The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern

Indo-Iranians Indo-Iranian peoples, also known as Indo-Iranic peoples by scholars, and sometimes as Arya or Aryans from their self-designation, were a group of Indo-European peoples who brought the Indo-Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European l ...

as an epithet of "noble".

Anthropological Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

, historical, and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of this concept.Arvidsson 2006:298 Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. The concept derives from the notion that the original speakers of the

Proto-Indo-European language Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...

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 Semites, Semitic peoples or Semitic cultures is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group.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. The isomorphism of race, culture, and language has been rejected as an erroneous conception by modern scholars. The term was adopted by various racist and antisemitic writers during the 19th century, including Arthur de Gobineau, Richard Wagner, and

Houston Stewart Chamberlain Houston Stewart Chamberlain (; 9 September 1855 – 9 January 1927) was a British-German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. His writing promoted German ethnonationalism, antisemitism, and scientific ...

, whose

scientific racism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...

influenced later Nazi racial ideology. By the 1930s, the concept had been associated with both

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...

and

Nordicism Nordicism is an ideology of racism which views the historical race concept of the "Nordic race" as an endangered and superior racial group. Some notable and seminal Nordicist works include Madison Grant's book ''The Passing of the Great Race ...

, and used to support the white supremacist ideology of Aryanism that portrayed the Aryan race as a "

master race The master race (german: Herrenrasse) is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative " Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as "''Herrenmenschen''" ("master humans"). T ...

", with non-Aryans regarded as racially inferior ('' Untermensch'', ) and an existential threat that was to be exterminated. In

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, these ideas formed an essential part of the state ideology that led to the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

History

Debates on linguistic homeland

In the late 18th century,

(PIE) was constructed as the hypothesized common

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattes ...

of the

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

. 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 Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

and began his study of Sanskrit and the Rig Veda, was astonished by the lexical similarities between

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

and other Indo-European languages such as

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

, Gothic,

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, and concluded that Sanskrit—as a descendant language—belonged to the same proto- or parent-language in the

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...

—that is PIE, as the other Indo-European languages, in his ''Third Anniversary Discourse on the Hindus'' (1786). However, the

linguistic homeland In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and '' Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is th ...

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 Chauvinism is the unreasonable belief in the superiority or dominance of one's own group or people, who are seen as strong and virtuous, while others are considered weak, unworthy, or inferior. It can be described as a form of extreme patriotis ...

causes. Some European

nationalists Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...

and

dictator A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in tim ...

s, most notably the Nazis, later attempted to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland in their country or region as racially superior.

Romanticism and Social Darwinism

The influence of

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

in Germany saw a revival of the intellectual quest for "the German language and traditions" and a desire to "discard the cold, artificial logic of Enlightenment". After Darwin's 1859 publication of ''

On the Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...

'' and publicization of the theorized model of

(PIE), the Romantics convicted that language was a defining factor in

national identity National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or to one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language". National identity ...

, combined with the new ideas of Darwinism. The

German nationalists German nationalism () is an ideological notion that promotes the unity of Germans and German-speakers into one unified nation state. German nationalism also emphasizes and takes pride in the patriotism and national identity of Germans as one ...

misemployed the scientific theory of

natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Cha ...

for the rationalization of the supposed fitness of some races over others, although Darwin himself never applied his theory of fitness to vague entities such as races or languages. The "unfit" races were suggested as a source of genetic weakness, and a threat that might contaminate the superior qualities of the "fit" races. The misleading mixture of

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable clai ...

and Romanticism produced new racial ideologies which used distorted Social Darwinist interpretations of race to explain "the superior biological-spiritual-linguistic essence of the Northern Europeans" in self-congratulatory studies. Subsequently, the German Romantics' quest for a "pure" national heritage led to the interpretation of the ancient speakers of PIE language as the distinct progenitors of a "racial-linguistic-national stereotype".Mish, Frederic C., Editor in Chief ''Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary'' Springfield, Massachusetts: 1994. Merriam-Webster p. 66

Invention of the Aryan race

Racial association of the term Aryan

The term " Aryan" was used as an

ethnocultural An ethnoreligious group (or an ethno-religious group) is a grouping of people who are unified by a common religious and ethnic background. Furthermore, the term ethno-religious group, along with ethno-regional and ethno-linguistic groups, is a s ...

self-designative identity of the

and the authors of the oldest known

religious texts Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual prac ...

of '' Rig Veda'' and ''

Avesta The Avesta () is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language. The Avesta texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by dialect, or by usage. The principal text in the lit ...

