Europe: A History (47 page)

The Asian nomads penetrated the Peninsula in waves that are spread over most
of recorded history. The Huns, who appeared in the fifth century
AD,
were successors to earlier hordes who had ridden the same steppes, notably the ancient Scythians and the Irano-Sarmatians, whom Ptolemy reported as the overlords of the steppelands in the second century
AD.
They were the predecessors of the Avars, the Magyars, and the Mongols, who were all to reach central Europe. Other nomads restricted their movements to the vicinity of the Black Sea. One branch of the Turkic Bulgars had established a kingdom on the middle Volga. Another branch settled near the mouth of the Danube in the seventh century
AD.
The Khazars followed traces of the Bulgars, creating a kingdom stretching from the north Caucasus to the Dniester. The Patzinaks (Pechinegs) advanced into the Balkans in the wake of the Khazars. After them, another ephemeral state was built on the Black Sea steppes by the Cumans. The gypsies or ‘Romanies’ reached Europe from India in the eleventh century. One branch of the Turks impinged on the Caucasus about the same time; the main branch conquered the Balkans in the fourteenth century.

Of all these non-Indo-Europeans, few were to leave a lasting mark. The Basques and the Maltese have weathered the centuries, speaking languages unrelated to any of their neighbours. The Jews, too, kept their separate identity. The Finns and Estonians on the Baltic, and Magyars in ‘Hungaria’, succeeded in founding modern nations. The Lapps still follow the reindeer. The Tartars, last descendants of the Mongols, have survived in ‘Tatarstan’ on the Volga and, despite modern deportations, in the Crimea. Gypsies are still spread all over Europe. The Turks, who won and lost a vast empire, have kept a precarious toehold in Europe in the immediate vicinity of Istanbul. The Balkan Bulgars have so identified with the Slav world that the communist regime could persecute its Turkish minority in the 1980s, on the grounds that their victims were not ‘true Turks’ but turkicized Slavs. If Bulgarian officialdom were consistent, it would have to recommend the mass expulsion of all Bulgarians on the grounds that they themselves are not ‘true Slavs’, but slavicized Turkics. [
GAGAUZ
]

‘Indo-European’, it must be emphasized, refers essentially to a linguistic category (see Chapter I, pp. 49–50), and only by extension to the peoples who have used those languages as their native tongue. All the languages which belong to the group can be traced back to a common proto-Indo-European language spoken somewhere in Eurasia over 5,000 years ago. Since then the group has spread over a wide area stretching from Iceland to Ceylon and, through modern colonization, to all continents of the world. It has been said that ‘language is the single most valuable possession of the human race’; and there can be no doubt that the ‘Indo-Europeans’ form one of the most important linguistic communities of human history.
³
(See Appendix III, p. 1232.)

The real problem, however, is to determine what, apart from their linguistic heritage, the Indo-Europeans may have in common. The old idea that language is necessarily linked to race has been discredited. Languages can be easily transferred from one racial group to another. Over a period of time, there need be no correlation whatsoever between a people’s ‘native language’ and their racial origins.
(This can be easily demonstrated from the English-speaking world, where English has been adopted by millions of Afro-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans.) In the case of Eurasia, it is by no means clear whether the brown-skinned Indo-element exported their language to their paler ‘European’ neighbours, or vice versa, or whether both adopted it from a third party. There is a popular tradition in Afghanistan that all Indo-Europeans came from there. By the same token, even if it exists, the so-called ‘European’, ‘Caucasian’, or ‘Aryan’ race group does not coincide with the Indo-European languages. The majority of Turks, for example, seem to be Caucasian by race but are manifestly non-European by language. [
CAUCASIA
]

Certainly, racial purity is a non-starter when applied to the European peoples in historic times. The population of the Roman Empire contained a strong admixture of both north African negroids and west Asian semitics. The barbarian tribes were constantly replenishing their genetic stock from captive women and prisoners. Though any visit to Ireland or to Scandinavia can easily demonstrate that racial types are no fiction of the imagination, language, culture, religion, and politics have been more powerful determinants of ethnicity than race. What
is
true is that any tribal or social grouping which lives together for any length of time needs to adopt a common language. Equally, to protect its sense of identity, it will often erect formal or informal barriers against interbreeding. In some cases, where membership is defined by criteria of kinship backed by religious taboos, miscegenation can be punished by expulsion. In this way, language and kinship do become intimately intertwined.

