THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 347 



The assumption that, as there must have been a primitive 

 Aryan people, in the philological sense, so that people must have 

 constituted a race in the biological sense, is pretty generally made 

 in modern discussions of the Aryan problem. But whether the 

 men of the primitive Aryan race were blonds or brunets, whether 

 they had long or round heads, were tall or were short, are hotly 

 debated questions, into the discussion of which considerations 

 quite foreign to science are sometimes imported. The combina- 

 tion of swarthiness with stature above the average and a long skull, 

 confer upon me the serene impartiality of a mongrel ; and, having 

 given this pledge of fair dealing, I proceed to state the case for 

 the hypothesis I am inclined to adopt. In doing so, I am aware 

 that I deliberately take the shilling of the recruiting sergeant 

 of the Light Brigade, and I warn all and sundry that such is the 

 case. 



Looking at the discussions which have taken place from a 

 purely anthropological point of view, the first point which has 

 struck me is that the problem is far more complicated and difficult 

 than many of the disputants appear to imagine ; and the second, 

 that the data upon which we have to go are grievously insufficient 

 in extent and in precision. Our historical records cover such an 

 infinitesimally small extent of the past life of humanity, that we 

 obtain little help from them. Even so late as 1500 b. c, northern 

 Eurasia lies in historical darkness, except for such glimmer of 

 light as may be thrown here and there by the literature of Egypt 

 and of Babylonia. Yet, at that time, it is probable that Sanskrit, 

 Zend, and Greek, to say nothing of other Aryan tongues, had long 

 been differentiated from primitive Aryan. Even a thousand 

 years later, little enough accurate information is to be had about 

 the racial characters of the European and Asiatic tribes known 

 to the Greeks. We are thrown upon such resources as archaeol- 

 ogy and human paleontology have to offer, and, notwithstanding 

 the remarkable progress made of late years, they are still meager. 

 Nevertheless, it strikes me that, from the purely anthropological 

 side, there is a good deal to be said in favor of the two proposi- 

 tions maintained by the new school of philologists : first, that the 

 people who spoke " primitive Aryan " were a distinct and well- 

 marked race of mankind ; and, secondly, that the area of the dis- 

 tribution of this race, in primeval times, lay in Europe, rather 

 than in Asia. 



For the last two thousand years, at least, the southern half of 

 Scandinavia and the opposite or southern shores of the Baltic have 

 been occupied by a race of mankind possessed of very definite 



the physical differences between a high-caste Hindoo and a Dravidian, except the Aryan 

 blood in the veins of the former ; and the strength of the infusion is probably quite as 

 great in some Hindoos as in some English soldiers. 



