Thus we see that the leaf-shaped sword folk, mainly the people of the mountain zone, have at one time or another invaded and in some way or another conquered nearly all Europe except the Iberian peninsula, while at the close of the bronze age they arrived as refugees in Celtic lands. The iron sword folk, the people of the plain, who had learned the use of iron in the Koban, followed them, making a complete conquest of Greece, of Italy north of the Apennines, of France all but the west and the Seine valley, Belgium and perhaps other regions further north. These people did not conquer Scandinavia, nor did they reach Britain, at any rate until several more centuries had elapsed. /Chapter XII/ THE ARYAN CRADLE During the middle half of the nineteenth century the minds of many European savants were focussed upon what was termed the Aryan hypothesis, which was investigated with more enthusiasm than discretion by comparative philologists in England and France, and with still greater vigour in Germany. Since then the general conclusions of these mid-nineteenth century speculations have been current among politicians and journalists, who talk glibly about Teutons and Celts and Slavs, and that medley of races and peoples, who still continue to use in a modified form the speech imposed upon them by their Roman conquerors, and are therefore called the Latin race. Such terms, meaningless though they are as applied to nations, have become popular during the last half century, with disastrous results, since they have been used to emphasise certain divisions which were growing up among European peoples, and which in their turn did much to give rise to the European war, and are still retarding the Peace for which everyone is longing. The idea was first put forward in 1786, when Sir William Jones,[424] in a communication to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, pointed out the similarities between the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German and Celtic languages, but little progress was made until in 1833-5 Bopp[425] published his comparative grammar. For the next fifty years the hypothesis grew at a great pace. The world was anxious for a scientific classification of its peoples, especially of the peoples of Europe. Men were also enquiring what had happened in this continent before early Greek legend and literature began to lift the veil. The sciences of anthropology and prehistoric archæology were in their infancy, and unable to provide answers to these questions, and the comparative philologists, from the evidence of language alone, were prepared to give full and most detailed explanations.