The Celts, who were the avant-garde of the Indo-Europeans on the northern plain, had moved well to the west by Roman times. They had founded some of the most advanced archaeological cultures (see p. 84). They had been associated with the spread of metal-working, and their possession of iron weapons may well explain their dramatic expansion. Celts stormed Rome in 390
BC
and Greece in 279
BC,
terrifying their victims by their huge stature, their red hair and ferocious temperament, and by their sickening habit of head-hunting. For twenty years at the close of the second century
BC,
in the shape of the Cimbri, who set off from Jutland in the company of the Teutons, they caused immense havoc in Gaul and Spain until caught by the Consul Marius. Having annihilated the Teutons at Campi Putridi (see p. 87), Marius annihilated the Cimbri at Campi Raudii, near Verona, in 101
BC.
One or two setbacks, however, did not stem the tide. The Celtic Boii were known in ‘Bohemia’. Other Celts had settled in force in northern Italy, creating Cisalpine Gaul. They occupied the whole of the land to the west and northwest of the Alps, creating Transalpine Gaul. They crossed the Pyrenees, creating, among other things, Galicia: and they moved into the Rhineland. Already in the eighth century
BC
they had invaded the offshore islands, thereby creating the ‘British’ Isles.

Hence, when the Roman legions conquered much of Western Europe in the late Republican era, it was the Celts who provided the native resistance. During the Empire, they constituted the basic demographic stock of romanized
Celto-Iberians in Spain, of Gallo-Romans in Gaul, of Romano-Britons in Britain. Many of their tribal names are recognizable in modern places that have entirely lost their Celtic connections—
Boii
(Bohemia),
Belgae
(Belgium),
Helvetii
(Switzerland),
Treveri
(Trier),
Parisi
(Paris),
Redones
(Rennes),
Dumnonii
(Devon),
Cantiaci
(Kent),
Brigantes
(Brigsteer). In due course, overwhelmed in many parts by the next influx of Germanic peoples, they set up their permanent strongholds in the far north-west, on the ‘Celtic fringe’ of Britain—in Ireland, western Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall. In the fourth century
AD,
under pressure from the Anglo-Saxons, Celtic migrants from Cornwall crossed into ‘Finisterre’, thereby creating Brittany. Of the six Celtic languages which have survived into contemporary times, three belong to the Goidelic or Q-Celtic group, and three to the Brythonic or P-Celtic group.
Cymru am byth!
One branch of the Celts departed for Asia Minor. ‘O foolish Galatians,’ exclaimed St Paul when he visited these ‘Gauls of the East’ in
AD
52 (Gal. 3:1). Three hundred years later St Jerome, who came from Trier, correctly noted that the Galatians spoke essentially the same tongue as the Gauls of his native Rhineland. [
TRISTAN
]

The Germanic peoples probably formed the largest barbarian population of the Roman period. First identified in southern Scandinavia, they were designated as
Germani
by Posidonius in 90
BC,
by which time they were well into the task of settling the lands that have borne their name ever since. In the west they overlapped with the Celts, so that tribes such as the Cimbri and the Teutons have been variously designated as Celtic, Germanic, or germanized Celts. In the east they overlapped with the Slavs, so that controversies have raged over whether tribes such as the
Venedi
, who were mentioned by Tacitus, were Slavonic Wends, Germanic Vandals, or perhaps germanized Slavs.

The Germanic peoples are generally classified in three groupings. The Scandinavian group gave rise to the later Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic communities. The West Germanic group, centred on the North Sea coast, included Batavians, Frisians, Franks, Alamans, Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. They are the principal ancestors of the later Dutch, Flemish, English, and lowland Scots communities; also, in part, of the French. The East Germanic group, to the east of the Elbe, included Swabians, Lombards, Burgundians, Vandals, Gepids, Alans, and Goths. They were largely responsible for the tribal traffic jam on the northern plain, and were among the principal actors in the crisis of the Western Empire, [
FUTHARK
]

The
Germania
of Tacitus provides a detailed survey of the customs, social structure, and religion of the Germanic tribes. They had traded with the Mediterranean world since Bronze Age times, and were adopting Roman farming methods, even viticulture. Their clans were united by kinship, and ruled in conjunction with a democratic assembly of warriors, the [
DING
] or ‘Thing’. Their religion centred on the fertility gods Njordr (Nerthus) and Freyr, on Wodin (Odin), the master of magic and god of war, and on Thor (Donar), protector of the farmers against giants, fairies, and evil of all sorts. There was no priesthood, since their war-leaders, who often took the title of king, combined both military and religious functions. They long resisted Christianity, though the Goths adopted Arianism at an early date (see below).