indications thus preserved for us show
the Aryans to have been a simple and fierce community of early warriors,
farmers, and shepherds, still in a partially nomad condition, living
under a patriarchal rule, originally ignorant of all metals save gold,
but possessing weapons and implements of stone,[1] and worshipping as
their chief god the open heaven. We must not regard them as an idyllic
and peaceable people: on the contrary, they were the fiercest and most
conquering tribe ever known. In mental power and in plasticity of
manners, however, they probably rose far superior to any race then
living, except only the Semitic nations of the Mediterranean coast.

[1] Professor Boyd Dawkins has shown that the Continental
Celts were still in their stone age when they invaded
Europe; whence we must conclude that the original Aryans
were unacquainted with the use of bronze.

From the common Central Asian home, colonies of warlike Aryans gradually
dispersed themselves, still in the pre-historic period, under pressure
of population or hostile invasion, over many districts of Europe and
Asia. Some of them moved southward, across the passes of Afghanistan,
and occupied the fertile plains of the Indus and the Ganges, where they
became the ancestors of the Brahmans and other modern high-caste
Hindoos. The language which they took with them to their new settlements
beyond the Himalayas was the Sanskrit, which still remains to this day
the nearest of all dialects that we now possess to the primitive Aryan
speech. From it are derived the chief modern tongues of northern India,
from the Vindhyas to the Hindu Kush. Other Aryan tribes settled in the
mountain districts west of Hindustan; and yet others found themselves a
home in the hills of Iran or Persia, where they still preserve an allied
dialect of the ancient mother tongue.

But the mass of the emigrants from the Central Asian fatherland moved
further westward in successive waves, and occupied, one after another,
the midland plains and mountainous peninsulas of Europe. First of all,
apparently, came the Celts, who spread slowly across the South of Russia
and Germany, and who are found at the dawn of authentic history
extending over the entire western coasts and islands of the continent,
from Spain to Scotland. Mingled in many places with the still earlier
non-Aryan aborigines--perhaps Iberians and Euskarians, a short and
swarthy race, armed only with weapons of polishe