634 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tives in the reindeer period. No doubt these fossil races, modi- 

 fied by intercrossing and other causes, persisted up to present 

 times. 



In this connection it may be well to refer briefly to the con- 

 tention now prevailing as to the origin and original habitation of 

 the ancestors of the present inhabitants of Europe. This subject, 

 very interesting, is full of difficulties, which open it up to specu- 

 lation and give full play to that class of scientists whom Prof. 

 Huxley has called the Uhlans of science. Philology seems to take 

 precedence in these investigations. The long-recognized simi- 

 larity in the so-called romance languages French, Italian, and 

 Spanish led Sir William Jones, about a century ago, to point out 

 the alliance between Sanskrit, Zend, Armenian, Greek, Latin, 

 Lithuanian, Slavonian, German, Celtic, etc. Inasmuch as the 

 similarity of French, Italian, and Spanish would be unintelligible 

 if it were not for Latin, so the relation between all of the above- 

 named tongues is unintelligible without a root tongue and a peo- 

 ple who spoke it. 



At first this honor was given to Sanskrit and the inhabitants 

 of the valley of the Ganges. Subsequent investigations demon- 

 strated that Zend and Sanskrit were modifications of an Indo- 

 Iranian tongue, of which Zend and Sanskrit were offshoots. Then 

 the region of the Hindu Koosh and Pamir was thought to be 

 the original seat; this idea crystallizing, as it were, long held 

 sway. As the people spread northwest into Europe and south- 

 east into India, they were called the Indo-Germanic race, and 

 have now come to be called the Aryan race, said to be the name 

 by which the Persians and Hindus knew themselves before their 

 separation. 



More recently speculation as to the original seat of the Aryans 

 has, we might say, run wild. Russia, Finland, the shores of the 

 Baltic, Scandinavia, and the Caucasian region all have or have 

 had their advocates. The claims made for the Caucasian region 

 and Russia appear to be the most plausible. They are, moreover, 

 to some extent complementary to each other. 



For the first locality the principal reason advanced is philo- 

 logical. It is held that the root language would necessarily con- 

 tain names for the familiar objects of the environment. As there 

 appear to be no words in Aryan to represent certain animals 

 camel, lion, and tiger it is supposed these forms did not exist in 

 the locality ; being unknown to the people, they had no names for 

 them. Hence, by studying the confines of animal life, a locality 

 where the unnamed life did not exist would fill the linguistic re- 

 quirement. The Caucasian region is said to do this. This reason- 

 ing is, however, of the negative kind, and is open to the objec- 

 tions that all negative reasoning is. 



