galton.org 203
Influence of Man upon Race
203
for more than 200 years. Then came the invasion of the Moors, who
rapidly conquered the whole of the Peninsula up to the mountains of
Asturias, where the Goths still held their own, and whence they issued
from time to time and ultimately recovered the country. The present
population consists of the remnants of one or more tribes of ancient
Iberians, of the still more ancient Basques, and of relics of all the invaders
who have just been named. There is, besides, a notable proportion of
Gypsies and not a few Jews.
This is obviously a most heterogeneous mixture, but to fully appreciate
the diversity of its origin the several elements should be traced farther
back towards their sources. Thus, the Moors are principally descendants
of Arabs, who flooded the northern provinces of Africa in successive
waves of emigration eastwards, both before and after the Hegira, partly
combining with the Berbers as they went, and partly displacing them from
the littoral districts and driving them to the oases of the Sahara, whence
they in their turn displaced the Negro population, whom they drove down
to the Soudan. The Gypsies, according to Sir Henry Rawlinson,
[1]
came
from the Indo-Scythic tribes who inhabited the mouths of the Indus, and
began to migrate northward, from the fourth century onward. They settled
in the Chaldean marshes, assumed independence and defied the caliph. In
A.D. 831 the grandson of Haroun al-Raschid sent a large expedition
against them, which, after slaughtering ten thousand, deported the whole
of the remainder first to Baghdad and thence onwards to Persia. They
continued unmanageable in their new home, and were finally transplanted
to the Cilician frontier in Asia Minor, and established there as a military
colony to guard the passes of the Taurus. In A.D. 962 the Greeks, having
obtained some temporary successes, drove the Gypsies back more into the
interior, whence they gradually moved towards the Hellespont under the
pressure of the advancing Seljukians, during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. They then crossed over to Europe
[1]
Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. i. This account of the routes of
the Gypsies is by no means universally accepted, nor, indeed, was offered as a complete
solution of the problem of their migration, but it will serve to show how complex that
problem is.
