OUR ARYAN FOREFATHERS 



fessor Huxley, 1 accounts remarkably well for the 

 actual distribution of light and dark complex- 

 ions 2 throughout Europe. It agrees so well 

 with the facts before us that we can hardly do 

 better than adopt it as a provisional explana- 

 tion, subject to such revision and amendment 

 as may turn out to be necessary. But if we 

 thus admit the existence of a primitive Aryan 

 race that was physically homogeneous, it must 

 be remembered that we admit it on very differ- 

 ent grounds from those on which were based 

 the demonstration of a primitive homogeneous 

 Aryan language. The original community of 

 language is a point on which we have reached 

 absolute certainty ; the community of race, in 

 any other sense than that of long-continued 

 community of language and culture, is largely 

 a matter of speculation. 



Concerning the people and the series of his- 

 toric events of which Aryana Vaejo was the 



1 On Some Fixed Points in British Ethnology, Critiques 

 and Addresses, London, 1873, pp. 167-180. 



2 We may go still farther in our discrimination between 

 the aboriginal Iberians and the invading Aryans. It is prob- 

 able that, along with black hair, black eyes, and brunette 

 skins, the Iberians were distinguished by short stature, slight 

 and compact frames, and long heads ; while, on the other 

 hand, along with their yellow hair, blue eyes, and blonde 

 skins, the Aryans would seem to have been distinguished by 

 tall stature, massive frames, and broad heads. See the pre- 

 ceding paper. 



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