"... All over Western Europe we see the barbarous races which overran and crushed the settling down into a less wild and savage life, adopting the arts as well as the of the conquered, and gradually emulating or surpassing the civilization which at their first coming they destroyed. In our own time, and before our eyes, a civilizing process is going on in Russia and in Turkey; disappears; nomadic tribes become settled ; the arts, the habits, even the dress, of neighbouring nations, are in course of adoption ; and the Muscovite and Turkic hordes are becoming scarce distinguishable from other Europeans. But, while this is the more ordinary process, or at any rate the one which most catches the eye when it roves at large over the historic field, there are not wanting indications that the process is occasionally reversed. Herodotus tells us of the , ... a Greek people, who, having been expelled from the cities on the northern coast of the , had retired into the interior, and there lived in wooden huts, and spoke a language "half Greek, half ." By the time of this people had become completely barbarous, and used the skins of those slain by them in battle as coverings for themselves and their horses. ... A gradual degradation of the is apparent in the series of their coins, which is extant ..."