R. G. Latham
The Ethnology of Europe
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066185756
Table of Contents
E T H N O L O G Y O F E U R O P E.
E T H N O L O G Y O F E U R O P E.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.—THE PHYSICAL PECULIARITIES OF EUROPE.—GENERAL SKETCH OF ITS ETHNOLOGY.—STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS.—THE SKIPETAR, OR ALBANIANS.—THEIR LANGUAGE, DESCENT.—THE FOUR TRIBES.—HOW FAR A PURE STOCK.—ELEMENTS OF INTERMIXTURE.
THE proper introduction to the ethnology of Europe is the following series of preliminaries:—
1. The physical peculiarities of the quarter of the world so called;
2. A general view of the stocks, families, or races which occupy it;
3. A statement of the chief problems connected with the Natural History of its populations.
1. The physical conditions of Europe are as remarkable in respect to their negative as their positive characters; in other words, there is a great number of points wherein Europe differs from Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, in respect to what it has not, as well as in respect to what it has.
These negative points will be treated first.
a. No part of Europe lies between the Tropics; so that the luxuriance of a spontaneous and varied vegetation, with its pernicious tendencies to incline the habits of its population to idleness, is wanting. The rank and rapid growth of the plants which serve as food to men and animals, and which dispense with labour, nowhere occurs.
b. No part comes under the class of Steppes; or, at most, but imperfectly approaches their character. In Asia, the vast table-lands of the centre, occupied by the Turks and Mongols, have ever been the cradle of an active, locomotive, hungry, and aggressive population. And these have seen, with a strong desire to possess, the more favoured areas of the south; and have conquered them accordingly. The Luneburg Heath, and parts of Hanover are the nearest resemblances to the great Steppes of Mongolia, and Independent Tartary; but they are on a small and beggarly scale. In Russia, where the land is flat and level, the ground is also fertile, so that agriculture has been practicable, and (being practicable) has bound the occupant to the soil, instead of mounting him on fleet horses to wander with his flocks and herds from spot to spot, to become a shepherd by habit, and a warrior by profession; for in all countries, shepherds and hunters are marauders on a small, and conquerors on a large scale.
c. Europe is narrowest in its northern parts. This has had the effect of limiting those populations of the colder climes, whose scanty means of subsistence at home, incline them to turn their faces southwards, with the view of conquest, and supply them with numbers to effect their purpose.
d. Its diameter from north to south is less than its diameter from east to west. This has kept the mass of its population within a similar climate; or, if not within a similar climate, within a range of temperature far less wide than that which separates the African, the American, or the Asiatic of the northern parts of their respective continents from the Hottentot of the Cape, the Fuegian of Cape Horn, and the Malay of the Malayan Peninsula. It has given uniformity to its occupants; since varieties increase as we proceed from south to north, but not as we go from east to west—or vice versâ.
Amongst its positive features the most remarkable are connected with its mountain-ranges, the extent of its sea-board, and the direction of its rivers.
a. In no country are the great levels more broken by mountains, or the great mountains more in contiguity to considerable tracts of level country. The effect of this is to give the different characters of the Mountaineer and the Lowlander more opportunity of acting and reacting on each other.
b. In no country are the coasts more indented. We may look in vain for such a sea-board as that of Greece, elsewhere. The effect of this is to give the different characters of the sailor and landsman, the producer and the trader, more opportunity of acting and reacting on each other.
c. Its greatest rivers fall into seas navigable throughout the year. Contrast with this the great rivers of Asia, the Obi, the Lena, the Yenesey, and others, which for the purposes of navigation are useless; falling, as they do, into an Arctic sea.
d. Our greatest river, the Danube, runs from east to west. This ensures a homogeneous character for the population along its banks. Contrast with this the Nile, the Missisippi, and the Yenesey, in all of which the simple effect of climate creates a difference between the populations of the source and the embouchure. The great rivers of China do the same as the Danube; but the Danube differs from them, and from all other rivers running in a like direction, in emptying itself into an inland sea; a sea which gives the opportunity of communication not only with the parts north and south of the rivers which fall into it, but with those to the east of it also. The Hoang-ho and Kiang-ku empty themselves into an ocean, that, in these days of steam communication, leads to America, but which in the infancy of the world led to a coasting trade only, or, at most, to a large island—Japan. The Baltic and Mediterranean act, to a certain degree, in the same manner. The one has Africa, the other Scandinavia, to ensure its being put to the uses of trade.
In no part of the world do the differences between the varieties of the human species lie within narrower limits than in Europe. The most extreme opponents to the doctrine of the unity of our kind have never made many species out of the European specimens of the genus Homo. And these are by no means of the most satisfactory sort.
They are unsatisfactory for the following reasons. The differences that are inferred from dissimilarity of language,