PREHISTORIC MAN. 293 



Aryan-speaking stock — only challenges the further ques- 

 tion : Which, then, is the Aryan stock ? which are the non- 

 Aryan recipients of Aryan speech? It would be dispro- 

 portionate here, and it is fortunately unnecessary, to discuss 

 the numerous attempts which have been made to answer 

 this question. For of all the physical types which compose 

 the population of Europe in historical and modern times, 

 every one, the Turk only excepted, has been claimed as 

 representing the original Aryan stock, or at least as closely 

 akin to it. 



79. We are therefore justified in putting all primarily 

 philological hypotheses on one side ; if only on the ground 

 that none of them meet the more probable case, that the 

 race, with which Aryan speech originated, may have been 

 at all times few in numbers, and may further have been 

 long since extinct ; and consequently that all the Aryan 

 speaking races of historic times may have, at one time or 

 another, learnt Aryan speech, without acquiring more than 

 the slightest tincture of Aryan blood. The ground is thus 

 left open for a review of the whole question from a point 

 of view primarily anthropological, and based in the first 

 place on physical, namely morphological criteria of natural 

 kinship between the races to be examined. 



80. This is peculiarly important in the southern part of 

 Aryan-speaking Europe, and this for two reasons. On the 

 one hand we are here, on the philological theory, farther re- 

 moved from the " Aryan Home," and separated from it 

 by great natural barriers. The theory of wholesale migra- 

 tion, therefore, may here be examined in a crucial instance ; 

 and as a matter of fact the physical evidence actually gives 

 a sufficiently coherent answer. On the other hand, it is 

 exactly in these southern areas, which project into the 

 Mediterranean, that the first great " Aryan " civilisations 

 came into being, namely those of Greece and Rome 

 which have in many respects so largely coloured current 

 conceptions of the probable complexion of primitive " Aryan 

 civilisation". It is therefore here that material and circum- 

 stantial evidence can be best brought to bear upon the 

 outline of "Aryan culture," as inferred from philological 



