Passing of the Great Race — Arya

XII ARYA

Having shown the existence in Europe of three distinct subspecies of man and a single predominant group of languages called the Aryan or synthetic group, it remains to inquire to which of the three races can be assigned the honor of inventing, elaborating and introducing this most highly developed form of human speech.

Our investigations will show that the facts point indubitably to an original unity between the Nordic or rather the Proto-Nordic race and the Proto-Aryan language or the generalized, ancestral, Aryan mother tongue.

Of the three claimants to the honor of being the original creator of the Aryan group of languages, we can at once dismiss the Mediterranean race.

The members of this subspecies on the south shores of the Mediterranean, the Berbers and the Egyptians, and many peoples in western Asia speak now and have always spoken Anaryan tongues.

We also know that the speech of the original Pelasgians was not Aryan, that in Crete remnants of Pre-Aryan speech persisted until about 500 B. C.

and that the Hellenic language was introduced into Ægean countries from the north.

In Italy the Etruscan in the north and the Messapian in the south were Anaryan languages and the ancestral form of Latin speech in the guise of Umbrian and Oscan came through the Alps from the countries beyond.

In Spain a Celtic language was introduced from the north about 500 B. C.

but with so little force behind it that it was unable to replace entirely the Anaryan Basque language of at least a portion of the aborigines.

In Britain, Aryan speech was introduced about 800 B. C.

and in France somewhat earlier.

In central and northern Europe no certain trace of the Anaryan languages at one time spoken there persists, except among the Lapps and in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Finland, where Non-Aryan Finnic dialects are spoken to-day by the Finlanders and the Esthonians.

We thus know the approximate dates of the introduction of Aryan speech into western and southern Europe and that it came in through the medium of the Nordic race.

In Spain and in the adjoining parts of France nearly half a million people continue to speak an agglutinative language, called Basque or Euskarian.

In skull shape these Basques correspond closely with the Aryan-speaking populations around them, being dolichocephalic in Spain and brachycephalic or pseudo-brachycephalic in France.

In the case of both the long skulled and the round skulled Basques the lower part of the face is long and thin, with a peculiar and pointed chin and among the French Basques the skull is broadened in the temporal region.

In other words, their faces show certain secondary racial characters which have been imposed by selection upon a people composed originally of two races of independent origin, but long isolated by the limitations of language.

The Euskarian language is believed to have been related to the ancient Iberian but has affinities which point to Asia as its place of origin and make possible the hypothesis that it may have been derived from the ancient language of the Proto-Alpines in the west.

The problem of the extinct Ligurian language must be considered in this connection.

It seems to have been Anaryan, but we do not know whether it was the speech originally of Alpines or of Mediterraneans either of whom could be reasonably considered as a claimant.

Other than the Basque language there are in western Europe but few remains of Pre-Aryan speech, and these are found chiefly in place names and in a few obscure words.

Remnants of Anaryan speech exist here and there throughout European Russia, but many of them can be traced to historic invasions.

Until we reach the main body of Ural-Altaic speech in the east of Russia, the Esthonians, with kindred tribes of Livonians and Tchouds, and the Finns are the only peoples who speak Non-Aryan tongues, but the physical type with the exception of the skull shape of all these tribes is distinctly Nordic.

In this connection the Lapps and related groups in the far north can be disregarded.

The problem of the Finns is a difficult one.

The coast of Finland, of course, is purely Swedish, but the great bulk of the population in the interior is brachycephalic, though otherwise thoroughly Nordic in type.

The Anaryan Finnish, Esthonian and Livonian languages were probably introduced at the same time as were round skulls into Finland.

The shores of the Gulf of Finland were originally inhabited by Nordics and the intrusion of round skulled Finns probably came soon after the Christian era.

This immigration and that of the Livonians and Esthonians may possibly have been part of the same movement which brought the Alpine Wends into eastern Germany.

The earliest references to the Finns that we have locate them in central Russia.

The most important Anaryan language in Europe is the Magyar of Hungary, but this we know was introduced from the eastward at the end of the ninth century, as was the earlier but now extinct Avar.

In the Balkans the language of the Turks has never been a vernacular as it is in Asia Minor.

In Europe it was spoken only by the soldiers and the civil administrators and by very sparse colonies of Turkish settlers.

The mania of the Turks for white women, which is said to have been one of the motives that led to the conquest of the Byzantine Empire, has unconsciously resulted in the obliteration of the Mongoloid type of the original Asiatic invaders.

