Artic Home of the Aryans by Lokamanya Bal ... - Mandhata Global

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in ancient times, before it was invaded by the Glacial epoch; and with
this result we must rest content, until we get sufficient new materials
to ascertain the exact position of the Aryan home within the Arctic
regions.
We commenced the book with a summary of the results of the
latest geological and archeological researches regarding the history
of primitive humanity and the invasion of northern Europe and Asia by
a series of glacial epochs in the Quarternary era. This discussion was
prefixed to the book with the object of clearing up certain
misapprehensions regarding the early history of our planet based on
knowledge derived from older geological works, when man was
believed to be postglacial; and it will now be seen that our theory of
the primeval Arctic home of the Aryan races is in perfect accord with
the latest and most approved geological facts and opinions. A
primeval Arctic home would have been regarded an impossibility, had
not science cleared the ground by establishing that the antiquity of
man goes back to the Tertiary era, that the climate of the Polar
regions was mild and temperate in inter-glacial times, and that it was
rendered cold and inclement by the advent of the Glacial epoch. We
can now also understand why attempts to prove the existence of an
Arctic home by discovering references to severe winter and cold in
the Vedas did not succeed in the past. The winter in the primeval
home was originally, that is, in inter-glacial times, neither severe nor
inclement, and if such expressions as “a hundred winters” (shatam
himâh) are found in the Vedic literature, they cannot be taken for
reminiscences of severe cold winters in the original home; for the
expression came into use probably because the year in the original
home closed with a winter characterized by the long Arctic night. It
was the advent of the Ice Age that destroyed the mild climate of the
original home and converted it into an ice-bound land unfit for the
habitation of man. This is well expressed in the Avesta which
describes the Airyana Vaêjo as a happy land subsequently converted
by the invasion of Angra Mainyu into a land of severe winter and
snow. This correspondence between