'' within the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European language family—Sanskrit and

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

, who lived in

ancient India According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. Quote: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by m ...

and

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. Although the Sanskrit ā́rya- and Iranian *arya- descended from a form *ā̆rya-, it was only attested to the Indo-Iranian tribes. Benjamin W. Fortson states that there may have been no term for self-designation of Proto-Indo-Europeans, and no such

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...

s has survived. J. P. Mallory et al. states although the term "Aryan" takes on an ethnic meaning attesting to Indo-Iranians, there is no grounds for ascribing this semantic use to the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction of lexicon ''*h₂eryós'' i.e. there is no evidence that the speakers of proto-language referred to themselves as "Aryans". However, in the 19th century, it was proposed that ā́rya- was not only the tribal self-designation of Indo-Iranians, but self-designation of Proto-Indo-Europeans themselves, a theory rejected by modern scholarships. The now-discredited and chronologically reconstructed North European hypothesis was endorsed by such scholars who situated the PIE homeland in northern Europe, which led to the association of " Proto-Indo-Europeans", originally a hypothesized linguistic population of

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago ...

n PIE speakers, with a new, imagined biological category: "a tall, light-complexioned, blonde, blue-eyed race" - supposed phenotypic traits of

Nordic race The Nordic race was a racial concept which originated in 19th century anthropology. It was considered a race or one of the putative sub-races into which some late-19th to mid-20th century anthropologists divided the Caucasian race, claiming tha ...

. The

anglicized Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influenc ...

term "Aryan" then came to be applied to this racial grouping. In any case, scholars point out that, even in ancient times, the Aryan identity as asserted in the ''Rig Veda'' was cultural,

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

, and

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, not racial; nor do the ''Vedas'' contemplate

racial purity The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal ...

. The Rig Veda affirms a ritualistic barrier: an individual is considered Aryan if they sacrifice to the right gods, which requires performing traditional prayer in the traditional language, and does not connote a racial barrier. Michael Witzel states that term Aryan "does not mean a particular ''people'' or even a particular 'racial' group but all those who had joined the tribes speaking

Vedic Sanskrit Vedic Sanskrit was an ancient language of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European language family. It is attested in the Vedas and related literature compiled over the period of the mid- 2nd to mid-1st millennium BCE. It was orally preser ...

and adhering to their cultural norms (such as ritual, poetry, etc.)". Scholars state that the historical Aryans, the

Vedic period The Vedic period, or the Vedic age (), is the period in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age of the history of India when the Vedic literature, including the Vedas (ca. 1300–900 BCE), was composed in the northern Indian subcontinent, betwe ...

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

tribes who lived in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

, and the northern

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...

—composers of the Rig Veda and Avesta—were unlikely to be blond or blue-eyed, contrary to the proponents of Aryanism and Nordicism.

North Europe hypothesis and archaeological affirmation

The racial interpretation of ''Aryans'' stems from the now-pseudoscientific culture-historical archaeology theory of

Gustaf Kossinna Gustaf Kossinna (28 September 1858 – 20 December 1931) was a German philologist and archaeologist who was Professor of German Archaeology at the University of Berlin. Along with Carl Schuchhardt he was the most influential German prehisto ...

, who asserted a one-to-one correspondence between archaeological culture and archaeological race. According to Kossinna, the continuity of a "culture" exposits the continuity of a "race" which lived continuously in the same area, and the resemblance of a culture in a younger layer to a culture from an older layer indicates that the autochthonous

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confli ...

from the homeland had migrated. Kossinna developed an ethnic paradigm in archaeology called settlement archaeology, and practiced the nationalistic interpretation of German archaeology for the

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. The obsolete North European hypothesis was endorsed by Kossinna and Karl Penka, including German nationalists, which was later used by the Nazis to condone their genocidal and racist state policies. Kossinna identified the Proto-Indo-Europeans with the

Corded Ware culture The Corded Ware culture comprises a broad archaeological horizon of Europe between ca. 3000 BC – 2350 BC, thus from the late Neolithic, through the Copper Age, and ending in the early Bronze Age. Corded Ware culture encompassed a v ...

