Three Thousand Years of Racism:
Recurring Patterns in Racism
by Merlin Stone
After the last few decades of efforts to erase or lessen the many overt and covert forms of racism in the U.S., many of us are now watching in horror as the reports of various forms of racist attitudes and violence seem to be increasing rather than fading away. We may blame it on the rise in unemployment, inflation, or extreme neo-conservative trends. But beneath our consideration of each of these factors lies the nagging question of the efficacy of the strategies and tactics that we have been using to battle against racism. Is there something that we should do that we have not done? Is there something that we have done that we should not have done? And perhaps most important have we ever arrived at a full and clear enough analysis of racism that provides a firm foundation for the formulation of effective anti-racist efforts?
We have long believed that our comprehension of racist acts and attitudes had been too limited. It had been based primarily upon observations of racism in the U.S. over the past few centuries and, for the most part, focused upon the effects of racism upon the victims rather than on the methods and behavior of the perpetrators. It was for this reason that we began to examine some of the records of racist acts and racist statements that had been written in many areas of the world and throughout recorded history. Some of these records dated back to over 3,000 years ago. As a result of this examination we believe that the chronologically and geographically broader perspective provided by these records may be of use in our comprehension of racism and thus in our formulation of viable strategies and tactics to combat racism in all its manifestations.
The written accounts of racism throughout world history are numerous and will require many years of work to fully present and discuss. But due to the urgency of the issue we feel that some of the basic insights gleaned from this examination should be presented now. In our effort to do this we will first describe and explain what appear to be rather consistent patterns in the many accounts of racism, following this with some specific historical examples of racism that we feel may be of particular significance in our understanding of racist behavior. The final focus of this paper will be on the records of racism among the ancient Aryan groups of about 1200–600 B.C., the accounts that we feel may offer especially useful insights into the methods and strategies of racist oppressors today.
The Process
One of the first realizations that the examination of a broad spectrum of historical records provides is that racism is not, and never has been, a static attitude, a monolithic form of behavior, or a body of random events. The records make it clear that racism occurs as a long-term process comprised of specific stages. Not truly perceiving racism as a process may be at the core of our problems in confronting it successfully for just when we think we are lessening racism, as it exists in one of its stages, it may surprise us by moving into another stage. But the examination of the historical records also reveals that the many stages of the entire racist process follow a surprisingly consistent repertoire, i.e., specific stages of racism occurring at specific points in the process. By first perceiving racism as a long-term process, then becoming familiar with the full repertoire of the numerous stages within the process, and finally better understanding when each stage will be used, we can begin to see the predictability in racist behavior. We believe that it is this predictability that will be of value in our formulation of anti-racist activities.
To understand racism as a process, we should first delineate the two major aspects within it. Although these two aspects are closely interwoven in nearly all racist oppression, perceiving the specific nature of each aspect is necessary for a clear comprehension of the process. The first aspect, and nearly always the underlying purpose of racism, is economic racism, the theft of the land, property, resources and/or labor from people of a racial or ethnic group other than one’s own. The second aspect is cultural racism, the act of propagandizing and/or believing that a racial or ethnic group other than one’s own is innately inferior in human development. This second aspect may range from assertions of an innate lack of mental or creative capacities to an innate lack of various “moral” capacities. It is the assertion that the lack of these qualities is innate, i.e., genetic, as much a biologically determined factor as skin coloring, that is the core of cultural racism.
Once distinguishing between these two aspects of racism so that we may define each, we may then observe the progressive stages within each aspect—and how each specific stage of cultural racism is strategically dovetailed to support each specific stage of economic racism. Within the context of this paper we have simplified the progression of the process into two major stages but, as we shall explain, many sub-stages exist within each stage and the transitions within and between the stages occur on a gradual continuum, at times even overlapping.
The first stage of economic racism is the initial theft of the land, property, resources and/or labor belonging to another racial or ethnic group by violence as extreme as that required to accomplish the theft, e.g., unprovoked aggression, invasion, full scale war, massacre and/or kidnapping. This theft is supported by the first stage of cultural racism. This is the assertion that the victims of the theft are innately immoral, even innately evil, e.g., demons, cannibals, head hunters, savages, bloodthirsty, merciless, sadistic, vicious, child killers, rapists, heathen, in league with the devil, criminal, devious, sly, sexually perverse, dishonest, cunning, etc.
In this first stage of cultural racism there is little or no emphasis on a supposedly innate mental superiority of the aggressors; innate moral superiority is the issue. The aggressors declare that they are innately moral. The victims are supposedly lacking in fully developed human capacities for morals and ethics, leading to the aggressors’ declaration that they must be controlled or annihilated. The aggressors claim to be combatting this evil and immorality for the sake of all humankind or in the name of some supposedly higher divine force.
The purpose of first stage cultural racism is to incite fervor among the aggressors that will fuel and justify the unprovoked aggression and extreme violence of first stage economic racism. The various sub-stages within this stage encompass the aggressors’ first assertions of evil or immorality, along with their initial physical attack, and continue until the final defeat and subjugation of the victims. As increasing areas of the victims’ territories are conquered and/or greater numbers of the victims are subjugated, the assertions of evil and immorality lessen by degree, creating sub-stages that may range from the aggressors’ initial assertions of “demons” or “savages” to somewhat milder assertions such as innate dishonesty or cunning. The length of time of the entire first stage encompasses the initial attack until the final conquest, a time period that may range from several weeks to several centuries, i.e., as long as there is serious resistance by the victims.
The second stage of economic racism is the long-term control by the aggressors/conquerors of what they have taken by force and then claim is rightfully theirs. The land, property and resources of the victims are legally in the conquerors’ name no matter that they wrote the new laws themselves. The labor of the victims, now living in the conquerors’ land, is reimbursed with just enough to keep the victims alive, able to work, and to produce more laborers whether for cheap or slave labor. (This includes the conquerors’ control and regulations of the number of laborers, leading to enforced pregnancies when more laborers are wanted by the conquerors, or enforced sterilization and/or less concern for the food supply and health care of the victims when less laborers are wanted.) The level of overt violence in this second stage is lower than in the first stage but is always present as an example or threat against rebellion by the victims.
The second stage of cultural racism supports the second stage of economic racism. This is the assertion that the members of the subjugated population are innately mentally inferior, e.g., less able to learn, less inventive, less creative toward cultural accomplishments, at a lower level of human development, etc. The menial jobs allotted to the conquered victims supposedly affirm this innate mental inferiority. These assertions of the victims’ supposed inferiority are structured into the social institutions of the conquerors, as well as the laws, customs, educational and economic systems and, at times, the religious systems.
