The Home of the Indo-Europeans

Abstract

THE original home of the Indo-Europeans is a well-worn subject, and Prof. Bender has treated it generally on the lines of philology, familiar to readers of works like Schrader's “Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples.” He suggests, but does not grapple with, the question whether there was an Indo-European race, or merely an aggregate of tribes, possibly of varied physical characteristics, more or less closely united by a common tongue and a common culture. Anthropology and archaeology may in time throw light, he suggests, on their habitat in the Stone Age, “although it will always be difficult to determine from the examination of a skull or a stone axe what language their owner spoke in life.” Again, we have only grave furniture to guide us, and the consideration of broad or long skulls is of little help, because the cephalic index “is merely a ratio,” and “among the living Chinese or in the Neolithic graves of Europe long skulls are nearly always found with short skulls, and vice versa.”

The Home of the Indo-Europeans.

By Prof. H. H. Bender. Pp. 58. (Princeton: Princeton University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1922.) 4s. 6d. net.