The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European historyGrant, Madison
History
The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history
Grant, Madison
Ethnology -- Europe
Having shown the existence in Europe of three distinct subspecies of man
and a single predominant group of languages 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. Our investigations will show
that the facts point indubitably to 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
Aryan group of languages, we can at once dismiss the Mediterranean race.
The members of this subspecies on the south shores of the Mediterranean,
the Berbers and the Egyptians, and many peoples in western Asia speak
now and have always spoken Anaryan 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 Ægean countries from the north. In Italy
the Etruscan in the north and the Messapian in the south were Anaryan
languages and the ancestral form of Latin speech in the guise of Umbrian
and Oscan came through the Alps from the countries beyond.
In Spain a Celtic language was introduced from the north about 500 B. C.
but with so little force behind it that it was unable to replace
entirely the Anaryan Basque language of at least a portion of the
aborigines.
In Britain, Aryan speech was introduced about 800 B. C. and in France
somewhat earlier. In central and northern Europe no certain trace of the
Anaryan languages at one time spoken there persists, except among the
Lapps and in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Finland, where 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.
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 or pseudo-brachycephalic in France. In the case of
both the long skulled and the round skulled Basques the lower part of
the face is long and thin, with a peculiar and pointed chin and among
the French Basques the skull is broadened in the temporal region. 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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