674 ^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY'. 



and mental traits which properly belong to this remarkable race, 

 we naturally turn our attention to that Medo-Persian people, in 

 whom the character of the unmixed stock was first distinctly 

 manifested. The results of such an inquiry may yield some valu- 

 able fruits to ethnological science. 



But before proceeding with this branch of our study it will be 

 necessary, if our search for the origin of the Aryan race is to be 

 conducted on strictly scientific lines and to be carried back to the 

 very germ of the race, to bear in mind the self-evident truth that 

 every linguistic stock must have originated in a single household. 

 Somewhere on earth there must have been an " Aryan family-pair," 

 the progenitors of the breed ; and all the speakers of the primi- 

 tive Aryan tongue must once have been gathered, as has been well 

 said, " under one roof." In an address which I had the honor of 

 delivering before this section* two years ago, I endeavored to 

 point out the conditions under which such a household must have 

 been formed, and to show that it must necessarily have originated 

 in some isolated spot where a little brood or a pair of orphan chil- 

 dren, left alone at too early an age to have a comjjleted language, 

 could have found the means of subsistence. This must have been 

 in some region where severe frost is unknown, and where food 

 could readily be obtained by very young children all the year 

 round. No such spot can be found in Europe, a fact which would 

 make the rise of a new linguistic stock in that quarter of the globe, 

 under its present climatic conditions, difficult to comprehend. 

 But in the Aryan territory already described such a district pre- 

 sents itself at once in the semi-tropical belt which borders the 

 Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and is known in modern 

 geography as the Deshtistan, or " low country," of the province of 

 Fars — that province which has always been deemed the original 

 seat of the Persian people. In this coast district, as we are told 

 by Prof. Rawlinson, snow never falls and there is but little rain. 

 Heavy dews, however, occur at night, so that the mornings are 

 often fresh and cool. Most of the region is dry and barren ; but 

 along the streams there is moisture, and the fruits of the tropics 

 thrive. The sandy shore abounds in shell-fish and especially in 

 oysters. On the northern coast of the Mexican Gulf, where the 

 climate and other conditions are somewhat similar to those of 

 this Aryan belt, I have seen from my open window in midwinter, 

 while the magnolias were blooming near and the orange-trees 

 showed their belated fruit, the little children of five or six yearg 

 old wading at low tide in the shallow water, feeling with their 

 naked feet for the shell-fish and gathering them into their baskets 



* The present article was read before the Section of Anthropology, in the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, at its meeting in August, 1888. The "Vice- 

 Presidential address " referred to is published in the Proceedings of the Association for 1886. 



