Although the Aryan expansion movement began so long ago, still we should not think of it as something past and ended. The outward movement in modern times of the Aryan-speaking peoples of Europe, that is to say, the expansion of Europe into Greater Europe and the Europeanizing of the world, is merely the continuation—and an illustration—of the Aryan expansion movement which went on in the obscurity of the prehistoric ages. Thus we see what leading parts, after what we may call the Semitic age, Aryan-speaking peoples have borne in the great drama of history.
References.—Schrader, The Prehistoric Civilization of the Aryan Peoples. Ripley, The Races of Europe. Ihering, The Evolution of the Aryan. Keane, Man, Past and Present. Deniker, The Races of Man. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race. Ratzel, The History of Mankind, 2 vols. All these works are for the teacher and the advanced student. Brinton, Races and Peoples; and Taylor, The Origin of the Aryans, can be used by younger readers.
Topics for Special Study.— 1. Causes of physical and mental differences between races. See Brinton. 2. The Aryans. See Taylor.
ancient Romans—a folk Aryan in speech if not in race—went out as conquerors and colonizers of the Mediterranean world. Wherever they went they carried their language and their civilization with them. Many of the peoples whom they subjected gave up their own speech, and along with the civilization of their conquerors adopted also their language. In this way a large part of the ancient world became Romanized in speech and culture. When the Roman Empire broke up, there arose a number of Latin-speaking nations,—among these, the French, Spaniards, and Portuguese. During the modern age these Romanized nations, through conquest and colonization, have spread their Latin speech and civilization over a great part of the New World. Thus it has come about that to-day the language of the ancient Romans, differentiated into many dialects, is spoken by peoples spread over the earth from Rumania in Eastern Europe to Chile in South America. All these peoples we call Latins, not because they are all descended from the ancient Romans,—in fact they belong to many different ethnic stocks,—but because they all speak languages derived from the old Roman speech. Just as we use the term Latin here, so do we use the term Aryan in connection with the Aryan-speaking peoples.
