E.— GEOGRAPHY 125 



steppes about this time. The latter may have been the ancestors of the 

 Slavs, who already seem to have settled in the Vistula Basin. Mean- 

 while the marginal i^-speakers (Gaelic, etc.) had reached Britain and 

 Ireland, and still occupied parts of France. The distribution of place- 

 names in Central and Western Europe clearly shows the migration of waves 

 of Gaelic and Welsh speakers across much of these areas. 



The conditions some seven centuries later (a.d. 300) are shown in the 

 next map which deals with Europe during the zenith of the Roman 

 Empire. The marginal primitive Aryan language Latin had been carried 

 far and wide ; so that it later gave rise to Italian, French and the other 

 Romance tongues — which are clearly offshoots of the ' K ' group of Aryan. 

 Brythonic (Welsh) was spoken in England, South Scotland and Wales 

 at this time, and probably in parts of the continent beside Brittany, 

 Possibly some Hamitic dialects still persisted in the Scottish Highlands, 

 as suggested by some of the Ogam inscriptions. Gaelic (a ' iC' language) 

 was spoken in Ireland and in most of Northern Scotland. 



Of great interest is the discovery that a Kentum language, called 

 Tocharese, was still in use north of the Tarim Basin in Central Asia about 

 this time (Fig. 13, at D). Tocharese seems, however, to have some 

 affinities with the Intermediate and Satem groups also. Hence it may 

 well be fairly close to the generalised Aryan ancestor from which all three 

 groups of Aryan have descended (Childe 1936). It is suggested in the 

 diagrams that this Kentum speech had been continuously used east of 

 Turkestan since early Aryan times. 



The medieval distribution of languages, and of the three subdivisions 

 of Aryan, is shown in the top map. To-day Gaelic is almost the sole 

 representative of a little-altered primitive Aryan speech — though the 

 much-evolved derivatives of primitive Latin are still very important 

 languages (Jespersen 1894). Hamitic has died out in Europe. Altaic 

 has encroached in Hungary and Finland, and displaced Hittite and Greek 

 in Anatolia. Semitic has driven out Hamitic in much of North Africa. 

 ' Satem ' Aryan, in the form of Russian, is in turn displacing Altaic 

 throughout much of U.S.S.R. 



The conclusion to be drawn from this tentative geographical approach 

 to the Aryan problem is that the waves of language have spread from 

 Turkestan towards India, Persia and Europe. There seems to be no 

 support for the origin of Aryan in the German or Lithuanian regions, 

 a theory which has been strongly upheld by a number of notable 

 continental philologists. 



H. The Race of the Early Aryan- Speakers. 



Let us turn to another aspect of the Aryan problem. What race first 

 spoke the Aryan languages .' (The name Wiro has been given to this 

 unknown ' race.') To-day Aryan is spoken by Alpines in central Europe, 

 by Nordics in the north and Mediterraneans in the south. There can 

 be little doubt that originally these dissimilar races ' despised ' each other 

 as bitterly as any pair of ignorant and opposed ' cults ' do to-day. It 

 seems logical to assume that each of the three original races at first had 

 a somewhat distinct culture, including language. How can we advance 



