os^ THE ARYAN QUESTION. vi 



are grievously insufficient in extent and in pre- 

 cision. Our historical records cover such an in- 

 finitesimally small extent of the past life of human- 

 ity, that we obtain little help from them. Even so 

 late as 1500 b. a, northern Eurasia lies in historical 

 darkness, except for such glimmer of light as may 

 be thrown here and there by the literatures 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 dif- 

 ferentiated from primitive Aryan. Even a thou- 

 sand years later, little enough accurate information 

 is to be had about the racial characters of the Euro- 

 pean and Asiatic tribes known to the Greeks. We 

 are thrown upon such resources as archaeology and 

 human palaeontology have to offer, and notwith- 

 standing the remarkable progress made of late 

 years, they are still meagre. Nevertheless, it 

 strikes me that, from the purely anthropological 

 side, there is a good deal to be said in favour of 

 the two propositions 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 distribution of this race, in primaeval 

 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 



