30C THE ARYAN QUESTION vi 



Scandinavia. It supposes that the blond long- 

 heads, in what may be called their nascent Aryan 

 stage, that is before their dialects had taken on 

 the full Aryan characteristics, were spread over a 

 wide region which is, conventionally, European ; 

 but which, from the point of view of the physical 

 geographer, is rather to be regarded as a continu- 

 ation of Asia. Moreover, it is quite possible and 

 even probable, that the blond long-heads may 

 have arrived in Turkestan before their language 

 had reached, or at any rate passed beyond, the 

 stage of primitive Aryan ; and that the whole 

 process of differentiation into Indo-Iranian took 

 place during the long ages of their residence in 

 the basin of the Oxus. Thus, the question 

 whether the seat of the primitive Aryans was in 

 Europe, or in Asia, becomes very much a debate 

 about geographical terminology. 



The foregoing arguments in favour of Latham's 

 " Sarmatian hypothesis " have been based upon 

 data which lie within the ken of history or may 

 be surely concluded by reasoning backwards from 

 the present state of things. But, thanks to the 

 investigations of the pre-historic archaeologists and 

 anthropologists during the last half-century, a vast 

 mass of positive evidence respecting the distribution 

 and the condition of mankind in the long interval 

 between the dawn of history and the commencement 

 of the recent epoch has been brought to light. 



