CHAPTER IV

THE MOVEMENTS OF PEOPLES IN THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE


[Sidenote: Universality of these movements.]

The ethnic and political boundaries of Europe to-day are the residuum of
countless racial, national, tribal and individual movements reaching
back into an unrecorded past. The very names of Turkey, Bulgaria,
England, Scotland and France are borrowed from intruding peoples. New
England, New France, New Scotland or Nova Scotia and many more on the
American continents register the Trans-Atlantic nativity of their first
white settlers. The provinces of Galicia in Spain, Lombardy in Italy,
Brittany in France, Essex and Sussex in England record in their names
streams of humanity diverted from the great currents of the
Völkerwanderung. The Romance group of languages, from Portugal to
Roumania, testify to the sweep of expanding Rome, just as the wide
distribution of the Aryan linguistic family points to many roads and
long migrations from some unplaced birthplace. Names like Cis-Alpine and
Trans-Alpine Gaul in the Roman Empire, Trans-Caucasia, Trans-Caspia and
Trans-Baikalia in the Russian Empire, the Transvaal and Transkei in
South Africa, indicate the direction whence the advancing people have
come.

[Sidenote: Stratification of races]

Ethnology reveals an east and west stratification of linguistic groups
in Europe, a north and south stratification of races, and another
stratification by altitude, which reappears in all parts of the world,