Deprived of their ancestral lands, property and resources, of their own cultures and customs, even of control of their own lives, the victims and their descendants gradually internalize the conquerors’ assertions of their superiority. The level of this internalization creates various sub-stages, forming a direct ratio to the level of repressive violence, i.e., the greater the internalization, the less overt the violence—and vice versa. (This does not apply to the less obvious violence of enforced pregnancies, sterilization, or lack of concern for food and health care used to control the labor supply.) The length of time of this second stage is determined by the ability of the aggressors/conquerors to maintain the subjugation of the victims and to fend off rebellion.
But the most important factor in understanding the entire process of racism is perceiving the conquerors’ strategy of revising both aspects of first stage racism upon any serious intransigence or rebellion by the victims at any time during the second stage, i.e., an acceleration of repressive violence accompanied by a reversion to the various forms of assertions of an innate evil or immorality in the rebellious victims.
We have long been aware of the increase in repressive violence as the conquerors’ response to confrontations of their racist behavior. What we have not seen as clearly is the conquerors’ strategy of vacillation between the two sets of quite different stereotypes of cultural racism: the correlations of assertions of an innate mental inferiority upon the passivity or cooperation of the victims; the assertions of an innate evil or immorality when the victims refuse to be victimized.
Observing the tactic of this vacillation to maintain economic racism and to repress all efforts to battle against it is vital to our understanding of the entire racist process for the historical records suggest that economic racism has seldom, if ever, existed without the support of some form of cultural racism.
Acts of economic racism have been recorded throughout written history. Written records supporting cultural racism are less plentiful but do surface in statements made shortly before, or at the time of, various conquests, and in the records of the legal, martial, religious, social and educational systems of the aggressors/conquerors. Observing some of the specific accounts of cultural racism, as it has been used and re-used to support economic racism for over 3,000 years, gives us some idea of the repertoire of various cultural racist assertions and when each will be used.
First Stage
The use of first stage cultural racism appears in the accounts of the Germanic Saxons’ battles with Asian Turkic Magyars in the Tenth Century. To fuel their battles against the Magyars, the Saxons asserted the Magyars were “cannibals and vampires,” “the devilish offspring of Gothic witches who had mated with fiends in the wastes of Asia.” 1
This assertion of an innate evil in the Asian groups that were to the north and east of the Teutonic/Germanic tribes was to be revived time and again. It was used to fuel the Crusades that began at the end of the Eleventh Century. At the call of Pope Urban II in 1095, white European men began to gather in troops and make their way across the thousands of miles of Europe and Asia to conquer the “evil Asian infidel,” i.e., the Asian Seljuk Turkic peoples who were accused of threatening Christianity in Byzantine Turkey. It was not long before Semitic Jews in Europe, as well as Semitic Jews and Arabs of the Near East, were also regarded as “evil Asian infidels” by European Crusaders who attacked and murdered many Jews and Arabs along with Asian Turks.
After several centuries of ‘Holy Wars,’ the crusading Teutonic Knights of Germany ruled over large areas on the eastern bank of the Baltic Sea, extending their conquests well into western Russia, while the Levantine area that is now Israel, Lebanon and west Syria was conquered by the leaders of the Crusades who eventually crowned themselves as kings or princes of many eastern Mediterranean towns and provinces. Godfrey of Lorraine became King of Jerusalem. Tancred of Normandy was crowned Prince of Galilee. Guy de Lusignan ruled Cyprus, Raymond of Toulouse claimed Tripoli. De la Roche became Duke of Athens, as Baldwin of Flanders took the throne of the Emperor of Constantinople, declaring himself as ruler of the entire Byzantine Christian Empire.2
But the white European assertion that Asian peoples were evil did not originate with Christianity. It had existed among the Norse and Swedes in the pre-Christian Viking period. Norse accounts of the Ninth Century describe the Inuit (Eskimos) and the Asian Finns, who lived to the north and east of the Norse and Swedes, as skraelings, literally “wretched savages.” Declaring that the Asians’ darker coloring made them “evil in appearance,” Norse Vikings gradually occupied the Asian Finnish areas of Scandinavia. This attitude apparently justified the unprovoked Viking murders of “skraelings” in Vinland (now thought to have been Newfoundland), which the Vikings had also attempted to colonize.3
Much this same form of cultural racism was used to fuel and justify the four centuries of violent conquest of the entire western hemisphere. The concept of “Manifest Destiny” as the justification for white Europeans to invade and take the lands and resources of Native Americans by ruse and violence was rife with images of the indigenous populations of the western hemisphere as “bloodthirsty heathen savages.” Despite the reports of Columbus who spoke of the Arawak tribe of the Caribbean as peaceful and generous, despite the writings of the Sixteenth Century Montaigne who described the Native Americans as the most honest and forthright of people, the general attitude of the white European adventurists, and of the European royalty and business interests that funded them, was that the Native Americans were “heathen savages” worshipping “accursed idols” and practicing immoral social and religious customs, i.e., non-Christian. This attitude of first stage cultural racism appears to have been most prevalent among the Puritan “colonists” from Britain, but also appears continually in Spanish accounts of the conquest of Mexico and the Yucatan.4
The refusal of most Native Americans to be forced from their own lands, and their refusal to be used as slave labor for the Europeans, led to a prolonged first stage of economic and cultural racism that began shortly after 1492 and continued until the last half of the Nineteenth Century. The remnants of this attitude lasted well into the Twentieth Century, surfacing time and again in “Cowboy and Indian” films. Since so much more than Native American labor was to be gained by the European invaders of the entire western hemisphere, the first stages of economic and cultural racism continued to the point of an almost total extermination of the indigenous population of North America and much of Central and South America. Although many Native Americans, especially in Mexico, were taken as slaves by the Spanish troops, and “good looking Indian women” were taken as war booty, most Native Americans resisted enslavement so furiously that they were not generally regarded as potential slave laborers by the Europeans.5
But while Native Americans remained in the extreme violence of first stage racism for so many centuries, European “colonists” then kidnapped people from Africa to serve as the slave labor on the lands they had taken from the Native Americans. European ships sailed the Atlantic, repeatedly carrying the silver and gold taken from the Native Americans to Europe, returning with cargoes of healthy young people kidnapped from Africa.6 Forcibly removed from their homelands, hence in an even more powerless position than the Native Americans, the kidnapped Africans and their descendants in North, Central and South America more quickly became the victims of second stage racism. Thus, as the Native Americans were still being described as “bloodthirsty heathens,” and gradually being exterminated by the continuation of first stage violence against them, it was primarily African people who were used as slaves. The European “colonists” were quick to assert that the kidnapped black people were at a lower level of mental development.
The pattern of the stages of the racist process remained consistent, for when the Native American populations became so small that they were no longer able to physically resist the theft and aggression, the survivors were then stereotyped as mentally and motivationally inferior, while Afro-Americans, especially since the recent demands for civil rights, have been increasingly stereotyped as vicious or dishonest.
