_Primal Home of the White Race._--Where should we look for these earliest representatives, for the primal home of the Eurafrican race? The usual answer has been “in Asia,” but now that answer is rejected by all the younger and most earnest ethnologists.
A steady stream of information has of late been contributed by the sciences of linguistics, palæontology, pre-historic archæology and racial anatomy, sufficient to convince even the skeptical that not Asia, but the western water-shed of the Eastern Continent, was the area of characterization which developed this race with its marked physical traits and singular mental endowments. In the previous lecture I have shown you that man himself probably came into being as such within the limits of that region which I have described as Eurafrica; and as its conditions were such as to foster his transformation from some inferior primate, so they continued, though profoundly altered, to favor his growth, as they still do continue to-day. It is by no mere accident or result of political manœuvres that western Europe has for two thousand years produced the mightiest nations and greatest minds of the earth.
The discussion of the precise locality where in Europe the primitive man developed into the white race has occupied many learned pens in the last score of years. But by nearly all of them the discussion has been limited to the birthplace of merely the Aryan linguistic stock--an unfortunate narrowness of view, which has prevented a comprehensive grasp of the question at issue.[51]
The Aryan peoples present by no means the only, nor yet the purest types of the white race. I have seen quite as noble blondes among the Kabyles of the Djurjura as in Denmark, quite as handsome brunettes among the Basques of the Pyrenees as among the Celts of France or the Italians. A broad construction of the question must include all these, and in this spirit I approach it.
We must search for the first abode, the primitive “area of characterization” of the white race:
1. Where its most ancient residence and greatest numbers were in earliest historic times.
2. Where the prehistoric remains prolong that residence most remotely back.
3. Where the earliest forms of linguistic structure continue to exist in large communities.