All the nations at present inhabiting Europe, with the exception of the Turks, the Finns, the Magyars, and the Basques, speak Aryan languages, and are to a large extent of Aryan descent,[11] although their blood has been mixed from time to time with that of the Neolithic non-Aryan aborigines. The Celts, therefore, belong to the Aryan group of nations, and came from the same cradle of the race in Central Asia as did the ancestors of the Greeks, Italians, Teutons, Slavs, Armenians, Persians, and the chief peoples of Hindustan. [11] The fallacy that identity of language or of culture necessarily implies identity of race must be carefully guarded against. It has been the fashion amongst persons holding what they suppose to be advanced views to dispute the fact that the cradle of the Aryans was in Central Asia, but this is neither the time nor the place to discuss the question. It is sufficient for our purpose to note that the successive waves of Aryan conquest entered Europe from the east, and that their general direction was towards the west. THE CELT AS DESCRIBED BY GREEK AND ROMAN AUTHORS The Celts make their first appearance in history at the end of the sixth century B.C., when, however, they are referred to not by their name as a people but by the name of the country they occupied. Thus, Hecatæus of Miletus, writing about 509 B.C., mentions Marseilles as being a Ligurian city near the Celtic region.[12] Herodotus, writing half a century later, is the first historian who uses the word κελτός (Celt) as distinguished from κελτική (the Celtic region). In the two passages[13] in which the Celts are mentioned, Herodotus says that they inhabited the part of Europe where the Danube has its source, and that the only other people to the westward were the Cynetes or Dog-Men. Both Herodotus and Aristotle erroneously supposed that the source of the Danube was situated in the Pyrenees. Aristotle[14] describes the country of the Celts as being so cold that the ass is unable to reproduce his species there. Plato, who lived sixty years after the time of Herodotus, classes the Celts with the Scythians, Persians, Carthaginians, Iberians, and Thracians, as being warlike nations who like wine, and drink it to excess.[15] [12] Μασσαλία πόλις τῆς Διγμστικῆς κατὰ τὴν κελτικήν (C. and T. Muellerus, _Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum_, Paris, 1841, vol. i., p. 2, fragm. 22). [13] Bk. ii., chap, xxxiii.; and Bk. iv., chap. xlix. [14] _De Generatione Animalium._ [15] _De Legibus._ Pytheas (_circa_ B.C. 300) is the first author who includes the part of Europe which was afterwards the Gaul of Cæsar within the Celtic territory.[16] According to the earlier historians, the parts of Europe occupied by the Celts at the end of the fourth century B.C. were the coast of the Adriatic from Rimini to Venice, Istria and the neighbourhood of the Ionian Gulf, and the left bank of the Rhone from the Lake of Geneva to the source of the Danube.[17]