A simultaneous migration of nomad shepherds on both sides of the Caspian-Aral Sea would naturally occur in a general movement southward and such migrations may have taken place several times. In all probability these Nordic invasions occurred one after another for a thousand years or more, the later ones obscuring and blurring the memory of their predecessors.
When shepherd tribes leave their grasslands and attack their agricultural neighbors, the reason is nearly always a famine due to prolonged drought and causes such as these have again and again in history put the nomad tribes in motion over large areas. During many centuries fresh tribes composed of Nordics or under the leadership of Nordics but all Aryan-speaking, poured over the Afghan passes from the northwest and pushed before them the earlier arrivals. Clear traces of these successive floods of conquerors are to be found in the Vedas themselves.
The Zendic form of the Iranian group of Aryan languages was spoken by those Sacæ who remained in old Bactria and from it is derived a whole group of closely related dialects still used in the Pamirs of which Ghalcha is the best known.
The Sacæ and Massagetæ were, like the Persians, tall, blond dolichocephs and they have left behind them dim traces of their blood among the living Mongolized nomads of Turkestan, the Kirghizes. Ancient Bactria maintained its Nordic and Aryan aspect long after Alexander’s time and did not become Mongolized and receive the sinister name of Turkestan until the seventh century, when it was the first victim of the series of ferocious invasions from the north and east, which under various Mongol leaders destroyed civilization in Asia and threatened its existence in Europe. These conquests culminated in 1241 A. D. at Wahlstatt in Silesia where the Germans, though themselves badly defeated, put a final limit to this westward rush of Asiatics.
The Sacæ were the most easterly members of the Nordic race of whom we have definite record. The Chinese knew well these “green eyed devils,” whom they called by their Tatar name, the “Wu-suns,”—the tall ones—and with whom they came into contact about 200 B. C. in what is now Chinese Turkestan. Other Nordic tribes are recorded in this region. Evidence is accumulating that central Asia had a large Nordic population in the centuries preceding the Christian era. The discovery of the Aryan Tokharian language in Chinese Turkestan considered in connection with other facts indicates intensive occupation by Nordics of territories in central Asia now wholly Mongol, just as in Europe dark-haired Alpines occupy large territories where in Roman times fair-haired Nordics were preponderant. In short we find both in Europe and in western and central Asia the same record of Nordic decline during the last two thousand years and their replacement by races of inferior value and civilization.
This Tokharian is undoubtedly a pure Aryan language related, curiously enough, to the western group rather than to the Indo-Iranian. It has been deciphered from inscriptions recently found in northeast Turkestan and was a living language prior to the ninth century A. D.
Of all the wonderful conquests of the Sacæ there remain as evidence of their invasions only these Indian and Afghan languages. Dim traces of their blood have been found in the Pamirs and in Afghanistan, but in the south their blond traits have vanished, even from the Punjab. It may be that the stature of some of the Afghan hill tribes and of the Sikhs and some of the facial characters of the latter are derived from this source, but all blondness of skin, hair or eye of the original Sacæ has utterly vanished.
The long skulls all through India are to be attributed to the Mediterranean race rather than to this Nordic invasion, while the Pre-Dravidians and Negroids of south India, with which the former are largely mixed, are also dolichocephs.
In short, the introduction in Iran and India of Aryan languages, Iranian, Ghalchic and Sanskrit, represents a linguistic and not an ethnic conquest.
In concluding this revision of the racial foundations upon which the history of Europe has been based it is scarcely necessary to point out that the actual results of the spectacular conquests and invasions of history have been far less permanent than those of the more insidious victories arising from the crossing of two diverse races and that in such mixtures the relative prepotency of the various human subspecies in Europe appears to be in inverse ratio to their social value.