The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1891-11-12
THE HUMAN RACE.
TIL eories Regarding It's Primitive Home
Was Tt in the Arctic Regions?

Prof. A. S. Sayce, in a paper which
has occasioned much comment. SAYS
the Baltimore SIN. abandons the posi-
ton that the primitive home of the
human race was in Asia. Apart from
the general belief in an Asiatic origin.
due TO OH theologic teaching. and the
effect of the discovery of Sanskrit /
can find. he says, "only two argu-
ments which have been supposed to be
of sufficient weight TO determine the
choice of Asia rather than of Europe
as the cradle of Indo- European speech
The first argument is philosophical
that the parent speech was spoken first
at no great distance from where the
hymns of the Rig Veda-the supposed
primitive root of the parent language
were composed. Prof Sayce gives
reasons why no student of language
would any longer employ this argu-
ment The primary, which
was once supposed to belong to Asia.
he says, has been taken from her. :"
Nor is the second-the historical rea-
son-more valid. There is no sound
proof that the Indo-European language
followed the migrations from the pla-
teau of Iran. There are many facts,
on the other hand, small in themselves,
but strong in their cumulative char
acter winch lead rs to believe that the
primitive home of the Aryan race was
not ID Asia. but in northern Europe.
This hypothesis, though weak in
pathological support, has all the coun-
lenance of history. Scandinavia was
early known as 1.-The manufactory of
nations The voyages and settle
ments of the Morse vikings offer his
torica illustration of what the prehis-
toric migrations of the speakers of the
Indo-European languages must have
been. The Kelts and Teutons of
Roman antiquity were of the tall. fair
. haired, blonde type. We find it scat
tered all over Europe and Asia in early
days and lit is reasonable to suppose
that it was from southern Scandinavia,
the home of this race, that those bands
of hardy men originally emerged who
made their way southwark and west
ward, and even eastward-the Kelts
of Gallia penetrating, like the Phry-
gians before them. into the heart of
Asia Minor. The Morse migrations of
later times were even more extensive,
and what the Morse vikings were able
to achieve could have been achieved by
their ancestor centuries before
Perhaps, having reached Scandina-
via as the first home OF the human
race, etymologists will soon go further
north and place the bibical Garden of
Eden at or near the north pole. There
are many excellent arguments in favor
of this view set forth by Hilton Scrib-
ner of New York in a monogram dedi-
Gated to Chauncey M. Depew. The
obstacle to this view has hitherto been
the almost general consent to placing
the first home of the race on the high
lands of Asia and the biblical idea of
the claims of the stretch of land lying
between the Euphrates and the Tigris.
Prof. Sayce, who is high authority,
removes one obstacle, and, after all,
the account in the bible is vague and
uncertain as to specific locality. Mr..
Scribner's argument, therefore, be-
comes strong. Briefly stated it is that
the earth, at first a molten mass,
slowly radiated heat in cooling, until
finally it became inhabitable. What
part of the earth's surface then nat
urally became the original seat of
life? 70 find this we must subtract
from the heat lost in cooling the heat
received from the sun for q given
period, and the remainder will be the
earth's actual or net loss Of heat. AS
the earth in process of cooling would
receive from the sun more heat at the
equator and less and less toward the
poles, the inference is inevitable that
the polar region was the first to reach
that degree of temperature which
would support life. If this argument
is valid the polar regions must have
passed gradually through all the cli-
matte conditions from intense heat to
intense cold, and could at one time
have supported all the forms of life.
animal or vegetable, which are now or
ever have been upon the globe.
From the north pole, according to
Mr.. Scribner's theory, life was slowly
driven southwark, following the course
of the valleys and rivers toward the
equator, and many prehistoric tropical
forms either persisted from the intense
cold or in migration southwark during
return of the glacial period. If, as
Prof. Sayce imagines, the human race
first became known in Scandinavia, it
is exactly the first habitable southwark
point where, under Mr.. Scribners
hypothesis, we might expect to find it.
AS to animals and plants, the POSSIBLE
tiles of their migrating southwark,
where all the pathways were naturally
easy, are infinitely greater than that
they had crossed oceans, mountain
chains and rivers westward or east
ward. These theories-one English
and the other American, but both fit
ting fairly we'll into each other-may
not be scientifically accepted, but how
much grander it would be to have the
birthplace of our race in the once trop-
ical, but now desolate arctic solitude
than among the highlands of Asia or