Equating the people of darker races, or darkness per se, with the devil, or some supernatural force of evil or immorality, has been used repeatedly in first stage cultural racism, not only in the Christian period but by pre-Christian white groups as well. As we will explain more fully, this form of first stage cultural racism appears throughout the religious accounts of the ancient Aryans. The ancient Aryan records provide a great deal of insight into the astonishing ideas invented by racist minds to support their abuse, conquests, and oppression of other peoples. But before discussing the early Aryan records, a look at some later records of second stage cultural racism may be helpful in better understanding the significance of the Aryan accounts and the role they played in contemporary racist attitudes.
Second Stage
Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries white Europeans invaded and conquered many areas of the world, in most cases those belonging to people of darker races who constitute the majority of the Earth’s population.
There was hardly a mile of the 5000 mile long continent of Africa that had not been appropriated by one European nation or another,7 as the conquerors eventually declared the innate mental inferiority of the indigenous African populations despite the reality that they had physically and culturally flourished on their own lands for thousands of years. From the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, from major portions of the mainland such as India and Burma, to the vast land areas of Australia and New Zealand, to large islands such as Borneo, New Guinea and The Philippines, to even the smallest of islands of the Polynesians in the mid-Pacific, the governments and troops of European countries such as England, France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium and Italy battled over which one of them owned the land, property, resources and labor of the people who had lived there for so many millennia.8 Initially spoken of as savages, cannibals, head hunters, or simply heathens, the people of the many conquered populations eventually became the cheap or slave labor force for the European conquerors.
By the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, when many “colonies” were in the firm grasp of the descendants of white Europeans, the claims of second stage cultural racism were widely propagated and believed among most white Europeans, those still in Europe, and those who ruled the indigenous populations of the “colonies,” some of which had become separate white-ruled nations. These second stage cultural racist claims were often deeply internalized by the descendants of those who had been conquered and subjugated in their own homelands, and by the descendants of those who had been kidnapped for slave labor in other lands.
It was in the early Nineteenth Century that second stage cultural racism, which had previously been institutionalized primarily by the laws and social structures of the aggressors/conquerors, emerged in yet another social institution of white people—the universities of Europe. Formulated as an “academic subject,” and described as “racial theory,” second stage cultural racism was reinforced by members of the European academic community as several highly respected university professors claimed that the mental and creative superiority of white people could be “proven” by “documented evidence.” It is somewhat ironic that the use of this so called academic evidence and the educational system to further institutionalize second stage cultural racism eventually led to a complete academic refutation of this “evidence,” as we shall explain.
The creation of “racial theory” as an academic subject appears to have begun with a Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Berlin (the direct predecessor of Hegel)—Johann Gottleib Fichte. It may be significant that in this particular form of second stage cultural racism, along with the then familiar white European assertions that the people of all darker races were supposedly mentally inferior to white Europeans, that there were further assertions that the lighter people of the white race were supposedly mentally superior to the darker people of the white race. According to Fichte, the descendants of the Teutonic/Germanic tribes, i.e, the lightest people of the white race, were supposedly superior to all others peoples on Earth. Fichte asserted that the French, Latin and Jewish “races” were inferior, their generally darker coloring revealing their genetic heritage from the supposedly inferior darker races. Putting forth these ideas in a series of university lectures in 1807 (later published and widely read), Fichte stated that it was only the Germanic people “in whom the seed of human perfection exists.” 9
Second stage cultural racism, in the guise of “racial theory” remained in the more generalized domain of philosophy for some forty years. But in 1847 a professor of ancient civilizations and philosophy (historical linguistics) at the University of Bonn, Christian Lassen, finally supplied what “racial theorists” had desperately wanted—historical “evidence” of an extremely ancient white civilization to legitimate their claims. It had been somewhat difficult, although apparently not impossible, to assert that the white race was the most mentally advanced form of human, when all available evidence showed that the earliest cultural inventions and developments—from law codes to the invention of the wheel—of the most ancient civilizations had been initiated by the darker peoples of the Near and Middle East. For the “racial theorists” of northern Europe this problem was all the more disturbing alongside the historical records about the Teutonic/Germanic tribes that described them as illiterate primitive people as late as the Roman period. By their own standards of the cultural and technological accomplishments that supposedly reveal basic human intelligence, the northern European “racial theorists” could produce no historical support for their claims. To establish an extreme antiquity, hopefully even a primacy, for white cultural development was a much longed for discovery among the “racial theorists” of the early Nineteenth Century.
The writings of Professor Christian Lassen provided this “discovery.” Lassen’s work was based upon information that was becoming increasingly available in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Sanskrit writings of the ancient Aryans of India. The information that most pleased the “racial theorists” was that the Sanskrit language of the Aryans was linguistically related to European languages.
The fact that Sanskrit was an Indo-European language had first been noted by William Jones and Charles Wilkins in late Eighteenth Century England. It was confirmed by the work of Franz Bopp of Bavaria in 1816.10 Publishing his work in four volumes entitled Indische Altertumskunde (Indian Antiquities), Lassen stressed the great antiquity, even the probable primacy, of Aryan culture. According to Lassen, the Aryans were responsible for having initiated and developed many of the earliest cultural and technological accomplishments of humankind. Drawing upon the work of Jones, Wilkins and Bopp, Lassen wrote that the linguistic connections between Aryan Sanskrit and European languages showed that the Aryans were the ancestors of the white race.11 Thus were the assertions of the second stage cultural racism based upon what was believed to be “documented evidence” of the primacy of the white race in cultural and technological development.
As we mentioned, basing claims of an innate superiority on archaeological and philological evidence of ancient cultures was to lead to further discoveries that completely refuted the “evidence” of white Aryan cultural and technological primacy. The “racial theorists” who used the then available knowledge of the ancient Aryans as proof of the innate superiority of what soon became known as the Teutonic/Germanic/Aryan people would have been deeply shocked, certainly disappointed, had they lived long enough to read the three volumes on the Harappan civilization of India written by archaeologist Jon Marshall and published in 1931.12
In these volumes, Marshall described the results of his years of excavations of the Harappan civilization of India, excavations that proved that the Aryans had invaded India as aggressive, illiterate nomads at about 1700 B.C. The Aryans had violently conquered the inhabitants of the Harappan civilization during several centuries of attack—eventually appropriating the cultural and technological accomplishments of the Harappans. Marshall’s work was later affirmed by the work of Mortimer Wheeler in 1946–1953.13
Not only had the Harappans used a written language, wheeled vehicles, metallurgical processes, a brick architecture that included large civic and religious buildings and two and three story private homes, paved streets, and a system of drain sewers that led to inside bathrooms in most homes, but the Harappan civilization had existed for close to a thousand years before the Aryans had even arrived in India. Even more shocking to “racial theorists” would have been Marshall’s and Wheeler’s evidence that the Harappan civilization had been developed by a mixture of Mediterranean and Proto-Australoid peoples who were the ancestors of the dark Dravidian people still present in south India today.
