paration, while living together in Central Asia, we have a clew to the
degree of civilization attained by the Greeks before they arrived in
Europe. Thus it appears that they brought from Asia a familiarity with
oxen and cows, horses, dogs, swine, goats, geese; that they could work in
metals; that they built houses, and were acquainted with the elements of
agriculture, especially with farinaceous grains; they used salt; they had
boats propelled by oars, but not sails; they divided the year by moons,
and had a decimal notation.[206]

The Greeks, as a race, came from Asia later than the Latin races. They
belonged to that powerful Indo-European race, to which Europe owes its
civilization, and whose chief branches are the Hindoos, the Persians, the
Greeks, the Latins, the Kelts, the Teutonic tribes, and the Slavi. The
original site of the race was, as we have seen in our chapter on
Brahmanism, in Bactria; and the earliest division of this people could not
have been later than three thousand or four thousand years before the
Christian era. When the Hellenic branch entered Europe we have now no
means of saying. It was so long anterior to Greek history that all
knowledge of the time was lost, and only the faintest traditions of an
Asiatic origin of their nation are to be found in Greek writers.

The Hellenic tribes, at the beginning of the seventh century before
Christ, were divided into four groups,--the Achaians, AEolians, Dorians,
and Ionians,--with outlying tribes more or less akin. But this Hellenic
people had been preceded in Greece by another race known as Pelasgians. It
is so difficult to say who these were, that Mr. Grote, in despair,
pronounces them unknowable, and relinquishes the problem. Some facts
concerning them may, however, be considered as established. Their
existence in Greece is pronounced by Thirwall to be "the first
unquestionable fact in Greek history." Homer speaks (Iliad, II. 681) of
"Pelasgian Argos," and of "spear-skilled Pelasgians," "noble Pelasgians,"
"Pelasgians inhabiting fertile Larissa" (II. 840; X. 429). Herodotus
frequently speaks of the Pelasgians. He says that the Dorians were a
Hellenic nation, the Ionians were Pelasgic; he does not profess to know
what language the Pelasgians used, but says that those who in his time
inhabited Crestona, Placia, and other regions, spoke a barbarous language,
and that the people of Attica were formerly Pelasgic. He mentions the
Pelasgians as remaining to hi