THE PRIMITIVE HOME OF THE ARYANS. 479 



from a negative proves little or uotbiug, the argument from agreement 

 proves a great deal. 



The comparative philologist has by means of it succeeded in sketching 

 in outline the state of culture possessed by the speakers of the parent 

 language, and the objects which were known to them. They inhabited 

 a cold country. Their seasons were three in number, i)erhaps four, and 

 not two, as would have been the case had they lived south of the tem- 

 l)erate zone. They were nomad herdsmen, dwelling in hovels, similar, 

 it may be, to the low round huts of sticks and straw built by the 

 Kabyles on the mountain-slopes of Algeria. Such hovels could be 

 erected in a few hours, and left again as the cattle moved into higher 

 ground, with the approach of spriug, or descended into the valleys 

 when the winter advanced. The art of grinding corn seems to have 

 been unknown, and crushed spelt was eaten instead of bread. A rude 

 sort of agriculture was however already practiced ; and the skins 

 worn by the community, with which to protect themselves against the 

 rigors of the climate, were sewn together by means of needles of 

 bone. It is even possible that the art of spinuing had already been 

 invented, though the art of weaving does not appear to have advanced 

 beyond that of plaiting reeds and withies. The community still lived 

 in the stone age. Their tools and weapons were made of stone or 

 bone, and if they made use of gold or meteoric iron, it was of the 

 uuwrought pieces picked up from the ground and employed as orna- 

 ments; of the working of metals they were entirely ignorant. As 

 among savage tribes generally, the various degrees of relationship 

 were minutely distinguished and named, even the wife of a husband's 

 brother receiving a special title ; but they could count at least as far as a 

 hundred. They believed in a multitude of ghosts and goblins, making 

 offerings to the dead, and seeing in the bright sky a potent deity. The 

 birch, the pine, and the withy were known to them ; so also were the 

 bear and wolf, the hare, the mouse, and the snake, as well as the goose 

 and raven, the quail and the owl. Cattle, sheep, goats, and swine 

 were all kept ; the dog had been domesticated, and in all probability 

 also the horse. Last, but not least, boats were navigated by means of 

 oars, the boats themselves being possibly the hollowed trunks of trees. 



This account of the primitive community is necessarily imperfect. 

 There must have been many words, like that for "river," which were 

 once possessed by the parent speech, but afterwards lost in either the 

 Eastern or Western branches of the family, Buch words the comparative 

 philologist has liow no means of discovering. He must accordingly pass 

 them over along with the objects or ideas which they represent. The 

 picture he can give us of the speakers of the primeval Indo-European 

 language can only be approximately complete. Moreover it is always 

 open to correction. Some of the words we now believe to have been 

 part of the original stock carried away by the derived dialects of Asia 

 m^ Europe ma^ hereafter turn out to have been borrowed by one of 



