The Passing of the Great Race
By Madison Grant
Part II - European Races In History
Chapter
12
ARYA
|
HAVING shown the existence in Europe of
three subspecies of distinct origin and a single predominant type of language
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, and our
investigations will show that the facts point indubitably toward 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 highest form of synthetic speech, known as
the Aryan group of languages, we can at once dismiss the Mediterranean race.
The members of this race on the south shores of the Mediterranean, the
Berbers and the Egyptians, speak now, and have always spoken, non-Aryan
tongues. In Asia, also, many people of this race speak non-Aryan 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 Aegean countries from the north. In
Italy the Ligurian and Etruscan in the north, and the Messapian in the south,
were non-Aryan languages; and the ancestral form of Latin speech in the guise
of Umbrian and Oscan came through the Alps from the countries beyond. Into Spain the Celtiberian language was
introduced from the north about 600 B.C., but with so little force behind it
that it was unable to entirely replace the non-Aryan language of the
aborigines, which continues to this very day as Basque. In Britain Aryan speech was introduced
about 800 B.C., and in France somewhat earlier. In central and northern
Europe no certain trace of non-Aryan languages at one time spoken there
persists, except among the Lapps and in the neighborhood of the Gulf of
Finland, where the 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. On the southern coast of the
inland sea, including Egypt, the population spoke in ancient times, and still
speaks, non-Aryan tongues; and 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 in France. In the case of both the long skull and the round
skull Basques, the lower part of the face is long and thin with a peculiar
and pointed chin. 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. Other than the Basque language there are in
western Europe but few remnants of Pre-Aryan speech, and these are found
chiefly in place names and in a few obscure words. Remnants of non-Aryan 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 Esths, with kindred but small tribes of Livonians and Tchouds,
and the Finns alone can lay claim to the honor of antedating the Aryan tongue
in Moscovite territories, but the physical type 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. It would seem that here the Alpine element were the more
ancient. The most important non-Aryan language in
Europe is the Magyar of Hungary, but this we know was introduced from the
eastward at the end of the ninth century. 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 or in Europe with whom they came in contact, has made the European Turk
of to-day indistinguishable in physical characters from his Christian
neighbors. The Turks of Seljukian and Osmanli origin
were never numerous, and the Sultan's armies were and are 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 forms of Aryan speech, chiefly
in the 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 Nordic blonds 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 non-Aryan to the best of our present
knowledge. The Hittites themselves were probably ancestral to the living
Armenians. We are thoroughly acquainted with the
languages of all the Mesopotamian countries, and we 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
Aryan, and 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 some doubt, but in all probability it was Aryan. There is,
therefore, much negative evidence against the existence of Aryan speech in
this part of the world earlier than its known introduction by Nordics. If 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 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 difiicult 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 scant, evidence of non-Aryan languages.
Even assuming, however, that the Alpines
did introduce this synthetic language to the Baltic dolichocephs along with
the art of metallurgy, we are obliged to believe that the Nordics, equipped
with this synthetic language and with bronze weapons, starting on their
marvelous career of expansion a full millennium after the Alpine conquest,
first attacked and conquered their Alpine teachers and then poured down from
the north in successive waves into the domain of the Mediterranean race,
passing en route through brachycephalic countries and taking along with them
varying proportions of Alpine blood. It may be said in favor of this claim of
the Alpine race to be the original inventors 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 southwest 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 conclude then, a study of the
Mediterranean race shows that, so far from being purely European, it is
equally African and Asiatic, and 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, and a
similar inquiry into the origin and distribution of the Alpine species shows
clearly the fundamentally Asiatic origin of this type, and that on its
easternmost borders in central Asia it marches on the round skulled
Mongolian. |
Continue on to Part 2, Chapter 13 - THE ORIGIN OF THE ARYAN LANGUAGES