The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

134
THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
speech must have been spoken originally by a small group of people, the primitive
Aryans, or, as we shall call them, the Wiros. But owing to loose thinking all the people
who speak these languages to-day, as well as those who have spoken them in the past,
were considered Aryans, and it was assumed that because their languages were related
they were racially identical. As long as this apphed only to European peoples no one
raised any protest, but when Max-Miiller asserted that the same blood runs in the veins
of EngUsh soldiers as in the veins of the darkest Bengalese,' the Nordic spirit in this
country, which, as we have seen, is prone to race exclusiveness, rose in its wrath, and
the whole generalisation was questioned.
It was then shown that languages could be imposed by conquerors upon their
subjects, and that there were instances on record of the reverse process taking place,
as in the case of the Prankish invaders of Gaul and the Viking settlers in Normandy.
People then, with equal lack of lucid thinking, ran to the opposite extreme and said,
" there is now no Aryan race, and there never has been one." To Penka* is due the
credit of making the matter clear. He pointed out that Aryan blood is not co-extensive
with Aryan speech. He showed that those who use the latter are of several distinct
anthropological types, but he argued that the primitive Aryans or Wiros must have
been of one type.
Penka's contention seems eminently reasonable and, one would think,
incontrovertible, for a group of languages, so closely resembling one another, must
have grown up in a somewhat restricted area, among a people who had, during the
formative period of the language, httle intercourse with the outside world. The very
conditions which would produce a speciaUsed type of language, would, we may feel
sure, have produced an equally speciahsed type of men, that is to say, a race in the
anthropological meaning of the term.
The failure of Penka's views to carry widespread conviction was, I am inchned
to think, due to the fact that his theory involved the identification of the primitive
Wiros with the Nordic race. There is really no vaMd objection to this view, and, as will
be seen later, the evidence which I am adducing points to a similar conclusion. But,
unfortunately, this theory became associated with certain poUtical opinions, and so
became distasteful to those with a different outlook.
5 Max-MiiUer (1855) 29. « Penka (1883, 1886).