Ancient History (Myers)/Chapter 2

by Philip Van Ness Myers

CHAPTER II

RACES AND GROUPS OF PEOPLES AT THE DAWN OF HISTORY

14. Subdivisions of the Historic Age.—We begin now our study of the historic age,—a record of about seven thousand years. The story of these millenniums is usually divided into three parts,—Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern History. Ancient History begins, as already indicated, with the earliest nations of which we can gain any certain knowledge through written records, and extends to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, A.D. 476. Mediæval History embraces the period, about one thousand years in length, lying between the fall of Rome and the discovery of the New World by Columbus, A.D. 1492. Modern History commences with the close of the mediæval period and extends to the present time.^[1]

It is Ancient History alone with which we shall be concerned in the present volume.

15. The Races of Mankind in the Historic Period.— Distinctions in bodily characteristics, such as form, color, and features, divide the human species into three chief types or races, known as the Black or Ethiopian Race, the Yellow or Mongolian Race, and the White or Caucasian Race.^[2] But we must not suppose each of these three types to be sharply marked off from the others; they shade into one another by insensible gradations.

We assume the original unity of the human race. It is probable that the physical and mental differences of existing races arose through their progenitors having been subjected to different climatic influences and to different conditions of life through long periods of prehistoric time.

There has been no perceptible change in the great types during the historic age. The paintings upon the oldest Egyptian monuments

Fig. 7.—Negro Captives

(From the monuments of Thebes)

Illustrating the permanence of race characteristics

show us that at the dawn of history the principal races were as distinctly marked as now, each bearing its racial badge of color and physiognomy.

16. The Black Race.—Africa south of the Sahara is the home of the peoples of the Black Race, but we find them on all the other continents and on many of the islands of the seas, whither they have migrated or been carried as slaves by the stronger races; for since time immemorial they have been "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for their more favored brethren.

17. The Yellow or Mongolian Race.—Eastern and Northern Asia is the central seat of the Mongolian Race. Many of the Mongolian tribes are pastoral nomads, who roam over the vast Asian plains north of the great ranges of the Himalayas; their leading part in history has been to harass peoples of settled habits.

But the most important peoples of this type are the Japanese and the Chinese. The latter constitute probably a fifth or more of the entire population of the earth. Already in times very remote this people had developed a civilization quite advanced on various lines, but having reached a certain stage in culture they did not continue to make so marked a progress. Not until recent times did either the Chinese or the Japanese become a factor of significance in world history.

18. The White Race and its Three Groups.—The so-called White Race embraces the historic nations. The chief peoples of this division of mankind fall into three groups,—the Hamitic, the Semitic, and the Aryan^[3] or Indo-European. The members forming any one of these groups must not be looked upon as kindred in blood; the only certain bond uniting the peoples of each group is the bond of language.^[4]

The ancient Egyptians were the chief people of the Hamitic branch. In the gray dawn of history we discover them already settled in the valley of the Nile, and there erecting great monuments so faultless in construction as to render it certain that those who planned them had had long previous training in the art of building.

The Semitic family includes among its chief peoples the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, the Arabians, and the Ethiopians. Most scholars regard Arabia as the original home of this family, and this peninsula certainly seems to have been the great distributing center.^[5]

It is interesting to note that three great monotheistic religions—the Hebrew, the Christian, and the Mohammedan—arose among peoples belonging to the Semitic family.

The Aryan-speaking peoples form the most widely dispersed group of the White Race. They include the ancient Greeks and Romans, all the peoples of modern Europe (save the Basques, the Finns and the Lapps, the Magyars or Hungarians, and the Ottoman Turks), together with the Persians and the Hindus and some other Asian peoples.^[6]

19. The Aryan Expansion.—Long before the dawn of history in Europe and while they were yet in the Neolithic stage of culture (sec. 6), the clans and tribes of the hitherto undivided Aryan family began to break up and to scatter.^[7]

Some of these tribes in the course of their wanderings found their way into the great river plains of Lidia and out upon the table-lands of Iran. They subjugated the aborigines of these lands and communicated to them their language. These Aryan invaders and the natives, thus Aryanized in speech and probably somewhat changed in blood, became the progenitors of the Iranians and the Hindus of history.^[8]

Other clans and tribes pushed into the peninsulas of Greece and Italy, and, mingling with the peoples already settled there, founded the Greek and Italian city-states, and from the germs of culture which they carried with them, or which they found among the native populations or afterwards received from the Oriental lands, developed what is known as the Classical Civilization. Yet other tribes of the family, either through peaceful expansion, through social relations, or through conquest, had, long before our era, made Aryan in speech almost all the remaining regions of Europe.^[9]

Although the Aryan expansion movement began so long ago, still we should not think of it as something past and ended. The outward movement in modern times of the Aryan-speaking peoples of Europe, that is to say, the expansion of Europe into Greater Europe and the Europeanizing of the world, is merely the continuation—and an illustration—of the Aryan expansion movement which went on in the obscurity of the prehistoric ages. Thus we see what leading parts, after what we may call the Semitic age, Aryan-speaking peoples have borne in the great drama of history.

