ack from the Danube, the alien Turks have withdrawn to the
shrinking territory of the Sultan and especially to Asia Minor.

[Sidenote: Diffusion of culture.]

Where a population too great to be dislodged occupies the land, conquest
results in the eventual absorption of the victors and their civilization
by the native folk, as happened to the Lombards in Italy, the Vandals in
Africa and the Normans in England. Where the invaders are markedly
superior in culture though numerically weak, conquest results in the
gradual permeation of the conquered with the religion, economic methods,
language, and customs of the new-comers.[141] The latter process, too, is
always attended by some intermixture of blood, where no race repulsion
exists, but this is small in comparison to the diffusion of
civilization. This was the method by which Greek traders and colonists
Hellenized the countries about the eastern Mediterranean, and spread
their culture far back from the shores which their settlements had
appropriated. In this way Saracen armies soon after the death of
Mohammed Arabized the whole eastern and southern sides of the
Mediterranean from Syria to Spain, and Arab merchants set the stamp of
their language and religion on the coasts of East Africa as far as
Mocambique. The handful of Spanish adventurers who came upon the
relatively dense populations of Mexico and Peru left among them a
civilization essentially European, but only a thin strain of Castilian
blood. Thus the immigration of small bands of people sufficed to
influence the culture of that big territory known as Latin America.

[Sidenote: Ethnic intermixture.]

That vast sum of migrations, great and small, which we group under the
general term of historical movement has involved an endless mingling of
races and cultures. As Professor Petrie has remarked, the prevalent
notion that in prehistoric times races were pure and unmixed is without
foundation. An examination of the various forms of the historical
movement reveals the extent and complexity of this mingling process.

In the first place, no migration is ever simple; it involves a number
of secondary movements, each of which in turn occasions a new
combination of tribal or racial elements. The transference of a whole
people from its native or adopted seat to a new habitat, as in the
_Voelkerwanderungen_, empties the original district, which then becomes
a catchment basin for various streams of people about its rim; an