896 IJEPOET— 1887. 



of Geiger, Cimo^ Peuka, and Scliracler have brought about an increasing- con- 

 viction that the origin of the Aryan race must be sought not in Central Asia, 

 )}ut in Northern Europe. These writers have urged that the evidence of language 

 shows that the primitixe Aryans must have inhabited a forest-clad country in 

 the neighbourhood of the sea, covered during a prolonged winter with snow, 

 the vegetation consisting largely of the fir, the birch, the beech, the oak, the 

 elm, the willow, and the hazel ; while the fauna comprised the beaver, the wolf, 

 the fox, the hare, the deer, the eel, and the salmon — conditions which resti'ict us to 

 a region north of the Alps and west of a line drawn from Dantzic to the Black Sea. 

 It has also been urged that the primitive Aryan type was That of the Scandi- 

 navian and North German peoples — dolichocephalic, tall, with white skin, fair 

 hair, and blue eyes, and that those darker and shorter races of Eastern and 

 Southern Europe who speak Aryan languages are mainly of Iberian or Turanian 

 blood, having acquired their Aryan speech from Aryan conquerors. It has been 

 urged that the tendency in historic times has been to migi'ation from north to 

 south, the inhabitants of the fertile and sunny regions of Southern Europe, 

 where the conditions of life are easy, having no inducements to migrate to the 

 inhospitable north. Moreover, in Central Asia we find no vestiges of any people 

 of the pure Aryan type, while the primitive Aryan vocabulary points to the fauna 

 and flora of Northern Europe rather than to that of Central Asia. 



Fair races have a greater tendency to become dark in a southern clime than 

 dark races to become fair in northern regions, as is proved by the fact that the 

 complexion of the polar peoples, such as the Eskimo, the Lapps, and the Samojeds, 

 has been unaffected by their sojourn for uncounted centuries in the north, while 

 there is much evidence to prove that the noble classes in the Mediterranean lands 

 were formerly ligliter in colour than at present. 



A vast body of evidence, of which the foregoing is a brief summary, has been 

 adduced to show that Northern Europe rather than Central Asia was the home of 

 the undivided Aryan race. 



But the Aryans must have had forefathers from whom they were developed, 

 and the inquiry suggests itself, what could have been the race from which the 

 Aryans might have been evolved ? A Semitic, an Iberian, an Egyptian, a Chinese, 

 a Turkic, or a Mongolic parentage is out of the question, and the author proposed to 

 show that, both from the anthropological and the linguistic point of view, the Finnic 

 people come closest to the Aryans, and are the only existing family of mankind 

 from which the Aryans could have been evolved." The Tchudic branch of the 

 Finnic family approaches very nearly to what we must assume to have been the 

 primitive Aryan type. The Tchuds are either mesocephalic or dolichocephalic. 

 They are a tall race, the hair yellow, reddish, or light brown, the skin white, 

 while blue or grey eyes are usual. As we go westward from the Baltic we find 

 that the Ugro-Finnic triljes approximate more and more to the Turko-Tatar ethnic 

 ^yp6> .just as when we go southward the southern Aryans conform increasingly to 

 the Iberian type. Hence in the Baltic provinces of Eussia we discover what 

 seems to be the centre of dispersion, a region where the ethnic characteristics of 

 Finns and Aryans do not greatly differ. Of this fact only two explanations are 

 possible. Either the Baltic Finns have been Aryanised in blood while retaining 

 their Finnic speech — an hypothesis supported by no evidence, and in itself im- 

 probable — or else we have here iu their original seats a survival of the people from 

 whom the Aryans were evolved. Anthropological considerations tend therefore 

 to show that the Aryans are an improved race of Finns, while on the other hand 

 the Finnic speech approaches more 'nearly than any other to the Aryan, and is 

 the only family of speech from which the Aryan languages can have been evolved, 

 The chief argument for deriving the proto- Aryans from Central Asia was the 

 belief that Sanskrit comes the nearest to the primitive Aryan speech. It is now 

 believed the Lithuanian, a Baltic language, represents a more primitive form of 

 Aryan speech than Sanskrit, and hence the argument formerly adduced in support 

 of the hypothesis that the vVryans originated in Central Asia becomes an argument 

 in favour of Northern Europe. 



The separation of the Aryan from the Finnic races must have taken place at a 



