42 Dr Daniel Wilson on the Intrusion of 



and the larger Mediterranean islands, constitute the popula- 

 tion 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 dis- 

 close 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, includ- 

 ing 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 Lithuanic being the likest of all the Indo-Eu- 

 ropean 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 pre- 

 supposed by the assumption of the Fins and Laps of Northern 

 Europe constituting 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, north- 

 ward 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 Moun- 

 tains 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 Phocian and other 

 colonial offshoots of south-eastern civilization, reached its 

 north-western shores, there are only two passages, or at most 



