A dissertation on the origin and progress of the Scythians or Goths. Being an introduction to the ancient and modern history of Europe / By John Pinkerton.
- John Pinkerton
- Date:
- 1787
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A dissertation on the origin and progress of the Scythians or Goths. Being an introduction to the ancient and modern history of Europe / By John Pinkerton. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![[ ] PREFACE. Being occupied with a mod laborious refearch into the hiftory of Scotland, preceding the year 1056, the author found it incontrovertibly fettled from Tacitus, Bed a, and the whole ancient accounts, that the Cakdonii or the ancient and dill chief inhabitants of*that country, came to it from German Scythia, or Scandinavia. This led him to enquire how the Scythians came to give their name even to the mod northern parts of Ger- many, from the earlieft days of Grecian literature, down to a very late period. He found that the firfl; Greek authors had certain knowlege that the Scythians had proceeded from Little, or Ancient, Scythia on the Euxine, even to the extremity of Germany, peopling the whole intervening country; and that the Latin daffies had the fame knowlege. But that the reafon why Ifidorus, Beda, Paulus Diaconus, the Geographer of Ravenna, and in- numerable writers of the middle ages, call Scan- dinavia peculiarly Scythia, was that Jornandes, who wrote about 530, had imagined that the mod ancient Scythians proceeded from it about 4000 years before Chrid. Hence, in the darknefs of the middle ages, Scandinavia was regarded as the true Scythia, or Scythia Antiqua.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28754529_0011.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
