Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/125

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The Primitive Aryans
105

brought iron with it into Great Britain, and is known as the wave of Brythonic Celts. From them the Welsh derive their language.

Kindred Celtic peoples were pressing southward into Spain and coming into contact not only with the heliolithic Basque people who still occupied the country but with the Semitic Phœnician colonies of the sea coast. A closely allied series of tribes, the Italians, were making their way down the still wild and wooded Italian peninsula. They did not always conquer. In the eighth century b.c. Rome appears in history, a trading town on the Tiber, inhabited by Aryan Latins but under the rule of Etruscan nobles and kings.

At the other extremity of the Aryan range there was a similar progress southward of similar tribes. Aryan peoples, speaking Sanskrit, had come down through the western passes into North India long before 1000 b.c. There they came into contact with a primordial brunet civilization, the Dravidian civilization, and learnt much from it. Other Aryan tribes

Photo: Underwood & Underwood.

THE MOUND OF NIPPUR

The site of a city which recent excavations have proved to date from at least as early as 5000 b.c., and probably 1000 years earlier