THE RACES OF EUROPE

time, and Iranian languages clung on for a long while in Kashgaria and in the oases of Russian Turkestan. Undoubtedly, the Scythians and their relatives were not destroyed, but were absorbed and reincorporated.

In studying the racial type of the Scythians, one must remember that they were not considered a homogeneous group by Herodotus, who is our chief historical source. They consisted of an inner clan called the Royal Scyths or True Scyths, who were the nobles and leaders, and, as a second element, the whole group of nomadic tribes of which the Royal Scyths were the integrating force. Herodotus also makes it clear that the Scythians kept many slaves. Only the Royal Scyths refused to own slaves, but em­ployed youths of pure Scythian blood as bodyguards, and sacrificed these

Fig. 29. Scythians, from the Kul Oba Vase. Redrawn from Minns, e. H., Scythians and Greeks, p. 201, Fig. 94.

in their tombs. Thus, the Royal Scythian burial mounds must contain a relatively pure Scythian group.

One must not imagine that the Scyths and their slaves were the only inhabitants of southeastern Europe during the last seven centuries before Christ and the first two of our era. Herodotus mentions the agricultural Scythians, who were probably some earlier sedentary people or peoples who remained as underlings of the Scythians and their providers of cereal food. We must remember that much of the Scythian territory had been farmed as early as Neolithic times.

There can be little doubt, even before examining the skeletal evidence, that the Scythians and Sarmatians were basically if not entirely white men and in no sense mongoloid. The only definite description of them which we have from classical literature is that of Hippocrates, who called them white-skinned and obese, but this designation was employed by the father of medicine to prove one of his environmental theories. In later times, the Alans are described as having golden hair.

Fortunately, we are not limited to literary references. The Scythians themselves, under the influence of powerful Greek colonies on the north shore of the Black Sea, and particularly in the Crimea, produced a dis­