334 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
in central Europe, and that, as their numbers increased, they had simply spread out over adjacent territory, with the excep- tion of the Phrygians, the Armenians, the Iranians, and the peo- ple of India, who had reached their final habitats only after long migrations. In a word, it was more logical to place the original center in the region where so many Aryan nations exist with the geographical relations corresponding to the linguistic rela- tions, rather than in the remote region of Bactria.
Meanwhile many other discoveries were made, especially in archaeology, prehistoric anthropology, and philology. It was found that the different human races, in the zoological sense, existing in the modern population of Europe were present thou- sands of years before the time of the Aryans. It was found also that the Lithuanian and other languages of Europe retained forms more primitive than the Sanskrit or the Zend. Recent criticism, exceeding the truth, perhaps, in the opposite direction, restores to a comparatively recent period those works of ficti- tious antiquity, the sacred books of Persia and India. M. Dar- mesteter, in his Le Zendavesta (Paris, 1893), asserts of this book, reputed the most ancient in the world : " It was entirely com- piled after the conquests of Alexander, between the first cen- tury before and the fourth century after our era." This is per- haps correct as regards the Zend compilation, but the compilers may have had at their disposition documents of an earlier date in Aramean or cuneiform.
Max Muller's theory has now only one serious advocate — himself. The philologists have worked out, little by little, the following conception : Instead of a patriarchal family, or even a primitive Aryan tribe, there existed a number of nomad tribes, spread out over a great territory, with languages closely related and undergoing a collective linguistic evolution toward the Aryan forms, each dialect influencing its neighbors. In this complex and ramifying mass of dialects, a process of selection eliminated the weaker and gave a broader extension to the stronger. Thus by the suppression of intermediate dialects were formed the great linguistic groups, just as, more recently, the French, Spanish, and Italian languages have been formed
