ABSTRACT
The hypothesis of an Asiatic origin for the Aryan peoples is the most venerable but the least well documented. Indeed it belongs in part to that realm of anthropological mythology the roots of which go back to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. In that world of prescientific speculation all races were derived from Asia which was regarded as a vast reservoir of peoples, and it was assumed that all migrations followed the sun from East to West. To this extent the doctrine of an Asiatic cradle of the Aryans is only one of the unfounded generalizations which anthropology and archaeology have been combating for the last seventy years. We now know that the relations between Europe and Asia have not been so one-sided as our ancestors believed, and that culture and population flowed in both directions.
