THE PRIMITIVE HOME OF THE ARYANS. 48S 



ill the chain may uot be strong, but collectively they afford that amount 

 of probability which is all that we can hope to attain in historical re- 

 search. Those who wish to study them may do so in Dr. Penka's work 

 on. the ^'Herhmft der Arier,^^ published in 188G. His hypothesis that 

 southern Scandinavia was the primitive "Aryan home" seems to me to 

 have more in its favor than any other hypothesis on the subject which has 

 as yet been put forward. It needs verification, it is true, but if it is 

 sound the verification will not be long in coming. A more profound ex- 

 amination of Teutonic and Keltic mythology, a more exact knowledge 

 of the words in the several Indo-European languages which are not 

 of Indo-European orgin, and the progress of archajological discovery, 

 will furnish the verification we need. 



Meanwhile it must be allowed that the hypothesis has the counte- 

 nance of history. Scandinavia, even before the sixth century, was char- 

 acterized as the " manufactory of nations; "* and the voyages and set- 

 tlements of the Norse Vikings offer a historical illustration of what the 

 pre historic migrations and settlements of the speakers of the Indo- 

 European languages must have been. They differed from the latter 

 only in being conducted by sea, whereas the prehistoric migrations 

 followed the valleys of the great rivers. It was not until the age of the 

 Koman Empire that the northern nations became acquainted with the 

 sailing-boat; our English sail is the Latin sagulum, "the little cloak of 

 the soldier," borrowed by the Teutons along with its name, and used to 

 propel their boats in imitation of the sails of the Roman vessels. The 

 introduction of the sail allowed the inhabitants of the Scandinavian 

 "hive" to push boldly out to sea, and ushered in the era of Saxon 

 pirates and Danish invasion. 



Dr. Penka's arguments are partly anthropological, partly archae- 

 ological. He shows that the Kelts and Teutons of Roman antiquity 

 were the tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired, dolichocephalic race which is now 

 being fast absorbed in Keltic lands by the older inhabitants of them. 

 The typical Frenchman of to-day has but little in common with the 

 typical Gaul of the age of Caesar. The typical Gaul was, in fact, as 

 much a conqueror in Gallia as he was in Galatia, or as modern 

 researches have shown, as the typical Kelt was in Ireland. It seems 

 to have been the same in Greece. Here too the golden-haired hero of 

 art and song was a representative of the ruling class, of that military 

 aristocracy which overthrew the early culture of the Peloponnese, and 

 of whom tradition averred that it had come from the bleak North. 

 Little trace of it now remains ; it is rarely that the traveler can dis- 

 cover any longer the modern kinsfolk of the golden-haired Apollo or 

 the blue eyed Athene. 



If we would still find the ancient blonde race of Northern Europe in 

 its purity we must go to Scandinavia. Here the prevailing type of the 



* " Quasi officin.i creutium aut certe velut vagina uatiouiim : " Jordanes, De Gctarum 

 sive Gothorum origine, ed. Gloss, c. 4. 



