ABSTRACT
In the last two chapters we beheld Aryan peoples emerging from the darkness of prehistory. In Hither Asia we believed that we could catch the first faint echoes of Indo-European speech on the tablelands of Iran by the begining of the second millennium b.c. By 1500 b.c. it was clear that the division into satem and centum languages was already established, and that an Indo-Iranian dialect not very far removed from Vedic Sanskrit was already being spoken. In Greece we thought that we could provisionally detect the Hellenes before the end of the IIIrd millennium, and in western Asia Minor we found it difficult to place the intrusion of the Phrygians very much later. Finally we recognized the Italici as a well-defined stock in Upper Italy by 1500 b.c. We must then conclude that the dispersion of the Aryans had begun by 2500 b.c.