But Marshall’s discoveries, and the publication of them, were not to be made until some eighty years after northern European ideas about the ancient Aryans were used as a foundation for a form of second stage cultural racism that was propogated by some of the most highly respected professors of Europe.
The impact that the incorrect evidence about the Aryans had upon “racial theory” was widespread. Count Arthur de Gobineau published the first book of another four-volume treatise in France in 1855, this one boldly entitled Essai sur l’Inegalite des Races Humaines (Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races). Basing his theories on the supposed primacy of Aryan cultural development, Gobineau wrote, “History shows that all civilization flows from the white race, that no civilization can exist without the cooperation of this race.” Gobineau also asserted that the lighter people of the Germanic and Celtic groups were the last “pure” remnant of the supposedly culture founding Aryans, i.e., the way all Aryans must have looked before some mixed with other races, extending Fichte’s “seed of human perfection” to all lighter colored people of northern France, northern Germany, Scandinavia, Holland, northern Switzerland, England, Ireland and Scotland.14
The erroneous evidence of Aryan antiquity in cultural and technological development provided by writers such as Lassen and Gobineau influenced many other European scholars of the Nineteenth Century. Among these was a Professor of History at the University of Berlin between 1874 and 1896. In his extremely well attended lectures, and in his articles in the Preussische Jahrbucher, Dr. Heinrich von Treitschke deeply influenced northern European thought, basing his conclusions of a Teutonic superiority upon the idea that the Aryans had been the original “bearers of culture.”
Treitschke’s colleague at the University of Berlin, Professor of Economics Eugen Karl Duhring, added “racial theory” to his analysis of economics, asserting that the Oriental or Asiatic nature of Jewish people was morally inferior, thus undermining the European economy.15 One can almost hear the echoes of Vikings, Saxons, and Crusaders, asserting that there is an innate evil or immorality among Asian peoples. It was perhaps not too surprising that some of the later Nazi propaganda used against the Jewish people of Europe stated that their original homeland had been in the heart of central Asia rather than in the actual Semitic homeland of the eastern Mediterranean.
Claims of a contemporary Teutonic/Aryan superiority wandered even further from factual evidence as “racial theory” was further developed and popularized by an Englishman living in Germany, Houston Stewart Chamberlain.16 In the 1200 pages of his two-volume Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Foundations of the Nineteenth Century), published in 1897, Chamberlain even challenged the New Testament. Despite the specific Hebrew genealogy listed in The Gospel According to Matthew, Chamberlain declared that the morals of Jesus “proved” that he was not a Semitic Hebrew. What was he then? Judging by his morals, Chamberlain asserted, he must have been an Aryan. Errors exist throughout Chamberlain’s writings. Speaking of the Amorites who produced the Law Code of Hammurabi, well known as a Semitic people, Chamberlain described them as “tall, blond, magnificent Aryans.” Of the Hittites of Anatolia, Chamberlain wrote that they were obviously Semitic, supposedly proved by their long noses. (The Hittites were later shown to be an Aryan group by the work of philologist B. Hrozny in 1915.) Yet despite the many errors and wild speculations in Chamberlain’s books, an English translation of the two volumes was made available in England and the U.S. by 1910, while the original German edition was in its 24th printing in 1938.
It was not a difficult leap for Adolph Hitler when writing Mein Kampf in 1924 to assert that the Slavic, French, Hungarian and Baltic “races” were inferior to the Germans. Hitler asserted that African people were “half-apes,” insisting that it was “a sin against all reason … a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator” to educate black people.17 But Hitler’s racism was not his own invention or the original product of a warped mind. He leaned heavily upon the “academic” cultural racism that had been accepted by much of northern Europe.
Thus Hitler could write, “All human culture, all the result of art, science and technology that we see before us today are almost exclusively the product of the Aryan … He is the Prometheus of mankind from whose bright forehead the divine spark of genius has sprung at all times … If we were to divide mankind into three groups, the founders of culture, the bearers of culture and the destroyers of culture, only the Aryan could be considered as representative of the first group.” 18
How ironic that such words were being written in 1924, the very year that Marshall began his excavations of the Harappan civilization, the excavations that revealed that the Aryans in India had been illiterate, barbaric nomads who had learned nearly all that they were credited with inventing from the dark Harappans. It is worth noting that in Mein Kampf, while referring to all other peoples as mentally inferior, Hitler singled out the Jewish people as being “in league with the Devil.” Could this sole assertion of first stage cultural racism have been noted and confronted before the horrors of the holocaust had we been more aware of the stages of cultural racism?
The Aryans
At this point we must examine the records of the ancient Aryans. Who were these people who were so joyfully adopted by many white Europeans to confirm the assertions of second stage cultural racism? As we shall see, the Aryans did not initiate or found cultural or technological development for humankind, but they may well have been the inventors of the process of racism that has been used repeatedly for over three thousand years.
We should begin by clarifying that the ancient Aryans were actually specific groups of the second millennium B.C. (2000–1000). Their identifications as Aryans are based primarily upon the evidence of the languages that they used. Aryan languages have been discovered to be the only known languages from ancient periods that are related to the Indo-European languages of today.
The Indo-European languages are widespread and numerous. Most of them fall into three major categories:
The first category is composed of the ancient Aryan/Indo-European groups that initially entered recorded history in the second millennium B.C., some invading India, some invading Anatolia (Turkey), some invading Greece, and some invading or migrating into Iran. Their languages are known respectively as Sanskrit, Hittite, Mycenaean Greek and Indo-Iranian.
The second category of Indo-European languages are the Slavic and Baltic (Lettic) languages still used by people who now live primarily in the areas of Russia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
The third category includes most contemporary western European languages, English, German, Danish, Swedish, Norse, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian, and the older languages of Latin and Gaelic. Greek, Persian, Armenian, Hindi, Bengali, Kurdish, Urdu and Romany are also Indo-European languages. Most archaeologists and philologists agree that the earliest Indo-European speaking people were originally a nomadic group whose earliest known homeland was probably on the steppes of southern Russia near the Aral Sea.
It was upon the extremely tenuous argument of a specific connection between the Aryans who had used Indo-European Sanskrit, and the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century people who used Indo-European Germanic languages, that “racial theorists” declared that the lightest skinned, lightest haired, lightest eyed members of the Teutonic/German peoples were the most direct descendants of ancient Aryan peoples. This claim of a direct Aryan ancestry for the lightest people of the white race may or may not be true. But even allowing, for the sake of discussion, that any specific group of people today are the last “pure” remnant of the ancient Aryans, what is this Aryan heritage?
