DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0172
146 THE COMING OF THE GREEKS
whole basin of the Mediterranean was inhabited in
Neolithic times by a dark-skinned long-headed race;
that this race possesses extraordinary persistence, and,
in spite of constant invasions and conquests, remains
the basis of the present population in Spain, Italy, Greece,
and Egypt ; that it is the most gifted race in the world,
and that the artistic impulse, wherever we find it in
the area which it inhabits, has always been due to it.
Grant all this, and we are little nearer solving what is
the really interesting part of the question, at what times
and under what influences its various branches developed
their special characteristics and their widely different
languages.
One hypothesis only can we reject with confidence,
that part, namely, of Professor Ridgeway's theory 1
which combines the two propositions that the creators
of the .ZEgean civilisation were indigenous and unmixed
from the earliest times to the end of the Bronze Age,
and that they spoke, or rather, we should say, evolved,
the Greek language. It could only be justified by the
assumption that the original centre of diffusion of the
Indo-European group of languages was the shores of the
Mediterranean, and that the dialect which was afterwards
to grow into Greek was left stranded there at a remote
period. The linguistic and historical improbabilities of
such a theory would on general grounds put it out of
court, even if we do not see in isolated languages such as
Basque and Finnish, and certain place names and other
primitive features in the Greek language itself, traces of
a pre-Aryan element in Europe.2
It is at this point that we naturally ask how far
light has been thrown on the question of language
by recent discoveries. The pictographic and linear
1 E.A.G. i. 1901, pp. 81, 92, and 645-80.
2 E.g. Kretschmer, E.G.S. 1896, pp. 289-409 ; H. R. Hal),
O.C.G. 1901, pp. 83-97, and J.U.S. xxv. pp. 323-5. Cp. Cowley's
Ugro-Finnic theory in C.R. xix. p. 71.
whole basin of the Mediterranean was inhabited in
Neolithic times by a dark-skinned long-headed race;
that this race possesses extraordinary persistence, and,
in spite of constant invasions and conquests, remains
the basis of the present population in Spain, Italy, Greece,
and Egypt ; that it is the most gifted race in the world,
and that the artistic impulse, wherever we find it in
the area which it inhabits, has always been due to it.
Grant all this, and we are little nearer solving what is
the really interesting part of the question, at what times
and under what influences its various branches developed
their special characteristics and their widely different
languages.
One hypothesis only can we reject with confidence,
that part, namely, of Professor Ridgeway's theory 1
which combines the two propositions that the creators
of the .ZEgean civilisation were indigenous and unmixed
from the earliest times to the end of the Bronze Age,
and that they spoke, or rather, we should say, evolved,
the Greek language. It could only be justified by the
assumption that the original centre of diffusion of the
Indo-European group of languages was the shores of the
Mediterranean, and that the dialect which was afterwards
to grow into Greek was left stranded there at a remote
period. The linguistic and historical improbabilities of
such a theory would on general grounds put it out of
court, even if we do not see in isolated languages such as
Basque and Finnish, and certain place names and other
primitive features in the Greek language itself, traces of
a pre-Aryan element in Europe.2
It is at this point that we naturally ask how far
light has been thrown on the question of language
by recent discoveries. The pictographic and linear
1 E.A.G. i. 1901, pp. 81, 92, and 645-80.
2 E.g. Kretschmer, E.G.S. 1896, pp. 289-409 ; H. R. Hal),
O.C.G. 1901, pp. 83-97, and J.U.S. xxv. pp. 323-5. Cp. Cowley's
Ugro-Finnic theory in C.R. xix. p. 71.