ous; it bears no trace
of any strong outside influence or sudden transition, no evidence of
disturbance like an invasion or conquest by an alien people till 1200 B.
C. when the latest stage of Minoan art was crushed by barbarian
incursion from the north.[893]

[Sidenote: Factor of protection in Ceylon and Japan.]

The early history of the Singhalese monarchy in Ceylon from 250 B. C. to
416 A. D., when even the narrow moat of Palk Strait discouraged Tamil
invasions from the mainland, shows the brilliant development possible
under even a slight degree of protection.[894] However, in the case of
these Ceylon Aryans, as in that of the Icelandic Norse, we must keep in
mind the fact that the bearers of this culture were picked men, as are
early maritime colonists the world over. The sea selects and then
protects its island folk. But the seclusion of Ceylon was more favorable
to progress than the mainland of India, with its incessant political and
religious upheavals. Japan, in contrast to China's long list of
invasions, shows the peace of an insular location. She never suffered
any overwhelming influx of alien races or any foreign conquest. The
armada sent by Kublai Khan in 1281 to subdue the islands paralleled the
experience of the famous Spanish fleet three centuries later in English
waters. This is the only attempt to invade Japan that recorded history
shows.[895] In the original peopling of the island by Mongolian stock at
the cost of the Aino aborigines, there is evidence of two distinct and
perhaps widely separated immigrations from the mainland, one from Korea
and another from more northern Asia. Thus Japan's population contained
two continental elements, which seem to have held themselves in the
relation of governing and governed class, much as Norman and Saxon did
in England, while the Ainos lingered in the geographical background of
mountain fastness and outlying islands, as the primitive Celts did in
the British Isles.[896] In the case both of England and Japan, the island
location made the occupation by continental races a fitful, piecemeal
process, not an inundation, because only small parties could land from
time to time. The result was gradual or partial amalgamation of the
various stocks, but nowhere annihilation.

[Sidenote: Character of the invaders as factor.]

But island location was not the sole factor in the equation. Similarity
of race and relative parity of civilization between the successive
immig