Thus were constituted the main branches of the widespread Finnish family, whose domain formerly extended from the Katanga beyond the Yenisei to Lapland, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Altai range, the Caspian, and the Volga, with considerable _enclaves_ in the Danube basin. But throughout their relatively short historic life the Finnish peoples, despite a characteristic tenacity and power of resistance, have in many places been encroached upon, absorbed, or even entirely eliminated, by more aggressive races, such as the Siberian "Tatars" in their Altai cradleland, the Turki Kirghiz and Bashkirs in the West Siberian steppes and the Urals, the Russians in the Volga and Lake districts, the Germans and Lithuanians in the Baltic Provinces (Kurland, Livonia, Esthonia), the Rumanians, Slavs, and others in the Danube regions, where the Ugrian Bulgars and Magyars have been almost entirely assimilated in type (and the former also in speech) to the surrounding European populations. Few anthropologists now attach much importance to the views not yet quite obsolete regarding a former extension of the Finnish race over the whole of Europe and the British Isles. Despite the fact that all the Finns are essentially round-headed, they were identified first with the long-headed cavemen, who retreated north with the reindeer, as was the favourite hypothesis, and then with the early neolithic races who were also long-headed. Elaborate but now forgotten essays were written by learned philologists to establish a common origin of the Basque and the Finnic tongues, which have nothing in common, and half the myths, folklore, and legendary heroes of the western nations were traced to Finno-Ugrian sources. Now we know better, and both archaeologists and philologists have made it evident that the Finnish peoples are relatively quite recent arrivals in Europe, that the men of the Bronze Age in Finland itself were not Finns but Teutons, and that at the beginning of the new era all the Finnish tribes still dwelt east of the Gulf of Finland[715].