The European hypothesis found in time many able supporters, and the advocates of rival Teutonic and Celtic claims waxed eloquent and heated over the exact location of the Aryan homeland. An industrious search was meanwhile conducted for words common to all Aryan languages which described the natural features of the racial “cradle”. This work of reconstruction was certainly not lacking in picturesque results, for attractive visions were presented of Aryan Arcadias in which the simple and contemplative ancestors of many bitter controversialists dwelt together in exemplary unity and peace. The question of location might remain unsettled, but it was generally agreed that the ancient people were surrounded by cows, sheep, and goats; sometimes they rode their horses or yoked them in rough rumbling carts, and sometimes they ate them. No asses were admitted to the fold because of their decided partiality for Central Asian plains, which seemed quite reasonable. Trouble was occasionally caused by wolves and bears, or, mayhap, a stray lion, but these and other worries associated with the simple life might be compensated for by the fact that the primitive people, as one writer[2] put it, “understood the art of drinking”. Mead, brewed from honey, was found to be “dear to the hearts of the ancient Aryans”; had the Brahman ever forgotten his “madhu”, the Welshman his “medhu”, or the Lithuanian his “medus”? Problems arose regarding the ancients' knowledge of trees: it was found that “bhaga” was applied indifferently by the family groups to the beech and the oak, and more than one ingenious explanation was suggested to account for this apparent discrepancy. Then, suddenly, Professor Max Müller swept into the background the rival Aryan homeland pictures, pointing out the while that it is “almost impossible to discover any animal or any plant that is peculiar to the north of Europe and is not found sporadically in Asia also”. Destructive criticism proceeded apace, until now nothing has been left to us of the ancestral Arcadia but “air, water, heat and cold”. In his review of the widely accepted philological “evidence” regarding the Aryan homeland, Max Müller declared it to be so pliant that it was possible “to make out a more or less plausible case for any part of the world”. The advanced group of philologists held, indeed, that no racial centre could be located. Ultimately “Delbrück went so far,” says Professor Ripley, “as to deny that any single parent language ever existed in fact”.[3] [2] Rydberg's _Teutonic Mythology_. [3] _The Races of Europe_, W. Z. Ripley, p. 481.