References.—Schrader, The Prehistoric Civilization of the Aryan Peoples. Ripley, The Races of Europe. Ihering, The Evolution of the Aryan. Keane, Man, Past and Present. Deniker, The Races of Man. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race. Ratzel, The History of Mankind, 2 vols. All these works are for the teacher and the advanced student. Brinton, Races and Peoples; and Taylor, The Origin of the Aryans, can be used by younger readers.

Topics for Special Study.— 1. Causes of physical and mental differences between races. See Brinton. 2. The Aryans. See Taylor.

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1. It is thought preferable by some scholars to let the beginning of the great Teutonic migration (A.D. 376) or the restoration of the Empire by Charlemagne (A.D. 800) mark the end of the period of ancient history. Some also prefer to date the beginning of the modern period from the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (A.D. 1453); while still others speak of it in a general way as commencing about the close of the fifteenth century, at which time there were many inventions and discoveries, and a great stir in the intellectual world.
2. Some ethnologists reckon a greater number of types or races. The classification given is simply a convenient and practical one (see Table, p. 19).
3. Ethnologists have ceased to use this name, as well as its equivalents, Indo-European and Indo-Germanic, as an ethnic term; but there is no reason why it should be given up by the historian. It should be carefully noted, however, that where the term Aryan is applied to a people it simply means that the people thus designated use an Aryan speech, and that it does not mean that they are related by blood to any other Aryan-speaking people. Physical or racial relationships cannot be determined by the test of language. Think of the millions of English-speaking African negroes in the United States! For a masterly discussion of the question of the ethnic types or races making up the population of Europe, see Ripley's The Races of Europe (New York, 1899).
4. In the case of the Semites and the Hamites, it is probable that the most of the peoples forming each group are in the main actually of the same ethnic stock; in the case of the Aryans, however, we certainly have to do with peoples belonging to several distinct ethnic subvarieties or types.
5. It is held by some, however, that the Semites at a very early time immigrated to Arabia from Africa, where they had lived in close relations to the Hamites. In successive waves they seem to have settled in the lands adjoining the Syro-Arabian desert, first the Babylonians and Assyrians, then apparently the Canaanitic and subsequently the Hebrew peoples, the Arabians and the Chaldeans, while Abyssinia clearly received its Semitic population from southwestern Arabia.
6. The kinship in speech of all these peoples is most plainly shown by the similar form and meaning of certain words in their different languages, as, for example, the word father, which occurs with but little change in several of the Aryan tongues (Sanscrit, pitri; Persian, padar; Greek, πατῄρ; Latin, pater; German, Vater).
7. Some scholars seek the early home of the primitive Aryan folk in Asia, others look for it in Europe, while still others declare the search to be wholly futile.
8. It is very important to note that in every case where a non- Aryan people gave up their own language and adopted that of their Aryan conquerors, there must have taken place at the same time almost necessarily a mingling of the blood of the two races. "Thus it will be correct to say that an Aryan strain permeates all or most of the groups now speaking Aryan tongues."—Keane, Ethnology, p. 396 (Cambridge Geographical Series, 1896).
9. This prehistoric Aryan expansion can best be made plain by the use of an historical parallel,—the Roman expansion. From their cradle city on the Tiber, the ancient Romans—a folk Aryan in speech if not in race—went out as conquerors and colonizers of the Mediterranean world. Wherever they went they carried their language and their civilization with them. Many of the peoples whom they subjected gave up their own speech, and along with the civilization of their conquerors adopted also their language. In this way a large part of the ancient world became Romanized in speech and culture. When the Roman Empire broke up, there arose a number of Latin-speaking nations,—among these, the French, Spaniards, and Portuguese. During the modern age these Romanized nations, through conquest and colonization, have spread their Latin speech and civilization over a great part of the New World. Thus it has come about that to-day the language of the ancient Romans, differentiated into many dialects, is spoken by peoples spread over the earth from Rumania in Eastern Europe to Chile in South America. All these peoples we call Latins, not because they are all descended from the ancient Romans,—in fact they belong to many different ethnic stocks,—but because they all speak languages derived from the old Roman speech. Just as we use the term Latin here, so do we use the term Aryan in connection with the Aryan-speaking peoples.