126 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



our knowledge of their early linguistic history ? There are several tech- 

 niques in use. The oldest method is to study ihe syntax and etymology 

 of related languages (i.e. Aryan), and learn, from their many variations, 

 which was the original. Unfortunately, for many years this technique 

 was fatally hampered by the idea that language ' decayed ' by losing 

 inflections — ^whereas this phenomenon is one of the clearest signs of 

 evolution. However, there can be little doubt that the unwieldy Kentum 

 languages of the western margin are closer to the original Aryan than the 

 Satem languages of the centre and east of the Aryan realm. 



Let us use an ecological approach. If we plot these languages on the 

 map, it seems highly likely that the Mediterranean folk of south and west 

 Europe spoke Hamitic (or its derivative Semitic) before they were con- 

 quered by Aryan speakers. The research of Rhys and Jones {The Welsh 

 People, 1908) makes this entirely probable as regards Gaelic and Welsh. 

 But our chief interest is concerning the original speech of the Nordics. 

 It is usually taken for granted that they spoke Aryan, and of a type not far 

 from Proto-German ! I do not know any reason for this belief except the 

 volubility of the high priests of the Nordic fetish. We have seen that it 

 is possible that the marginal European of the south-west originally spoke 

 Hamitic. Let us apply the same reasoning on the northern margin of the 

 Aryan realm. Here dwell the Nordics — and it is very important to 

 remember that many of the Finns are Nordic, as are some of the northern 

 Asiatic peoples such as the Ostiaks of the Yenesei. These Finns and 

 Ostiaks speak Altaic. Applying our general Ecological Law of Lin- 

 guistics, we should expect that some marginal languages (i.e. Altaic) have 

 been replaced by later languages (Aryan) migrating from the cultural 

 cradle. 



It is very significant that some of the characteristic features of the 

 Teutonic group of Aryan remind one of similar features in the speech of 

 the Finns and Ostiaks. For instance, ' strong ' verbs like those of 

 German (and English) are quite common in Ostiak {Encyc. Brit., 

 1929). Moreover, Finn and Ostiak have more inflection and less of 

 agglutination than most other Altaic tongues. There is, therefore, some 

 ground for the suggestion that the Nordic folk of Germany and Scandi- 

 navia, originally spoke an Altaic language (like Finn or Ostiak) : and only 

 relatively lately in linguistic history learnt an Aryan tongue. Indeed, 

 there seems little doubt that the earliest-known Nordics of central 

 Sweden, like those of Finland, spoke Finn, not Teutonic. This specula- 

 tion as to the ancestral tongue of the ' Blonde Overlords ' is not likely 

 to be acceptable in Teutonic circles. 



The Basque problem has intrigued philologists for a century. The 

 language is quite different from Aryan, but has some slight affinity with 

 three distant groups, Abkasian in the Caucasus, Altaic, and certain 

 Amerind (i.e. American Indian) tongues (Fig. 13). So far as I know no 

 one but myself has suggested any satisfactory reason for the relation 

 between Basque and Amerind. Yet if we study the zones and strata of 

 Europe there is one curious feature. Peake (in The Bronze Age) has" 

 suggested that the earliest Aryan tongues (Gaelic, etc.) reached central 

 Europe from Asia by way of tribes of Alpine race about 1500 B.C., or 

 thereabouts. But there were folk of Alpine race in Europe for some four 



