THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 505 



which can "be given to the two questions which we put at starting 

 are these : There was and is an Aryan race that is to say, the 

 characteristic modes of speech, termed Aryan, were developed 

 among the blond long-heads alone, however much some of them 

 may have been modified by the importation of non- Aryan ele- 

 ments. As to the " home " of the Aryan race, it was in Europe, 

 and lay chiefly east of the central highlands and west of the Ural. 

 From this region it spread west, along the coasts of the North 

 Sea to our islands, where, probably, it met the brunet long-heads ; 

 to France, where it found both these and the brunet short-heads ; 

 to Switzerland and south Germany, where it impinged on the 

 brunet short-heads; to Italy, where brunet short-heads seem to 

 have abounded in the north and long-heads in the south ; and to 

 the Balkan Peninsula, about the earliest inhabitants of which we 

 know next to nothing. There are two ways to Asia Minor, the 

 one over the Bosporus and the other through the passes of the 

 Caucasus, and the Aryans may well have utilized both. Finally, 

 the southeastern tribes probably spread themselves gradually over 

 west Turkistan, and, after evolving the primitive Indo-Iranian 

 dialect, eventually colonized Persia and Hindostan, where their 

 speech developed into its final forms. On this hypothesis, the no- 

 tion that the Celts and the Teutons migrated from about Pamir 

 and the Hindoo Koosh is as far from the truth as the supposition 

 that the Indo-Iranians migrated from Scandinavia. It supposes 

 that the blond long-heads, in what may be called their nascent 

 Aryan stage that is, before their dialects had taken on the full 

 Aryan characteristics were spread over a wide region which is, 

 conventionally, European ; but which, from the point of view of 

 the physical geographer, is rather to be regarded as a continuation 

 of Asia. Moreover, it is quite possible, and even probable, that 

 the blond long-heads may have arrived in Turkistan before their 

 language had reached, or at any rate passed beyond, the stage of 

 primitive Aryan; and that the whole process of differentiation 

 into Indo-Iranian took place during the long ages of their resi- 

 dence in the basin of the Oxus. Thus, the question whether the 

 seat of the primitive Aryans was in Europe, or in Asia, becomes 

 very much a debate about geographical terminology. 



The foregoing arguments in favor of Latham's " Sarmatian 

 hypothesis " have been based upon data which lie within the ken 

 of history, or may be surely concluded by reasoning backward 

 from the present state of things. But, thanks to the investigation 

 of the prehistoric archaeologists and anthropologists during the 

 last half -century, a vast mass of positive evidence respecting the 

 distribution and the condition of mankind in the long interval be- 

 tween the dawn of history and the commencement of the recent 

 epoch has been brought to light. 



