The Huns and Magyars were the next tribes who made their way into
Europe; and their advent, fierce, rapid, and exterminating, was
conducted like a charge of cavalry. They hewed their way with the sword
through the Slavonian and other tribes who impeded their march; and
after being for a brief season the terror of Europe, they settled _en
permanence_ on the plains of Hungary, where for upwards of a thousand
years they dominated, like a ruling caste, over the surrounding Slavonic
tribes. The influx of this warlike race took place by two
migrations,—firstly, of the Huns, under Attila, in the fifth century;
and, secondly, of the Magyars, under Arpad, in the ninth. The type of
the two races was identical; it is peculiarly exotic, and unlike any
other in Europe. It belongs to the great Uralian-Tatar stem of Asia;
but, strangely enough, though they differ in type from the Fins, the
Magyars speak a dialect of the Finnish language,—which shows that the
two races must have been associated in some way at a remote epoch, and
before either of them emerged from the depths of Asia. M. Edwards thus
describes the Magyar type:—“Head nearly round; forehead little
developed, low, and bending; the eyes placed obliquely, so that the
external angle is elevated; the nose short and flat; mouth prominent,
and lips thick; neck very strong, so that the back of the head appears
flat, forming almost a straight line with the nape; beard weak and
scattering; stature short.” The Magyars did not belong to the Caucasian
stock; and their long-continued supremacy over tribes decidedly
Caucasian, is a nut to crack for those ethnographers who deduce
everything from race, irrespective of the habits and state of
development of particular nations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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