One group of Aryans is known to have entered the area of Iran (hence the name Iran, from Aryan) before the second millennium B.C. They do not appear to have developed any major cultures there for several thousand years. This was despite the fact that the nearby cultures of the Sumerians in southern Iraq, the Semitic Akkadians in central Iraq, the Elamites in southwestern Iran, and the Harappans in India, had been using written language and building highly developed civilizations from about 3000 B.C. The archaeological evidence of Iran suggests that the Aryan migration or invasion into the area may even have brought earlier Neolithic developments there to somewhat of a dead end, e.g., Jarmo, Susa, Sialk, and Tepe Hissar.19 As we shall explain more fully, the earliest evidence of Iranian/Aryan literacy dates to about the Seventh Century B.C.
A second group of Aryans are known to have invaded Anatolia (Turkey) at about 1800–1500 B.C. Anatolia had experienced gradual Neolithic cultural and technological development by non-Aryan groups from about 5000 B.C., e.g., Hacilar and Catal Huyuk. According to the archaeological evidence and written records of about 1400 B.C. the Aryans had arrived in Anatolia as aggressive, illiterate nomads, killing and terrorizing as they moved southward. After a period of several centuries they eventually subjugated the people of the earlier culture of Hatti in central Anatolia. After this conquest the Aryans adopted the cuneiform writing of the Semitic Akkadians to their south. It was from these cuneiform tablets written by the Aryans in Anatolia, who referred to themselves as the “Rulers of the Land of Hatti,” that archaeologists dubbed the Aryans of Anatolia as Hittites. Their records reveal that once the Aryans had conquered the people of Hatti, the Aryans assumed the roles of aristocracy and ruling class, enslaving many of the indigenous inhabitants who were of Mediterranean origin.
Were the Hittite Aryans a superior people? If the violent conquest of citizens of developed urban and agricultural communities by invading nomads using horses for speed and power and javelins for murder and terror is indicative of a superior people then the Hittite Aryans were superior. It is true that once they had conquered the indigenous Hattians, the Aryans ruled for several centuries, but such a people can hardly be described as the founders or inventors of culture, or as the essence of innate morality.20
The most substantial body of evidence of the early Aryans comes from India, the group of Aryans that became the subject of Lassen’s study and, in turn, so deeply affected the development of “racial theory.” In India, both archaeological and written evidence confirm the invasion and conquest of the ancient Harappan civilization by the nomadic Aryans. Although Harappan writing has been discovered it has not yet been deciphered, thus the oldest available written records of ancient India are the Aryan writings that date from about 1200 B.C. onward. These were written in a script believed to have been adopted from Mesopotamia. From archaeological excavations, and from the written records of the Aryans, we know that the Aryan invasion of India occurred in much the same gradual pattern as the Aryan invasion of Anatolia, and at approximately the same period. Since the Aryan/Indo-European entries into Greece are also dated to about this same time, it is clear that the Aryans had broken up into several groups at about this time or slightly earlier.
One extremely interesting aspect of the Aryan records from India is the description of a sacred Aryan ritual known as the Asvamedha. This ritual consisted of a specially consecrated horse being allowed to roam free for one year, followed by a band of Aryan warriors on horseback. As the horse wandered onto the territories of other peoples the ritual required that the band of Aryan warriors insist upon a payment of tribute from the inhabitants of the territory. If tribute was refused, the Aryans then broke into open warfare. If the Aryans achieved a martial victory the territory was then claimed as an addition to Aryan lands. (If the horse and warriors were still alive at the end of the year, the warriors brought the horse back to their tribal chieftain who then sacrificed it in ritual ceremony.) 21 Perhaps related to this custom, the Aryans gradually swept through the entire Harappan culture that had been built along some 950 miles of the banks of the Indus River. The archeological evidence suggests that the killing and looting of both urban and agricultural communities continued for several centuries.
It is interesting to note that the Aryans, even in the much later period when they had adopted writing, described any rebellious inhabitants as rakshas, demons who drank blood and killed infants, or yaksas who were said to eat children, or vetalas—vampires. Later Aryan legends tell of a “Demon King” named Ravana who was associated with the large island of Ceylon that lies just off the southernmost tip of India. Although the “Demon King” is portrayed as a mythical figure in Aryan legend, his connection with the southern area of India that experienced the least Aryan intrusion is interesting, especially as the later Dravidian writer Kamban portrayed Ravana as a somewhat heroic figure defending his people.22
Upon the eventual subjugation of the indigenous peoples of India, the Aryans instituted the Varna class structure (sometimes referred to as the caste system). The Varna structure (Varna literally means color) divided the population of India into four major classes. The highest class was that of the Brahmins, Aryans who were regarded as the priestly class. The second class was the Ksatriyas, Aryans regarded as warriors. The third class was the Vaisyas, the shepherds and merchants. The Vaisyas were generally of mixed Aryan/Harappan heritage, the offspring of an interbreeding that had occurred during the centuries of battle and conquest. The fourth class was the Sudra, or slaves. This class was primarily composed of the dark indigenous inhabitants of India—the Dravidians. The Varna structure was affirmed by Aryan religion in the form of a simple creation legend that supposedly explained the origins of the four classes from a primeval cosmic father, Purusha. An Aryan hymn in the Rg Veda explained, “The Brahmin was his mouth, of his arms came the Ksatriyas, his thighs became the Vaisyas, and of his feet the Sudras were born.” 23
Laws based on the Varna structure appear in an early Aryan text known as the Laws of Manu. According to these laws the Sudras had been created solely to serve the other classes. If they did not please or satisfy the wishes and demands of the higher classes, they were “to be expelled or slain at will.” The Laws of Manu declared, “A Sudra who tries to make money or to better his lot in life is distressing to the Brahmin priests … It is better to do one’s own class duty badly than to do another’s well.” (This same Aryan belief in blindly fulfilling the duty of one’s own class also justified all aggression and battles for the Aryan Ksatriya warriors, as so clearly explained in the Bhagavad Gita.) Along with the various laws against “confusion of class,” i.e., social or sexual mixing between the classes, the Laws of Manu even provided information on the exact amount of interest that each class was to pay if they borrowed any material goods or money: Brahmins 24%, Ksatriyas 36%, Vaisyas 48%, Sudras 60%. So much for later claims in Europe that usurious interest rates on money lending was a Semitic idea that was unnatural to the Aryan mind.24
The laws of Manu also declared: “Of [all] creatures the animate are said to be the best, of animate being those who live on their wits, of those who live on their wits men, and among men Brahmans are best … The very birth of a Brahman is an eternal form of dharma; born for the sake of dharma he is conformed to becoming Brahman. When a Brahman is born he is born superior to the whole Earth, he is the lord of all creatures, and he has to guard the treasury of dharma. Everything that exists throughout the world is the private property of the Brahman. By the high excellence of his birth he is entitled to everything. What he enjoys, what he wears, and what he gives away are his own private property, and it is through the mercy of the Brahman that others enjoy [anything at all] (Manu, I. 96–101).”
