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The most definite evidence of the antiquity and original exclusive use of the decimal system among the Indo-Germans is furnished by the well-known agreement of all Indo-Germanic languages in respect to the numerals as far as a hundred inclusive.
The hoary mysterious forms of the Erinnyes are no Hellenic invention; they were immigrants along with the oldest settlers from the East. Graeco-Italian Culture The task, however, of determining the degree of culture which the Indo-Germans had attained before the separation of the stocks properly belongs to the general history of the ancient world.
While it is probable that the Indo-Germans led a pastoral life and were acquainted with the cereals, if at all, only in their wild state, all indications point to the conclusion that the Graeco-Italians were a grain-cultivating, perhaps even a vine-cultivating, people.
As to the regions stretching between Cilicia and Caria, more especially Lydia, there is still, notwithstanding the full remains of the native language and writing that are in this particular instance extant, a want of assured results, and it is merely probable that these tribes ought to be reckoned among the Indo-Germans rather than the Semites.
Above all, the Phoenicians, like the rest of the Aramaean nations as compared with the Indo-Germans, lacked the instinct of political life the noble idea of self-governing freedom.
While faith and knowledge in a certain sense were the especial property of the Aramaean nations and first reached the Indo-Germans from the east, neither the Phoenician religion nor Phoenician science and art ever, so far as we can see, held an independent rank among those of the Aramaean family.
Above all, the Phoenicians, like the rest of the Aramaean nations as compared with the Indo-Germans, lacked the instinct of political life the noble idea of self-governing freedom.
It is difficult to determine the primitive seat of the Indo-Germans more precisely: it must, however, at any rate have been inland and remote from the sea, as there is no name for the sea common to the Asiatic and European branches.
The utmost we can say is that several traces, that seem tolerably trustworthy, point to the conclusion that the Etruscans may be on the whole numbered with the Indo-Germans.
An historical connection between the Indo-Germanic agriculture and that of the Chinese, Aramaean, and Egyptian stocks can hardly be disputed; and yet these stocks are either alien to the Indo-Germans, or at any rate became separated from them at a time when agriculture was certainly still unknown.
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