Aryan race

Quick Facts: Who was Aryan race?

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Aryan race

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A pseudoscientific 19th-century concept linking language origins to a supposed superior human race.

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Origins & Early Life

The Aryan race is a pseudoscientific historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people who descend from the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by Indo-Iranians as an ethnocultural self-designative identity and epithet of "noble". Anthropological, historical, and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of the racial concept. The concept derives from the notion that the original speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language were distinct progenitors of a superior specimen of humankind, and that their descendants up to the present day constitute either a distinctive race or a sub-race of the Caucasian race, alongside the Semitic race and the Hamitic race. This taxonomic approach to categorizing human population groups is now considered to be misguided and biologically meaningless due to the close genetic similarity and complex interrelationships between these groups.

Career & Major Achievements

The term was adopted by various racist and antisemitic writers during the 19th century, including Arthur de Gobineau, Richard Wagner, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose scientific racism influenced later Nazi racial ideology. By the 1930s, the concept had been associated with both Nazism and Nordicism, and used to support the white supremacist ideology of Aryanism that portrayed the Aryan race as a "master race", with non-Aryans regarded as racially inferior (Untermensch, lit. 'subhuman') and an existential threat that was to be exterminated. In Nazi Germany, these ideas formed an essential part of the state ideology that led to the Holocaust. In the late 18th century, Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was constructed as the hypothesized common proto-language of the Indo-European languages.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

Sir William Jones, who was acclaimed as the "most respected linguist in Europe" for his Grammar of the Persian Language (1771), was appointed one of the three justices of the Supreme Court of Bengal. Jones, who arrived in Calcutta and began his study of Sanskrit and the Rig Veda, was astonished by the lexical similarities between Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages such as Persian, Gothic, Greek, and Latin, and concluded that Sanskrit—as a descendant language—belonged to the same proto- or parent-language in the language family—that is PIE, as the other Indo-European languages, in his Third Anniversary Discourse on the Hindus (1786). However, the linguistic homeland of the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European was a politicized debate among the archaeologists and comparative historical linguists since the start, entangling in chauvinistic causes. Some European nationalists and dictators, most notably the Nazis, later attempted to identify their country or region as the Proto-Indo-European homeland and their people as belonging to a pure and superior race. According to Leon Poliakov, the concept of the Aryan race was deeply rooted in philology, based on the work of Sir William Jones' claiming that Sanskrit was related to Greco-Roman (European) languages.

Chronological Milestones & Life Events

1. 1771: 1771 Milestone — Sir William Jones, who was acclaimed as the "most respected linguist in Europe" for his Grammar of the Persian Language (1771), was appointed one of the three justices of the Supreme Court of Bengal.
2. 1786: 1786 Milestone — Jones, who arrived in Calcutta and began his study of Sanskrit and the Rig Veda, was astonished by the lexical similarities between Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages such as Persian, Gothic, Greek, and Latin, and concluded that Sanskrit—as a descendant language—belonged to the same proto- or parent-language in the language family—that is PIE, as the other Indo-European languages, in his Third Anniversary Discourse on the Hindus (1786).

Historical Fact-Check Quiz: Aryan race

True or False: “The term 'Aryan' was originally used by all Proto-Indo-Europeans as their self-designative identity.”

Answer (FALSE ❌): The term 'Aryan' was initially an ethnocultural self-designation primarily used by Indo-Iranians, and modern scholarship disputes its application to the entire Proto-Indo-European group.

Contemporary Figures & Related Historical Timelines

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