vi THE ARYAN QUESTION. 290 



primitive A^an language was generated may have 

 formed a separate race as far back as the pleisto- 

 cene epoch, when the first unquestionable records 

 of man make their appearance, I do not see that 

 he goes beyond possibility — though, of course, that 

 is a very different thing from proving his case. 

 But, if the blond long-heads are thus ancient, the 

 problem of their primitive seat puts on an alto- 

 gether new aspect. Speculation must take into 

 account climatal and geographical conditions 

 widely different from those which obtain in 

 northern Eurasia at the present day. During 

 much of the vast length of the pleistocene period, 

 it would seem that men could no more have lived 

 either in Britain north of the Thames, or in Scan- 

 dinavia, or in northern Germany, or in northern 

 Russia, than they can live now in the interior of 

 Greenland, seeing that the land was covered by a 

 great ice sheet like that which at present shrouds 

 the latter country. At that epoch, the blond long- 

 heads cannot reasonably be supposed to have occu- 

 pied the regions in which we meet with them in the 

 oldest times of which history has kept a record. 



But even if we are content to assume a vastly 

 less antiquity for the Aryan race; if we only make 

 the assumption, for which there is considerable 

 positive warranty, that it has existed in Europe 

 ever since the end of the pleistocene period — when 

 the fauna and flora assumed approximately their 

 present condition and the state of things called 



