Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/347

 ASPECTS OF THE ARYAN QUESTION 333

The Iranians and the people of India were the eldest of the family, the most faithful conservators of the primitive language and institutions. The Celts, the Latins, Greeks, Germans, and Slavs represented swarms or colonies of the original stock push- ing farther and farther westward. In this hypothesis Europe was conceived as a region without previous inhabitants, for the idea of the existence of prehistoric man in Europe was still regarded by scholars as a dream and by conservatives as a nightmare.

But it soon transpired that between the great linguistic divi- sions had existed complex affinities wholly different from what the above theory required ; each of them was related in a par- ticular way to several others, and unfortunately these rela- tions existed between the languages of peoples now occupying neighboring regions ; that is, they were correlated with the present geographical relations, and not with the order in which the colonies were supposed to have separated from the parent tribe. It was then necessary to assume that the expansion of the Aryans had occurred only after their differentiation into great tribes, Celts, Germans, Slavs, Hindus, etc., and that the respective position of these tribes in the primitive Aryan land was the same as that of the historic peoples of Europe. Thus it came to be thought that the Aryan tribes had developed

in his later years — so I am informed by his friend, Dr. Beddoe — to consider the region now largely covered by the North Sea as the cradle of the Aryan race. He thus reached substantially the hypothesis advocated by the present writer.

Among the authors who have regarded central Asia as the original home of the Aryans, because they considered the true Aryans to have been brachycephalic, must be cited Ujfalvy. This author has, however, abandoned this earlier view. He now considers, and rightly so, the brachycephalics as comparatively late arrivals in central Asia. The Tadjiks, so analogous to the bracycephalics of the Alpine region that Topinard regards them as Savoyards retarded in their migration, are in reality a peo- ple transplanted into Bactria only a short time before our era, commg from the confines of Armenia. Ujfalvy, in his recent work, Les Aryens an Nord el an Siiii Je I'HindoH- Kouch (Paris, 1896), allies himself with the twofold hypothesis of the European origin of the Aryans and of the prevalence of the dolicho-blond type among them.

Taylor's Origin of the Aryans sustains a twofold hypothesis, first, the European origin of the Aryan languages and civilization, and, second, the prevalence among the Aryans of the brachycephalic Finnic type. This work, although full of anthropological errors, is in general the best and most recent guide in regard to the ethnographic and philological aspects of the matter.