ABSTRACT
The reader may think that the rôle here assigned to the Aryans is an extremely modest one. If the view advanced in the last chapter be correct, they were not the inaugurators of the neolithic civilization even in Europe nor were they as a whole the pioneers in the use of bronze or iron. The makers of the kitchen-middens on the Danish coasts have been justly termed “disgusting savages”. Even stronger epithets might be applied to the other claimants to the title of proto-Aryans; for a suspicion of cannibalism clings to the ochre-grave peoples. 1 Even in barbarian Europe the material culture of the Nordics was not originally superior to that of the Danubian peasants or the megalith-builders; in Transylvania they appear frankly as wreckers; in the Ancient East and the Aegean they appropriated and for a time impaired older and higher civilizations.
