Page:History of Early Iran.pdf/35

Rh ogy, dangerous as its evidence may be, concurs with this "Alpine" theory and tentatively suggests that the extension of "Caucasian" linguistic elements from far-away India on the east through Elam and the Zagros into Anatolia on the west is perhaps not without significance.

Nevertheless, this view conflicts with the theory already stated and commonly held, that the brown Eurafrican variety of longheads in Mesopotamia was also the chief block of the earliest population in Iran. If this be accepted, we must assume, as indeed would not be difficult, that the "Caucasian" linguistic affinities have transcended race and people, being spoken both by the supposed original roundheads of Asia Minor and by the dolichocephalic peoples of Iran.

The present state of our knowledge leaves us at a complete stalemate. No theory, enticing as it may be, is acceptable; only with the help of physical anthropology shall we solve the problem.

Where we possess written records the social customs are much less difficult to describe. Such documentation for Iran is found only in Elam and only after the twenty-fifth century ; even then we must read between the lines of a few inscriptions to obtain the maximum amount of evidence.

In Elam, as elsewhere throughout the Orient in early times, woman's sphere of activity was not limited to the home. Like man, she signed documents, carried on business, inherited and willed