled by "Iberians." Not far from the date 

 mentioned these were driven westward by inroads of the 

 Celts. He acknowledges, howevgr, that there are no relics 

 positively attributable to either Ligurians or French Ibe- 

 rians; and his theory therefore must be accepted as only 

 one degree less unlikely than the purely gratuitous one of 

 Virchow, who makes out the Ligurians to have been "Tu- 

 ranians." 



In recent numbers of the Globus and Ausland, Karl Penka 

 urges with renewed vigor his theory that Scandinavia was 

 the original home of the Aryan stock; and that not very 

 long before the beginning of our era the whole of central 

 Europe was peopled by Celts. He has an earnest disciple in 

 E. Krause, who lately issued a volume of nigh 700 pages on 

 " Tuisko-Land," his name for Scandinavia, to which, with 

 great wealth of learning, he traces both the myths of Hellas 

 and the simple cults of pristine Rome. 



Another ethnologist with his own notions is Dr. Theodore 

 Koppen, librarian of the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg. 

 In a pamphlet reviewed at length in the Archiv fur Anthro- 

 pologie (Band xx.) he insists that the Finnic and Aryan 

 linguistic stocks are one in origin; that their ancestral home 

 was somewhere about the region of the middle Volga; that 

 the separation took place into eastern and western branches 

 on the river Don ; and that at that time arose the Aryan and 

 Ugro-Finnic divisions. His arguments are principally lin- 

 guistic, and he lays especial stress on the words for " honey " 

 and "linden bast," which he finds the same in the two 

 stocks. His work is principally interesting as showing 

 the growing tendency among scholars to discard the old 

 theory that the Indo-European s began in Asia, in favor of 

 an origin in Europe; but Koppen repeats the familiar error 

 of attributing the theory of the origin of the white race in 

 Europe to Dr. Latham; whereas, long before he mentioned 

 it, it had been urged with clearness by Omalius D'Halloy, 

 the distinguished Belgian anthropologist. 



Retrogressive Culture in Prehistoric Times. 



The general law of the continuity of development holds 

 good throughout historic and prehistoric time; but the care- 

 ful archaeologist will always bear in mind that, in both, 

 periods of retrogression have occurred in many localities; 

 and he will not, therefore, assign to relics of man's industry 

 a later date solely on the ground of higher technical perfec- 

 tion. Often a tribe or nation has been conquered or destroyed 

 by one ruder though stronger, and for generations a lower 

 has followed a higher degree of art-produce. 



Two or three examples of this in prehistoric times have 

 recently been adduced. Mr. H. Stopes reports in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, 1890, a curious station in the Thames Valley, where 

 some tribe in the Palaeolithic condition had overwhelmed one 

 with Neolithic culture; and not understanding the use of the 

 polished stone implements of the latter had chipped them 

 into rough stone shapes! Not less remarkable was the dis- 

 covery of the brothers Siret, in the caves and rock-shelters- 

 near Almeria, Spain, that the most ancient Neolithic potteries 

 there are distinctly superior in make and ornament to those 

 of later date. Something similar seems to be the case with, 

 the interesting series of potteries lately exhumed in the Neo- 

 lithic station of Latinne, Belgium, by M. de Puydt. They 



