The European branch probably lingered in Persia and Armenia for some considerable time after the departure of the Indians; for, according to all appearance, that region has been the cradle of agriculture and of the culture of the vine.
Barley, spelt, and wheat are indigenous in Mesopotamia, and the vine tothe south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea: there too the plum, the walnut, and others of the more easily transplanted fruit trees are native.

It is worthy of notice that the name for the sea is common to most of the European stocks--Latins, Celts, Germans, and Slavonians; they must probably therefore before their separation have reached the coast of the Black Sea or of the Caspian.
By what route from those regions the Italians reached the chain of the Alps, and where in particular they were settled while still united with the Hellenes alone, are questions that can only be answered when the problem is solved by what route--whether from Asia Minor or from the regions of the Danube--the Hellenes arrived in Greece.

It may at all events be regarded as certain that the Italians, like the Indians, migrated into their peninsula from the north.( 1) The advance of the Umbro-Sabellian stock along the central mountain-ridge of Italy, in a direction from north to south, can still be clearly traced; indeed its last phases belong to purely historical times.

Less is known regarding the route which the Latin migration followed.

Probably it proceeded in a similar direction along the west coast, long, in all likelihood, before the first Sabellian stocks began to move.