The second stage cultural racism of the Varna structure was further embedded in the Aryan Vedic religion in the form of beliefs about reincarnation. There is some evidence suggesting that the concept of reincarnation had existed among the people of the earlier Harappan civilization. The concept is not mentioned in the earliest Aryan writings. When it does appear as an integral aspect of the Aryan Brahman and later Hindu religious tenets, the idea of a “pie in the sky” class mobility is inherent within it. According to Brahmanic and Hindu texts, if the Sudras lived their lives fulfilling their proper class duty, i.e serving the other classes obediently, they might find their reward in a future incarnation—being born lighter and thus in a higher class.25
The vast body of records from ancient India that refer to those who would not accept the Aryan invasion and domination as bloodthirsty demons and vampires, and then using both religion and laws to support an ongoing second stage of economic racism by the Aryans, are probably the earliest written accounts of a conscious and tangible use of the various stages of cultural racism to support economic racism.
In the later written accounts from the Aryans that entered Iran we may be observing an even more basic concept underlying all Aryan racism. Although the earliest written materials from the Aryans of Iran are as late as the Seventh Century B.C., they are thought to reflect very ancient Aryan beliefs that may have been preserved through oral recitations. Although nothing as tangibly racist as the Laws of Manu are known from this earliest literate period of Iran, the religious concepts of Zoroastrianism based on the Aryan/Iranian writings in the Zend Avesta, and the later writings in the Bundahisn and Denkart, appear to reveal a form of cultural racism that was not only justified but encouraged by Aryan/Iranian beliefs about the very structure and purpose of the universe.26
The Zend Avesta is attributed to a prophet known as Zarathustra (Zoroaster) and is generally dated to about 600 B.C. According to the Avesta, in the beginning of all time there were two gods, the God of Light, Spenta Mainyu (Ahura Mazda), who represented all that is “light, good and beautiful,” and the God of Darkness, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), who represented all that is “dark, evil and repulsive.” The Avesta states that when Ahura Mazda realized that the dark and evil Ahriman existed, he created the entire universe, Earth and stars, as a battleground on which to suppress and defeat Ahriman. It was supposedly at that time that the souls of all people came to Earth to aid Ahura Mazda battle against Ahriman. But the Aryan account goes on to tell that Ahriman then invaded the “light and perfect creation” of Ahura Mazda, “mixing and mingling his darkness” with what had been pure light, thus supposedly contaminating the Earth and the universe with darkness. According to Zoroastrianism, the presence of Ahriman’s contamination could be seen in all things dark, while the presence of Ahura Mazda existed in all things light.27
In the Bundahisn and the Denkart it is stated that those who worshipped Ahura Mazda were representatives of light and goodness, while those who did not were a “dark race,” “the people of Ahriman,” “the demons and fiends of evil.” According to Zoroastrianism, the cosmic struggle between light and darkness was taking place continually, and the souls that had not been “contaminated” by the darkness of Ahriman would eventually conquer the “dark demons.”
Another legend in the Avesta might give us a glimpse into the idea of Aryan expansionism as a “Manifest Destiny” concept of some 2500 years ago. This is the legend of the Aryan Yima, known as the “son of the sun.” Yima was said to be the first ruler of the Aryan people, personally appointed by Ahura Mazda to “rule the world.” To help him achieve this wordly rule, Ahura Mazda is said to have supplied Yima with two sacred instruments—a whip and a goad. According to the legend, when Yima felt that his people were too crowded, he “extended” the Earth by one third more than it was before. He did this three times by using the whip and the goad.28
It is also interesting to note that the First Woman in the Aryan/Iranian cosmology is Jeh, “The Demon Whore Queen,” the consort of Ahriman. Not only was Jeh blamed with contaminating the First Man with her “whoredom” but as the First Woman she was said to contaminate all women who, in turn, would defile all men. Along with this Aryan attitude towards women’s sexuality, it was also said that Jeh’s first menstruation was caused by the kiss of Ahriman when he was pleased that she had defiled the First Man. Thus women’s menstrual periods were viewed by the Aryans as having been caused by the kiss of the Aryan devil, Ahriman.29
Records of the class structure of the Iranian/Persian empire as it existed in the Sassanian Period of about 250 A.D. may reveal the remnants of a class structure similar to that of the Varna structure in India. The four Iranian classes (Pistras) consisted of the highest class, the warriors who were the second class, the farmers and cattle breeders as the third class, and the artisans and laborers were the fourth. This structure did not include a slave class such as the Sudra but the Iranian Pistras class structure is strikingly similar to that of the Varna structure of India. The fact that the Pistras structure was also accompanied by a legend of a cosmic man from whom the four classes had emerged, much as they supposedly had from Purusha, has caused some scholars to state that both the class structure and the legend had been adopted from India at a later period. Although the Iranian Aryans and the Aryans of India had once been members of a single cohesive group, the idea that the Pistras class structure was adopted is quite plausible. It may well have supplanted earlier class ideas that appear in the Bundahisn. This is an even more extreme class hierarchy consisting of ten species of human. The highest species was said to be represented by the First Man, Gayo Mareta, “the pale eyed seed of the Aryan lands.” The lowest species of “man” as listed in this Aryan race/class hierarchy, was the monkey.30 Aside from any argument or discussion about which Aryan class structure was the older, it is clear that a class structure based upon physical identities was a long familiar Aryan concept.
The later Iranian religion of Manicheism, based upon Zoroastrian beliefs, also pitted Ahura Mazda, as Ohrmazd, against Ahriman. Ohrmazd was said to be “pure light,” living in heaven, while Ahriman was referred to as “The Prince of Darkness,” living in the darkest depths of the earth surrounded by his dark demons.31 The eventual spread of Iranian Manicheism to Rome, and even later to other areas of Europe, had far reaching effects upon Christian concepts of a powerful God in Heaven and an almost equally powerful Devil in Hell, a devil often referred to in Christian writings as The Prince of Darkness. In consideration of this influence of Iranian/Aryan religion upon the development of Christianity we may want to examine the accounts of Magi appearing at the birth of Jesus more closely.
Perhaps influenced by Iranian Manicheism, perhaps influenced by even earlier Aryan connections, we should note that the Twelfth Century writer Helmold described pre-Christian Slavic religion holding the same duality, worshipping Byelbog as the God of Light and Good, Chernobog as the God of Dark and Evil.32 Several mythologists and psychologists have described this duality as a natural archetype, or instinctual universal, basing their conclusions almost entirely upon Indo-European cultures.
