65 : 14. Ripley, pp. 361 seq.
66 : 4. Blumenbach was the first to divide the races into Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American and Malayan, in his De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa, in 1775.
66 : 8–23. Ossetes. For a full description of these people see Zaborowski, Les peuples aryens d’Asie et d’Europe, pp. 246–272. Deniker likewise treats of them in Races of Man, p. 356. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, p. 37, says: “Klaproth first proved in 1822 that the Ossetes are the same as the Caucasian Alans, and this is supported by the testimony of the chroniclers, Russian, Georgian, Greek and Arab. From Ammianus Marcellinus (XXXI, II, 16–25) we know that at the time of the Huns’ invasion these Alans pastured their herds over the plains to the north of the Caucasus, and made raids upon the coast of the Mæotis and the peninsula of Taman. The Huns passed through their land, plundering Ermanrich, the king of the Goths.... Ammianus means by Alans all the nomadic tribes about the Tanais (Don) and gives a description of their habits, borrowed from the account of the Scythians in Herodotus. For the first three centuries of our era we find these Alans mentioned (Pliny, N. H., IV, 80; Dionysius Perigetes, 305, 306; Fl. Josephus, Bell. Jud., VII, VII, 4; Ptolemy, etc.), as neighbors of the Sarmatians on this side or the other of the Don, living the same life and counting as one of their tribes. That is, that the Ossetes, Jasy, Alans, Sarmatians[[4]] are all of one stock, once nomad, now confined to the valleys of the central chain of the Caucasus. The Ossetes are tall, well-made, and inclined to be fair, corresponding to the description of the Alans in Ammianus (XXXI, II, 21) and their Iranian language answers to the accounts of the Sarmatians, of whom Pliny says ‘Medorum ut ferunt soboles’ (N. H., VI, 19).”
[4]. The author agrees with Zaborowski and differs from Minns in his belief that the Ossetes are of Nordic stock while the Sarmatians were Alpines.
Chantre found among the Ossetes 30 per cent of blonds. See Chantre, 2.
66 : 16. Alans. See Jordanes, History of the Goths, Mierow translation. Procopius, writing about 550 A. D., says: “At this time the Alani and the Absagi were Christians and friends of the Romans of old and lived in the neighborhood of the Caucasus.” In his vol. III, chap. II, 2–8, we read of the period from 395–425 A. D. “There were many Gothic nations in earlier times just as also at the present, but the greatest and most important of all are the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths and Gepædes. In ancient times, however, they were named Sauromatæ and Melanchlæni, and there were some too who called these nations Getic. All these, while they are distinguished from one another by their names, as has been said, do not differ in anything else at all. For they all have white bodies and fair hair and are tall and handsome to look upon, and they use the same laws, and practise a common religion. For they are all of the Arian faith and have one language called ‘Gothic.’” (Procopius thinks they all came originally from one tribe, and were distinguished later by the names of those who led each group of old. They dwelt north of the Danube and later the Gepædes took possession of the portion south of the river. In regard to the derivation of the Goths and other tribes from the Sauromatæ, compare the note on Sarmatians, for p. 143 : 21.) As to the Goths in the Crimea see Zeuss, Die Deutschen, pp. 432 seq.; F. Kluge, Geschichte der götischen Sprache, pp. 515 seq. Crim-götisch existed as a language in southern Russia up to the 16th century.
66 : 23. Scythians. See the note to p. 214 : 10.
66: 24. Indo-European. The earliest known occurrence of this term is in an article in The Quarterly Review for 1813, written by Doctor Thomas Young (no. XIX, p. 225).
Indo-Germanic. This term, although said not to have been invented by Klaproth, was used by him as early as 1823. See Leo Meyer, in Über den Ursprung der Namen Indo-Germanen, Semiten und Ugro-finner, Göttingergelehrte Nachrichten, philologisch-historische Klasse, 1901, pp. 454 seq.
67 : 4. The idea of an Aryan race was first promulgated by Oscar Schrader in his Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte. That there was an original Aryan tongue but no Aryan race was the idea of Broca. Pösche identified the Aryans with the Reihengraber type. Consult also Penka, Herkunft der Arier and Origines Ariacæ.