But it also may have been separate and distinct from any of them.
In this case, we are again supplied with an alternative.
1. The population may have been _one_--just as that of Germany is _one_.
2. The population may have fallen in several--nay, numerous divisions--so that the so-called races may have been _one_, _two_, _three_, _four_, or even more.
Dealing with these questions, we first ask what are the reasons for supposing the population--whether single or subdivided--of Asia to have been _peculiar_, _i.e._ different from that of the frontier areas--Georgia, Thrace, Armenia, Mesopotamia and Syria?
This is answered at once by the evidence of the Lycian Inscriptions, which prove the _Lycian_, at least, to have been distinct from all or any of the tongues enumerated.
The following extracts, however, from Herodotus carry us farther:--
“The Lycians were originally out of Crete; since, in the old times, it was the Barbarians who held the whole of Crete. When, however, there was a difference in Crete, in respect to the kingdom, between the sons of Europa, Minos and Sarpedon, and when Minos got the best in the disturbance, he (Minos) expelled both Sarpedon himself and his faction; and these, on their expulsion, went to that part of Asia which is the _Milyadic_ land. For that country which the Lycians now inhabit was in the old times _Milyas_; and the _Milyæ_ were then called _Solymi_. For a time Sarpedon ruled over them. They called themselves by the name which they brought with them; and even now, the Lycians are called by the nations that dwell around them, _Termilæ_. But when Lycus, the son of Pandion, driven away from Athens, and like Sarpedon, by his brother (Ægeus), came to the Termilæ under Sarpedon, they, thence, in the course of time, were called, after the name of Lycus, Lycians. The usages are partly Cretan, partly Carian. One point, however, they have peculiar to themselves, and one in which they agree with no other men. They name themselves after their mothers, and not from their fathers: so that if any one be asked by another _who he is_, he will designate himself as the son of his mother, and number up his mother’s mothers. Again, if a free woman marry a slave, the children are deemed free; whereas, if a man be even in the first rank of citizens, and take either a strange wife or a concubine, the children are dishonoured.”