1854.] 



ON THE INTRUSION 01? THE GERMANIC RACES. 



249 



all occupying the geographical positions to which tho foremost 

 intruders into the European area must have been driven by the 

 accession of successive migrations from the east. In Greece and 

 Italy were the Hellenic and Kelto-Italian successors of the Pe- 

 lasgi, with, iu the Italian peninsula, the intrusive Semitic race 

 of the Easena or Etruscans. In Spain were the Iberi and 

 Celtiberi, with also a small intrusive race: Phoenician or Punic; 

 and those with the Phoeian and Punic colonies of JMasallia 

 and the larger Mediterranean islands, constitute the population 

 of Southern Europe, when the curtain first rises and reveals 

 to us the great arena of the world's later civilization. To 

 the north of this, our imperfect knowledge suffices to disclose 

 the central area of the continent, lying between the Alps and 

 the German Ocean, occupied, from the Atlantic to the head of 

 the Adriatic, by the different branches of the Keltic stock, and 

 thence eastward to the Euxine Sea, and along the valley of the 

 Danube, by the Scytho-Sarmatian stock, including the whole 

 Lithuanian and the first of the Slavonian populations, by whom 

 so large a portion of their ancient area is still retained. Of these 

 latter the Lettes are the most ancient : the Lithuauic being the 

 likest of all the Indo-European tongues to the Sanskrit, the 

 ancient sacred language of India. 



As a broad ethnological sketch of the superficies of Europe at 

 the dawn of authentic history, this is no baseless theory, but an 

 outline of facts as well established as the nature of the imperfect 

 evidence admits. But it will be seen that only a very slight 

 extension of the old Ugrian area, such as is presupposed by the 

 assumption of the Fins and Laps of Northern E urope consti- 

 tuting the remnant of a more widely diffused Allophylian 

 stock, is requisite to occupy the whole of Europe, without the 

 presence of a single branch of the Germanic stock in any of their 

 later geographical areas. While, however, those various older 

 races were gradually moving westward, ever pressed from 

 behind by fresh swarms from the Asiatic hive, till the Gael 

 overflowed from Gaul into Britain, northward into the Kimbric 

 Chersonesus, and southward into Italy, the younger Germanic 

 stock entering Europe by the only unguarded portal, between 

 the southern spur of the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea, 

 •circa 500 v. 400 B.C. ( ?), found their way along the banks of 

 the tributaries of the Vistula to the Baltic. 



Besides the approach to Southern Europe by the Mediterra- 

 nean, by means of which the isolated Semitic populations of 

 Etruria, Gadir, and Tartessus, and the Phoeian and other 

 colonial off-shoots of south-eastern civilization, reached its north- 

 western shores, there are only two passages, or at most three, 

 open to the migratory wanderers from Asia to Europe. The 



Tlie Kymbri themselves were anciently known as Galli. The oldest 

 author mentioning them is'Sallust (Bell. Jugurth., c. 114, adversorum 

 Gallos ab ducibus nostris Q. Coepioni et M. Manlio male pugnatum 

 est); also the Kimbric slave sent to kill Marius at Mintuone is called 

 natione Gallus by Livy (Epist. 77). The latter notices tend to show 

 that the assertion of Strabo, or rather Posidonius (Strabo 7), after- 

 wards repeated by Plutarch (Marius c. 11), that the Cimbri and Cim- 

 nierii are the same, is not one to be hastily rejected, though so able 

 and cautious an authority as Dr. Latham has expressed himself as 

 "utterly disbelieving the Chnmerii of the Cimmerian Bosphorus to 

 have been Keltic." (Man and his Migrations, p. 169.) The above 

 argument is chiefly designed, however, to justify the substitution of 

 the term Germanic for that of Teutonic, employed by me elsewhere, and 

 generally used in England to designate the Scandinavo-German race. 

 Even if the Teutons can be shown to be Germanic, they ,werc always a 

 comparatively small and unimportant tribe, nor is the suitableness of 

 the denomination Germanic disputed by any one ; the supposed risk of 

 confusion with it, in its modern political sense, has aloue interfered with 

 its adoption. 



most southern of these, which required the navigation of the 

 Hellespont or tho Thracian Bosphorus, may be supposed to have 

 been the course pursued by the ancient Pelasgi, or some still- 

 older southern Allophyfe, in times lying beyond all history. 

 This road, however, we know was early closed by the occupation 

 of the whole of Asia Minor by Phrygians, Lydians, Lycians, 

 Phoenicians, and other civilized and warlike people, whose pre- 

 sence entirely precluded the approach of any migratory horde 

 to the shores of the Propontis. Beyond this, therefore, later 

 migratory tribes, including, perhaps, the earliest pioneers of 

 Keltic colonization, would find open for them the narrow passage 

 formed by the lower valleys between the Caucasus and the 

 Caspian Sea, and then reaching the northern shores of the 

 Kimmerian Bosphorus, they would enter by the passage between 

 the Carpathian Mountains and the Euxine into the fertile valley 

 of the Danube. This road, also, in itself narrow and straight- 

 ened, was closed against such nomade intruders long prior to 

 the dawn of history, by the occupation of the whole country 

 around the lower Danube by Scythic tribes belonging to the 

 Thracian division. These warlike tribes were in undisputed 

 possession of this important European area when we obtain our 

 first glimpse of them iii the pages of Homer, and no doubt can 

 be entertained of their ability to withstand the encroachments of 

 all later intruders. 



Thus, then, at the assumed period of the immigration of the 

 Germanic nomades, after the entire occupation of southern and 

 central Europe by older races, there remained only one road 

 open for tribes immigrating westward from Asia into Europe, 

 through the Ural passage to the north of the Caspian Sea ; and 

 thence — the southern road through the valley of the Danube 

 being now closed — they must have crossed the vast prairies of 

 Russia, along the northern edge of the impenetrable forests of 

 Volhynia and Poland, and the watershed of the Dnieper and 

 the Vistula — the route pursued by the Huns, under Attila, in 

 the fifth century — and thence along the tributaries of the Vistula 

 to the Baltic. Here the ethnologist may be said to strike the 

 trail of the first Germanic nomades. The later Cimbri or 

 Kymri, and the younger Scytho-Sarmatians in their wake, having 

 been obliged to pursue a north-western course till they reached 

 the southern shores of the Baltic, the Kymri, and no doubt also 

 the Belgse, penetrated still further to the westward, while their 

 Scytho-Sarmatian followers remained at the Vistula, The Ger- 

 manic nomades, beginning their intrusive migration long after 

 their precursors had consolidated their power, and occupied their 

 borders with the increased numbers of a settled population, were 

 compelled to pursue the still more northern, but less encumbered 

 course, while being, in the common movement towards the west, 

 driven to the shores of the Baltic near Livonia and Esthonia, 

 they crossed to the Islands, to Gottland, Oland, and to Scania, 

 and there settling themselves in the great northern Scandina- 

 vian peninsula, where archaeological research proves them to 

 have displaced an older Allophylian population, they nursed 

 their )«oung strength, preparatory to their intrusion on the his- 

 toric area of ancient Europe. 



Archaeological investigations contribute many valuable acces- 

 sories to such ethnological inquiries, and specially tend to confirm 

 the conclusions here advanced relative to the late arrival of the 

 Germanic nomades in Western Europe. This is strikingly 

 shown by the abrupt transition from the aboriginal stone relies 

 to the evidences of the metallurgic arts of the last Pagan period, 

 disclosed in the sepulchral depositories of Northern Scandinavia.* 



* Vide Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, p. 358. 



