the old Attic and the old
Roman monuments; in the choice of the most ancient kinds of grain,
millet, barley, spelt; in the custom of cutting the ears with the
sickle and having them trodden out by cattle on the smooth-beaten
threshing-floor; lastly, in the mode of preparing the grain -puls-
--poltos--, -pinso- --ptisso--, -mola- --mulei--; for baking was
of more recent origin, and on that account dough or pap was always
used in the Roman ritual instead of bread. That the culture of the
vine too in Italy was anterior to the earliest Greek immigration,
is shown by the appellation "wine-land" (--Oinotria--), which
appears to reach back to the oldest visits of Greek voyagers. It
would thus appear that the transition from pastoral life to agriculture,
or, to speak more correctly, the combination of agriculture with the
earlier pastoral economy, must have taken place after the Indians
had departed from the common cradle of the nations, but before the
Hellenes and Italians dissolved their ancient communion. Moreover,
at the time when agriculture originated, the Hellenes and Italians
appear to have been united as one national whole not merely with
each other, but with other members of the great family; at least,
it is a fact, that the most important of those terms of cultivation,
while they are foreign to the Asiatic members of the Indo-Germanic
family, are used by the Romans and Greeks in common with the Celtic
as well as the Germanic, Slavonic, and Lithuanian stocks.(6)

The distinction between the common inheritance of the nations and
their own subsequent acquisitions in manners and in language is
still far from having been wrought out in all the variety of its
details and gradations. The investigation of languages with this
view has scarcely begun, and history still in the main derives its
representation of primitive times, not from the rich mine of language,
but from what must be called for the most part the rubbish-heap of
tradition. For the present, therefore, it must suffice to indicate
the differences between the culture of the Indo-Germanic family in
its oldest undivided form, and the culture of that epoch when the
Graeco-Italians still lived together. The task of discriminating
the results of culture which are common to the European members of
this family, but foreign to its Asiatic members, from those which
the several European groups, such as the Graeco-Italian and the
Germano-Slavonic, have wrought out for