It was perhaps the tragedy of timing (although no excuse for racist attitudes or acts can or should ever serve to apologize for basic greed and inhumanity) that knowledge of the great ancient civilization of the Harappans of India, and the even earlier civilization of the Sumerians of southern Iraq, were not discovered until the early Twentieth Century. It was not until 1924 that Marshall began his excavations that revealed the astonishing information about the ancient civilization along the Indus River. Marshall’s work, and the later work of Wheeler, turned archaeologists’ beliefs about the nature of the ancient Aryans upside down. Yet even after these discoveries, some European archaeologists and historians glorified the warlike abilities of the Aryans, some even praising how fair they were to their slaves once they had conquered their lands.
The discoveries of the Sumerian culture became known at much the same time as those of the Harappans. It is now generally believed that the earliest development of written language, and the cultural and technological accomplishments of Egypt, Harappa and Akkad, were influenced by the even earlier Sumerian civilization which began to flower about 3200 B.C. Shown not to have used either an Indo-European or a Semitic language (the two major language groups of the Near East), the Sumerian people have never been racially identified. Their language has been most closely compared to the Ural-Altaic languages of central and north Asian peoples, but even this link is extremely tenuous.33
In stark contrast to these ancient civilizations to whom we owe such a great debt of gratitude for the legacy of inventions and cultural developments to which we became heir, The Germania of Tacitus records that the Teutonic/Germanic peoples of northern Europe still lived in primitive, illiterate, tribal groups some three thousand years later. According to Tacitus, the men of the Germanic tribes thought it “tame and spiritless to accumulate slowly by the sweat of his brow what can be got quickly by the loss of a little blood … When not engaged in warfare they spend a certain amount of time hunting but much more in idleness, thinking of nothing else but sleeping and eating. For the boldest and most warlike men have no regular employment, the care of home and fields being left to the women, old men and weaklings of the family. In thus dawdling away their time they show a strange inconsistency—at one and the same time loving indolence and hating peace.” 34
It was not until the Fifth Century A.D., that the Angles and some of the Saxons, both Teutonic/Germanic tribes, left their territories in Denmark and northern Germany to become the Anglo-Saxons of Britain. While the Angles and Saxons were invading the then- Celtic island of Britain, Teutonic/Germanic tribes such as the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Suevi, Franks, Asding Vandals and Siling Vandals were invading and conquering the areas now known as France, Italy and Spain.35 A few centuries later, the groups of Dane and Swedes known as Varangians colonized along the great rivers of Russia, eventually forming an aristocracy under King Oleg in 880 A.D.
These Teutonic/Germanic invasions and conquests in central and southern Europe and western Russia resulted in an accentuated spectrum of skin and hair color in these areas even today. Although groups such as the Visigoths or Ostrogoths no longer exist as such, it is interesting to note the social and/or economic positions of the people on the lighter end of the spectrum in the various countries of Europe and in Russia. Could it have been from these invasions that we find a type of pecking order of racism that occurs as a domino effect from the lightest to the darkest people in so many areas? Are we still infested with ancient ideas of light as good and dark as bad and archaic concepts of some cosmic class structure based upon coloring?
Summary
The need to feel proud of one’s ancestry seems to be a basic drive in all human beings. The desire to establish a claim of proud antiquity appears to run deep within the human creature. From children squabbling about their parent’s jobs or status to efforts to trace a family tree to some royal line—the desire is observable.
Early Christian writers used the assertion of primacy when challenging the religious beliefs of the pagan Romans. Drawing upon the antiquity of the Hebrew Scripture (Old Testament), at the time thought to be even older than it actually is, Tertullian claimed that Christianity was the more worthwhile religion for it was as old as “the nativity of the world itself.” St. Augustine also challenged the religious beliefs of the Greeks and the Romans by claiming that the antiquity of the Old Testament was far greater than that of Greece. One might even be tempted to consider if the very existence of Jewish people, once the Christian Church had been formed, remained as the one obstacle to an unchallenged Christian claim to the Old Testament. Is the Old Testament one piece of property that even first stage cultural racism has not made possible to fully appropriate? Can this be the underlying core of anti-Semitism? There is certainly a puzzling irony in a Christian embrace of the Ten Commandments on one hand, alongside anti-Semitic assertions of innate immoralities of Jewish people on the other.
Even in the past decade, in ideas as seemingly innocent and certainly wildly speculative as theories of space travelers implanting culture on Earth, there lingers a continuing refusal by some white people to believe that people of darker races could have been responsible for the cultural and technological developments of ancient civilizations. The originator of such theories, Von Daniken, comments upon the astronomical knowledge of the Mayan peoples of the Yucatan, saying, “it is difficult to believe that it originated from a jungle people.” And in describing some ancient artifacts from Indonesia, Von Daniken writes, “One cannot imagine savages making them.” For those who cannot imagine “jungle people” or “savages” as culturally inventive or intelligently observant, Von Daniken subtly provided an alternative answer. Not only were the culture founders of Earth supposedly from outer space but they were a rather specific type of outer space being. In a passage concerning the Incas, Von Daniken provided his sole suggestion of a physical identity for these culture-founding space travelers. “Never before had they heard of gigantic white men who came from somewhere in the sky.” Dare we ask, had the remains of a great ancient civilization been discovered in some field outside Berlin or Amsterdam, would Von Daniken have been so willing to attribute it to ancient space travelers?
As Twentieth Century study of ancient history and early civilizations came more and more to focus on the periods of archaic and classical Greece as the foundations of western culture, over two thousand years of the cultural invention and developments of Sumerian, Egyptians, Harappans and Akkadians have been almost completely ignored in education. If discussed at all, the ancient beginnings of culture and technology are presented in somewhat of a chronological vacuum, seldom explained as the two to three thousand year old cultural and technological foundations of Greece and Rome that they had been. Our western education systems leave many people with the idea that only white people have a proud cultural heritage. One of the first steps that we must take in combatting racism is to ensure that students of all grade levels—from elementary to university—are more knowledgeable about the cultural histories that all races possess. Explaining that the earliest known cultural accomplishments of humankind were those initiated and developed by darker skinned peoples is vital in combatting racist ideas. Early education about the most ancient cultures mentioned above, as well as those of the Orient and the western hemisphere, that developed quite apart from white European influence, could make second stage cultural racism difficult if not impossible for children first formulating their views of the world. But this cannot be done until those who educate children are truly familiar with the non-European civilizations of the past.
Combatting first stage cultural racism may be more difficult. No race or ethnic group has been totally morally and ethically perfect. But more honest accounts of the aggressions of the Indo-European ruled Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, as well as of the Vikings, the Crusades, and the centuries of European “colonization” of much of the world, are vital in avoiding pretensions of a white European ethical or moral supremacy. This might also be accompanied by a more careful study of the records of the ethics and morals of pre- and non-Christian religions. The repeated emphasis on the importance of charity, compassion and honesty in the religious texts of Egypt and Sumer, as well as in the written and oral accounts of the early religious beliefs of many other cultures, may help to erase the erroneous assumption that white Europeans invented these ideals.
