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The "Aryan race" is a concept in Europe an culture that was influential in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European Languages and their descendents up to the present day constitute a distinctive Race . In its best-known incarnation, under Nazism , it was argued that the earliest Aryans were identical to Nordic People . Belief in the superiority of the "Aryan race" is sometimes referred to as ''Aryanism''. This should not be confused with the unrelated Christian religious belief known as Arianism . ORIGIN AND BACKGROUND OF THE CONCEPT See Also: Aryan and his son, Xerxes I . It is used both as a linguistic and a "racial" (spiritual) designation. Darius refers to these meanings in the Behistun Inscription (DBiv.89), which is written in a language known as ''Airyan'', Old Persian .]] The term ''Aryan'' originates with the Indo-Iranian self-designation ''arya'', attested in the ancient texts of Hinduism and Zoroastrianism , the Rigveda and the Gathas of Zoroaster . Since, in the 19th century, the Indo-Iranians were the most ancient known speakers of " Indo-European " languages, the word Aryan was adopted to refer not only to the Indo-Iranian people, but also to Indo-European speakers as a whole, including the Armenians , Romans , Greeks , the Germans , Balts , Celts and Slavs . It was argued that all of these languages originated from a common root — now known as Proto-Indo-European — spoken by an ancient people who must have been the original ancestors of the Europe an, Iranian , and Indo-Aryan peoples. The ethnic group composed of the Proto-Indo European s and their modern descendants was termed the Aryans with the idea of distinctive behavioral and ancestral ethnicity marked by language distribution. This usage was common in the late 19th and early 20th Century . An example of an influential best-selling book that reflects this usage is the 1920 book ''The Outline of History'' by H. G. Wells Wells, H.G. ''The Outline of History'' New York:1920 Doubleday & Co. Chapter 19 The Aryan Speaking Peoples in Pre-Historic Times Pages 271-285. In it he wrote of the accomplishments of the Aryan people, stating how they "learned methods of civilization" while "Sargon II and Sardanapalus were ruling in Assyria and fighting with Babylonia and Syria and Egypt". As such, Wells suggested that the Aryans had eventually "subjugated the whole ancient world, Semitic, Aegean and Egyptian alike". H.G. Wells describes the origin of the Aryans (Proto-Indo Europeans): The usage of Aryan to mean "all Indo-Europeans" is now regarded by most scholars as obsolete, though it is still seen occasionally and some people continue this usage. Renfrew, C. ''The Origins of Indo-European Languages'' Scientific American October 1989 Pages 106–114 The word "Aryan" is used to mean "all Indo-Europeans. (This article presents the Anatolian Hypothesis , i.e., that the proto-Indo Europeans originated about 7000 BC in the city of Catal Huyuk .) In today's English, "Aryan", if used at all in scholarly contexts, is normally synonymous to Indo-Iranian , or Proto-Indo-Iranian . The idea that the ''north'' Europeans were the "purest" of these people was later theorized by the Comte De Gobineau and by other writers, most notably his disciple Houston Stewart Chamberlain , who wrote of an "Aryan race"—those who spoke Indo-European languages and were claimed to be the "noblest" of people. INTERPRETATIONS OF THE TERM During the 19th century, it was commonly believed that the Aryan race originated in the southwestern steppes of present-day Russia , and including the Caucasus Mountains . The Steppe theory of Aryan origins was not the only one circulating during the nineteenth century, however. Many British, American and German scholars argued that the Aryans originated in ancient Germany or Scandinavia , or at least that in those countries the original Aryan ethnicity had been preserved. The German origin of the Aryans was especially promoted by the archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna , who claimed that the Proto-Indo-European peoples were identical to the Corded Ware Culture of Neolithic Germany. This idea was widely circulated in both intellectual and popular culture by the early twentieth century. British Raj |
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