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seventh and sixth centuries B.C. Of the regions our map included some have been all along within the shadow. The extreme eastern archipelago, which is afterward to be Japan, so far as history is concerned, is quite dark. Yet the archæologist can tell us much which the historian is well inclined to accept. Six thousand years ago,1 in all probability, the people whom we call Ainus had begun to make the shell mounds around the Japanese coasts which to-day are in many respects articulate. Groping their way across the Euro-Asiatic continent, these members of an old Caucasian stock, specially distinguished by their hairiness, reached at last the islands where they are now diminished to a miserable remnant of some twenty thousand fishermen and hunters. They had a neolithic culture, used some artistry in their pottery, and were possibly cannibals. They had the bear for their totem, and celebrated the bear sacrifice with sacramental rites which recall passages in the Finnish Kalevala. They were also fetish-worshipers, using fetishes - or inao of willow and lilac wood. They probably lived in caves and were known to later inhabitants as "earth-hiders" or "earth-spiders," though some ethnologists have distinguished between these and the Ainus proper.

In the southeast too there is darkness, though we are sure that here also there was mass-movement, whole tribes being pushed out into the islands of the Indian and Pacific oceans. Who can tell to what degree the rock-carvings and terraces of Easter Island or the temples of Tonga are relics of a civilization of which we shall never recover the story, mountain-tops of a long-submerged culture sunk forever out of sight?

For the rest, we may speak with a more or less confident accent only in the case of the countries we have mentioned. China has become a very definitely organized society, to which we must return in our next chapter. India has gone so far as to have lost the first spontaneity of religion and life under the Brahmanic system. The Euphrates civilization has been developed by one highly endowed race, only to be passed on again 1 See Gordon Munro, The Primitive Art of Japan.

and again, with but little added, to other peoples pressing in from the north. The western parts of Asia, especially in Asia Minor, are feeling the pressure of other mass-movements, in a general way from Europe, such as defy any lucid analysis. The historian who is able to pick up the ethnological débris of Asia Minor and make therefrom a clear and convincing story for the general reader will certainly deserve our gratitude. But his time is not yet.

CHAPTER III

FROM CYRUS TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA

ALL the various geographical units mentioned in our last chapter must have been very much astir during the seven centuries which lead up to the beginning of the Christian era. Some of these movements are, of course, still beyond the reach of the conscientious historian, and of these we shall have little to say. Nevertheless, we feel certain things happening in the dark, which we have every right to claim as part of our story. For instance, in the Far Eastern archipelago we are conscious, almost as though we could see them, of new racial elements filtering in to disturb the peace of the Ainus. From the north come the people whom we describe as Sushen, a people possibly of the stock we now call Manchu. From the south we have the warlike race known as Kumaso, possibly of Malay, even of Polynesian origin. And from the continent, by way of Korea, come the Yamato tribes who settled in the west. As in the case of the inhabitants of the British Isles, Japan began her preparation for nationhood by the blending of several racial strains. The southeast again was undoubtedly feeling the pressure of mass-movements from the north, resisting them and suffering from them. But it was all a fight in the dark, as in a dense wood we might hear the battling of animals whom we could not see. We can hardly say more of the movements which were going on in the vast stretches of Central Asia, though here was the starting-point of the widespread disturbance. Economic pressure or restless personality was all the time initiating some tribal trek, which affected the neighbors

precisely as the fall of one domino affects the others set up in

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Though we may not be precise in linking up movement with movement to our complete satisfaction, we are made aware that during these centuries Asiatic history possesses a unity which is unexpected and rather startling. The great Achæmenian empire of Persia, for instance, was as conscious of the Khakan of China on the east as it was of the Greek Ionian colonies which hung like limpets on the western frontier. The wars of Iran, described in the Shah Namah, had to do with Turan as well as with Rum.1 Alexander's wedge into Asia, again, -to many a mere gesture in the unrecording air, had consequences for China and the extremest East as well as for Persia and India. Till all this is clear to the student much of the historian's work must necessarily be vain, though historians are sometimes themselves to blame for imposing unreal limits. Ere the end of the period we see two mighty empires, Rome and China, meeting not very far from the Caspian, with consequences which send their vibrations all the way from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Parallel with this juxtaposition of material imperialisms we see two great religions, Buddhism and Christianity, sending their respective gospels east and west, from land to land, with a success no historian. may ignore.

In this chapter we do no more than suggest the separate developments which may not be left out of consideration by anyone desirous of appreciating the significance of modern conditions in the East.

Starting from the west, it is necessary first to consider those two centuries of Achæmenian rule from the capture of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 B.C. to the collapse of the third Darius on the field of Arbela in 331. The period is of vast importance both for Asia and for Europe. On the death of Cambyses, the successor of Cyrus and the conqueror of Egypt, the Achæmenian

1"Rum" is the name under which all the West was known to the Orient. The term includes any territory which was traditionally part of the Roman Empire.

line nearly experienced disaster. It was due to the skill and personality of Darius Hystaspes that the insurrection of Gomâta, the pseudo-Smerdis, and other similar rebellions were quelled. Darius, elected in the emergency following the death of Cambyses by hippomancy,1 soon justified the choice, by whatever means obtained, and imposed upon his time belief in his right royal claim to rule. His real right was that of superb fitness. Under his wise and energetic sway the empire flourished from India to the Hellespont, though the Ionian colonies still made the coast of Asia Minor more Greek than Persian. Roads throughout the empire were good, and travel along them was speedy and safe. Swift couriers carried the posts, with relays of men and horses at stated intervals. Though later on the satrapies were as loosely linked together as the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, yet during the reign of Darius, and for some time after, the Persian dominions were exceedingly well knit together. After the initial rebellions had been suppressed, there seems to have been little disaffection, and the subject peoples, such as the Jews, had little to complain of. Darius has left his record on the great Rock of Behistun, which was copied and deciphered by Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1844. But one intended record was missing to the end, namely, the story of conquered Greece. Darius indeed invaded Macedonia, but the decisive battle of Marathon made the conquest void. Ten years later Xerxes suffered yet more terrible defeats than his father in the battles of Salamis and Platea. The Persian effort to establish a scientific frontier by pushing back the Greek colonies to Europe failed. Yet the Greeks of Asia Minor rendered on occasion distinguished service to the " King of Kings," and his armies were generally stiffened by the presence of Hellenic mercenaries.

Persia in its turn rendered service to humanity. It was under Cyrus that a spiritually minded minority of the Jewish captives left the valley of the Euphrates to essay the task of

1 Hippomancy is divination by the neighing of a horse.
2 The Persian Bagistanon; that is, the abode of the gods.

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