Persistent crossing with Circassian and Georgian women, as well as with slaves of every race in Asia Minor and in Europe with whom they came in contact, has made the European Turk of to-day indistinguishable in physical characters from his Christian neighbors.

At the same time, polygamy has greatly strengthened the hold of the dominant Turk.

In fact, among the upper classes of the higher races monogamy and the resultant limitation in number of offspring has been a source of weakness from the viewpoint of race expansion.

The Turks of Seljukian and Osmanli origin were never numerous and the Sultan’s armies were largely composed of Islamized Anatolians and Europeans.

In Persia and India, also, the Aryan languages were introduced from the north at known periods, so in view of all these facts the Mediterranean race cannot claim the honor of either the invention or dissemination of the synthetic languages.

The chief claim of the Alpine race of central Europe and western Asia to the invention and introduction into Europe of the Proto-Aryan form of speech rests on the fact that nearly all the members of this race in Europe speak well developed Aryan languages, chiefly in some form of Slavic.

This fact taken by itself may have no more significance than the fact that the Mediterranean race in Spain, Italy and France speaks Romance languages, but it is, nevertheless, an argument of some weight.

Outside of Europe the Armenians and other Armenoid brachycephalic peoples of Asia Minor and the Iranian Highlands, all of Alpine race, together with a few isolated tribes of the Caucasus, speak Aryan languages and these peoples lie on the highroad along which knowledge of the metals and other cultural developments entered Europe.

If the Aryan language were invented and developed by these Armenoid Alpines we should be obliged to assume that they introduced it along with bronze culture into Europe about 3000 B. C.

and taught the Nordics both their language and their metal culture.

There are, however, in western Asia many Alpine peoples who do not speak Aryan languages and yet are Alpine in type, such as the Turcomans and in Asia Minor the so-called Turks are also largely Islamized Alpines of the Armenoid subspecies who speak Turki.

There is no trace of Aryan speech south of the Caucasus until after 1700 B. C.

and the Hittite language spoken before that date in central and eastern Asia Minor, although not yet clearly deciphered, was Anaryan to the best of our present knowledge.

The Hittites themselves were probably ancestral to the living Armenians.

We are sufficiently acquainted with the languages of the ancient Mesopotamian countries to know that the speech of Accad and Sumer, of Susa and Media was agglutinative and that the languages of Assyria and of Palestine were Semitic.

The speech of the Kassites was Anaryan, but they seem to have been in contact with the horse-using Nordics and some of their leaders bore Aryan names.

The language of the shortlived empire of the Mitanni in the foothills south of Armenia is the only one about the character of which there can be serious doubt.

There is, therefore, much negative evidence against the existence of Aryan speech in that part of the world earlier than its known introduction by Nordics.

If, then, the last great expansion into Europe of the Alpine race brought from Asia the Aryan mother tongue, as well as the knowledge of metals, we must assume that all the members of the Nordic race thereupon adopted synthetic speech from the Alpines.

We know that these Alpines reached Britain about 1800 B. C.

and probably they had previously occupied much of Gaul, so that if they are to be credited with the introduction of the synthetic languages into western Europe, it is difficult to understand why we have no known trace of any form of Aryan speech in central Europe or west of the Rhine prior to 1000 B.

C.

while we have some, though scanty, evidence of Non-Aryan languages.

It may be said in favor of this claim of the Alpine race to be the original inventor of synthetic speech, that language is ever a measure of culture and the higher forms of civilization are greatly hampered by the limitations of speech imposed by the less highly evolved languages, namely, the monosyllabic and the agglutinative, which include nearly all the Non-Aryan languages of the world.

It does not seem probable that barbarians, however fine in physical type and however well endowed with the potentiality of intellectual and moral development, dwelling as hunters in the bleak and barren north along the edge of the retreating glaciers and as nomad shepherds in the Russian grasslands, could have evolved a more complicated and higher form of articulate speech than the inhabitants of southwestern Asia, who many thousand years earlier were highly civilized and are known to have invented the arts of agriculture, metal working and domestication of animals, as well as of writing and pottery.

Nevertheless, such seems to be the fact.

To summarize, it appears that a study of the Mediterranean race shows that so far from being purely European, it is equally African and Asiatic and that in the narrow coastal fringe of southern Persia, in India and even farther east the last strains of this race gradually fade into the Negroids through prolonged cross breeding.

A similar inquiry into the origin and distribution of the Alpine subspecies shows clearly the fundamentally Asiatic origin of the type and that on its easternmost borders in central Asia it marches with the round skulled Mongols, and that neither the one nor the other was the inventor of Aryan speech.