The New Student's Reference Work/Aryans

Aryans (är' yăns), the name given to the parent race from which most of the modern Europeans are supposed to have descended. The race, possibly, lived originally in the highlands of Central Asia and spoke a common language. Now and then small groups separated from the parent fold and traveled to the northwest. The first of these groups were the Celts, who once seem to have spread over a large part of Europe, though the Welsh and Irish and a few other peoples are all that is left of them. A good while later the ancestors of the Italians, the Greeks and the Germans started westward and settled in the regions which these nations now occupy. Other tribes that set out in the same way are the Slavs, the Persians and the upper classes of Hindus. The languages of these different peoples are now quite different; but they show that they were once all part of the same root-tongue. The parent race was a peaceful, agricultural people, having a definite form of government. They probably lived in towns and built houses. All that we know about them comes from the study of the languages of European nations and of the Old-Persian and the high-caste races of Hindustan. The English are a branch of the Aryan race through the Germans.