240 HISTORY OF GBKECE. hypothesis contradicted implicitly, if not directly, by the words of Herodotus, and no way necessary in the present case. It is not from them, however, that Herodotus draws his vivid picture of the people, with their inhuman rites and repulsive personal features. It is the purely nomadic Scythians whom he depicts, the earliest specimens of the Mongolian race (so it seems proba hie) 1 known to history, and prototypes of the Huns and Bulga 1 Both Nicbuhr and Bocckh account the ancient Scythians to be of Mon- golian race (Niebuhr in the Dissertation above mentioned, Untersuchungeii fiber die Geschichte der Skythen, Geten, und Sarmaten, among the Klcino Historische Schriften, p. 362 ; Boeckh, Corpus Inscriptt. Grsecarum, Intro- ductio ad Inscriptt. Sarmatic. part xi, p. 81). Paul Joseph Schafarik, in his elaborate examination of the ethnography of the ancient people described as inhabiting northern Europe and Asia, arrives at the same result (Slavische Alterthtlmer, Prag. 1843, vol. i, xiii, 6, p. 279). A striking illustration of this analogy of race is noticed by Alexander von Humboldt, in speaking of the burial-place and the funeral obsequies of the Tartar Tchiughiz Khan : " Les cruaute's lors de la pompe funebre des grands-khans rcssemblent entierement <a celles que nous trouvons decrites par Herodotc (iv, 71) environ 1700 ans avant la mort de Tchinghiz, et 65 de longitude plus i 1'onest, cbez les Scythes du Gerrhus et dn Borysthene." (Humboldt, Asie Centralc, vol. i, p. 244.) Nevertheless, M. Humboldt dissents from the opinion of Niebuhr anil Boeckh, and considers the Scythians of Herodotus to be of Indo-Germanic, not of Mongolian race: Klaproth seems to adopt the same view (see Hum- boldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i, p. 401, and his valuable work, Kosmos, p. 491, note 383). He assumes it as a certain fact, upon what evidence I do not distinctly see, that no tribe of Turk or Mongol race migrated westward out of Central Asia until considerably later than the time of Herodotus. To make out such a negative, seems to me impossible : and the marks of ethno- graphical analogy, so far as they go, decidedly favor the opinion of Niebuhr Ukert also (Skythien, pp. 266-280) controverts the opinion of Niebuhr. At the same time it must be granted that these marks are not very conclu- sive, and that many nomadic hordes, whom no one would refer to the same race, may yet have exhibited an analogy of manners and characteristics equal to that between the Scythians and Mongols. The principle upon which the Indo-European family of the human race is defined t.r.i parted off, appears to me inapplicable to any particular case wherein the language of the people is unknown to us. The nations consti- tuting that family have no other point of affinity except in the roots and structure of their language ; on every other point there is the widest difference. To enable us to affirm that the Massagctae, or the Scythians, or the Alani.