We might also become more conscious of any and all self-righteous claims of a superior morality, or accusations of a basic immorality in others. The subtle propagation of such ideas has long heralded the beginnings of more overt and violent racist acts. Many of our anti-racist efforts of the past few decades have been aimed at showing the equality of mental abilities in all races. It is perhaps time to stress the truth about the moral qualities inherent in all peoples. For as the simultaneous growth of automated production and greater population lead to a need for less labor, we may want to be wary of a return to first stage racism as a control of the labor supply.
It is perhaps divine providence of a sort that leaves us in doubt about the racial or ethnic identity of the Sumerians, the people who, at least to date, appear to have played such a major and primal role in cultural and technological development. As long as the identity of the Sumerians remains unknown, no race can state a claim of superiority based upon an ultimate primacy of either mental ingenuity or moral ethics. But whatever evidence is found in the future, it is surely time that we understood the equal capacities of all races and ethnic groups. Or will it take an actual encounter with beings from outer space to force us to see each other and ourselves as no more and no less than the fascinating life form that we are—as Earthlings.
Annotations and Bibliogray
1. Keen, Maurice. The History of Medieval Europe London: Routledge & Kegal Paul, 1968, pg. 41.
2. Ibid. See Runciman, S. A History of the Crusades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, pgs. 117–133.
3. Magnusson, M. & Palsson, H. The Vinland Sagas. London: Penquin/U.K., 1965. See Kendrick, T.D. A History of the Vikings. London, 1930.
4. Farb, Peter. Man’s Rise to Civilization. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968, pgs. 257–278. See Hanke, L. Aristotle and the American Indian. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959. Morison, S.E. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages. Oxford University Press, 1971. Morison, S.E. The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages,1974.
5. Diaz del Castillo, Bernal. The Conquest of New Spain. Trans., J. M. Cohen. London: Penquin/U.K., 1963.
6. Mannix, Daniel. Black Cargoes. New York: Viking Press, 1962. See Davidson, Basil. Black Mother. Boston: Atlantic-Little Brown, 1961. Murdock, George. Africa: Its Peoples and Their Cultures. New York: McGraw Hill, 1959. McEvedy, Colin. The Penquin Atlas of African History. New York: Penquin, 1980.
7. Goode, J. Paul, ed. Rand McNally Atlas. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1932.
8. McEvedy, Colin. The Penguin Atlas of Modern History. New York: Penquin, 1972, pg. 48.
9. Dawidowicz, L. The War Against the Jews. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1975, pg. 26. Shirer, Wm. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959, pg. 143. See Fichte, J.G. Reden an die Deutsche Nation. Berlin: 1808. Mosse, G. L. The Crisis of German Ideology. New York, 1964.
10. Basham, A.L. The Wonder That Was India. New York: Grove, 1954, pgs. 4–7.
11. Lassen, Christian. Indische Altertumskunde. Koenig. 1847–62, 42 Vols.
12. Marshall, John. Mohenjo Daro and The Indus Civilization. Probsthain, 1931, 3 Vols.
13. Wheeler, Mortimer. Harappa Journal of Ancient India III. 1947. The Indus Civilization. Cambridge, 1953.
14. de Gobineau, Arthur. Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. Paris, 1853–55. See Bidess, Michael D. The Father of Racist Ideology: The Social and Political Thought of Count Gobineau. New York, 1970.
15. Dawidowicz, L. op. cit. p. 38f. See Duhring, E.K. The Jewish Question. Berlin, 1881.
16. Shirer, Wm. Op. cit. p. 152ff. See Chamberlain, H. S. Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. New York, 1910, 4 Vols.
17. Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Houghton Mifflin, 1971, pg. 430.
18. Ibid., p. 290.
19. Childe, V. Gordon. New Light on the Most Ancient East. W.W. Norton, 1969, pgs. 189–206. Mellaart, James. Earliest Civilizations of the Near East. Thames and Hudson, 1965, pgs. 69–76.
20. Gurney, O. R. The Hittites. New York: Penquin, 1952. Garstang, J. The Land of the Hittites Constable, 1910. Mellaart, J. Anatolian Chronology in the Bronze Age. Anatolian Studies, Oxford: VII, 1957.
21. Basham, A. L. op. cit. pg. 42.
22. Ibid., p. 318, pg. 475. O’Flaherty, W. Hindu Myths. New York: Penguin, 1975, pgs. 198–204.
23. Basham, A. L. op. cit. p. 137ff. Clayton, A. C. The Rg Veda and Vedic Religion. Madras, 1913.
24. Buhler, G. “The Laws of Manu.” Sacred Books of the East. Oxford: VII, 1880.
25. Speiser, F. Living Religions of the World. Thames and Hudson, 1957, pg. 85ff. O’Flaherty, W. op. cit., pg. 251ff .
26. Zaehner, R. C. The Teachings of the Magi. George Allen & Unwin, 1956. Ibid. The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism. London, 1961. See Mills, L. H. “The Zend Avesta.” Sacred Books of the East, XXXI. Oxford, 1887. Dhalla, M. N. Zoroastrian Theology, New York, 1914. Moulton, J. M. Early Zoroastrianism. Williams and Norgate, 1913.
27. Zaehner, R. C. op. cit. Brandon, S. G. F. Creation Legends of the Near East. Hodder & Stoughton, 1963. Dresden, M. J. in Mythologies of the Ancient World. ed. Kramer, S. N. Doubleday, 1961, pgs. 333–364.
28. Dresden, M. J. op. cit. pg. 344f.
29. Zaehner, R. C. The Teachings of the Magi. op. cit. pgs. 42–46. Dresden, M.J. op. cit. pg. 343f.
30. Zaehner, R. C. op. cit. pg. 75. Dresden, M.J. op. cit. pg. 342f.
31. Speiser, F. op. cit. pgs. 451–467. Dresden, M. J. op. cit. pg. 341f. Burkitt, F. C. The Religion of the Manichees. Cambridge University Press, 1925.
32. Warner, Rex. ed. Encyclopedia of World Anthology. Phoebus, 1971, pg. 183.
33. Kramer, S. N. The Sumerians, Their History, Culture and Character. University of Chicago Press, 1963.
34. Tacitus, P. Cornelius. The Agricola and the Germania. Trans. by Mattingly, H., revised, Handford, S. A. Penguin, 1970, pg. 114. See Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars. Trans. by Graves, R. Penguin, 1957. Caesar the Conquest of Gaul. Trans. by Handford, S. A. Penguin, 1951. Tacitus, P. C. The Annals of Imperial Rome. Trans. by Grant, M. Penguin, 1956.
35. Keen, M. op. cit. p. 19.