I now turn to
2. The Aryac Stock
of peoples and languages. It is sometimes called the “Indo-European,” or “Indo-Germanic,” or “Celt-Indic”[88] stock, and embraces the principal historic nations of Europe, and in Asia the Armenians, Persians and Hindostanees.
Origin of the Aryans.—No ethnographic question of late years has led to keener discussion than the origin and affinities of these peoples. The theory derived from the Hebrew myth of the Deluge, that they migrated into Europe from Asia, was long accepted without question, and seemed to be strengthened by the discovery that Sanscrit, the classical language of India, and Zend, the ancient tongue of Persia, are related to Greek, Latin and German.
But reflection and extended observation led to other results. It was perceived that the majority of the Aryac peoples had lived in Europe from the remotest historic times, and only a small minority in Asia; that some of the Aryac tongues of Europe retain more ancient forms than either Sanscrit or Zend; that the oldest traditions point to migrations from Europe into Asia, and not the reverse; that these traditions are supported by the Indian Aryans, who distinctly claim that their ancestors migrated from the north into India, and by the Persians, whose sacred book, the Avesta, declares they were not the original owners of Iran, and finally by an examination of the arts of the pre-historic Europeans,[89] and an exhaustive analysis of the words common to all the dialects of Aryac speech, which indicate that the ancestral tribe must have lived in geographic surroundings not to be found in the Aryac districts of Asia, but answering in all points to the regions of central or western Europe.
I constantly see it stated in works on ethnology and linguistics that the scientist who first advanced this opinion was the Englishman, Dr. Robert G. Latham. Nothing is more erroneous. For a score of years before he introduced it to the English public, this view had been repeatedly and ably defended by the eminent Belgian naturalist, d’Omalius d’Halloy. He lost no opportunity of showing that the ancestors of the modern Europeans did not come from Asia, but belonged originally to the continent they now inhabit.[90]
Since his first promulgation of this theory in 1839, the evidence in its favor has been slowly but steadily accumulating, until now it numbers among its adherents practically all the ethnologists of the day who do not feel committed by their previous writings, or by their creeds, to the Asian hypothesis. Among the English writers who have recently treated the subject with marked ability and much more fullness than is possible for me at present, I mention Canon Isaac Taylor and Professor A. W. Sayce; in Germany, O. Schrader, Karl Penka, Theodor Pösche, L. Geiger, and in France, M. de Lapouge, etc.
I shall not enter into a recital of these arguments, for I believe the debate is so nearly terminated that the conclusion may be accepted that the Aryac peoples originated in Western Europe and migrated easterly. This you will observe is in accord with the general theory of the origin and distribution of the white race which I laid before you, and is a potent argument in its support.
The Aryac Physical Type.—When we endeavor to fix more precisely the home of that tribe which was the lineal Aryac progenitor, several considerations must be carefully weighed. The physical types of the Aryac people differ markedly, as I stated in my last lecture, and some writers (Penka, Lapouge, etc.) have claimed that the Teutonic, the tall blonde type, is peculiar to the Aryans, and must have been the original character. But it is found with just as great purity among the Libyans of Africa, so that the assumption is vain.
It is an undeniable fact that at the earliest period, both in Europe and Asia, the majority of Aryan-speaking peoples were brunettes, and it is also a fact that in the population of Europe to-day there is a tendency to revert to that type. When a blonde and a brunette intermarry, ten per cent. more children will take after the brunette.[91] There is a probability, therefore, that the original Aryac tribe was a mixture of blondes and brunettes, with a majority of the latter, and also that the form of its skulls was variable, some long, some broad.[92]