, and placed the

Proto-Indo-European homeland The Proto-Indo-European homeland (or Indo-European homeland) was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities o ...

Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein (; da, Slesvig-Holsten; nds, Sleswig-Holsteen; frr, Slaswik-Holstiinj) is the northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Sc ...

. He argued a diffusionist model of culture, and emphasised the racial superiority of

Germanic peoples The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and e ...

over

Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

(

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...

) and French, whom he described as destroyers of culture as compared to Germanics. Kossinna's ideas have been heavily criticised for its inherent ambiguities in the method and advocacy for the ideology of a Germanic master race. The isomorphism of race, culture, and language has been rejected as an erroneous conception by modern scholars. After Kossinna's death,

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...

, and other Nazi figures such as

Alfred Rosenberg Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head o ...

, adopted his theories, including settlement archaeology, and founded the SS organization Ahnenerbe (german: Deutches Ahnenerbe) for conducting archaeological investigations of a presumed "Germanic expansion in pre-history".

Earliest utilization by race theorists

Max Müller is often identified as the first writer to mention an Aryan race in English, and began the racial interpretation of the Vedic passages based upon his editing of the ''Rigveda'' from 1849 to 1874. He postulated a small Aryan clan living on a high elevation in central Asia, speaking a proto-language ancestral to later Indo-European languages, which later branched off in two directions: one moved towards Europe and the other migrated to Iran, eventually splitting again with one group invading north-western India and conquering the dark-skinned ''dasas'' of Scythians, Scythian origin who lived there. The northern Aryans of Europe became energetic and combative and they invented the idea of a nation, while the southern Aryans of Iran and India were passive and meditative and focussed on religion and philosophy. Modern scholars reject the characterization as a racial division between dark or light skinned people, and indicate that the Rig Vedic opposition between Ārya and Dasyu is distinction between dark and light worlds, light and darkness, good and evil. Though he occasionally used the term "Aryan race" afterward, Müller later objected to the mixing of the linguistic and racial categories, and in his 1888 lecture at Oxford, he stated that "[the] science of Language and the science of Man cannot be kept too much asunder... it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of Dolichocephaly, dolichocephalic grammar", and in his ''Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas'' (1888), he writes, "[the] ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes, and hair, is a great sinner as a linguist [...]". However, increasing number of Western writers, especially among anthropologists and non-specialists influenced by Darwinist theories, contrasted ''Aryans'' as a "physical-genetic species" rather than an ethnolinguistic category, such as Arthur de Gobineau, who argued that the Aryans represented a superior branch of humanity. Gobineau attempted to identify the races of Europe as Aryan and associated them with the sons of Noah, emphasizing superiority, and categorized non-Aryan as an intrusion of the

Semitic race Semites, Semitic peoples or Semitic cultures is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group.Karl Penka and Hans F. K. Günther, Hans Günther during the nineteenth century for the promotion of

, spawning ideologies such as

and Aryanism. The connotation of the term ''Aryan'' was detached from its proper geographic and linguistic confinement as a Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European language family by this time. In 1853, Arthur de Gobineau published ''An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races'', in which he originally identified the Aryan race as the white race, and the only civilized one, and conceived cultural decline and miscegenation as intimately intertwined. According to him, northern Europeans had migrated across the world and founded the major civilizations, before being diluted through racial mixing with indigenous populations described as racially inferior, leading to the progressive decay of the ancient Aryan civilizations. The inequality of races and the notion of a "superior race" was universally accepted by the scholars of this era, therefore race was referred to "national character and national culture" beyond biological confinement. In 1899,

published what is described as "one of the most important proto-Nazi texts", ''The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century'', in which he theorized an existential struggle to the death between a superior German-Aryan race and a destructive Semitic people, Jewish-Semitic race. In 1916, Madison Grant published ''The Passing of the Great Race'', a polemic against interbreeding between "Aryan" Americans, the original Thirteen Colonies settlers of British-Scots-Irish-German origin, with immigrant "inferior races", which according to him were, Poles, Czechs, Jews, and Italians. The book was a best-seller at the time. In 1920, H. G. Wells's bestseller ''The Outline of History'', used the term in the plural ("the Aryan peoples"). In 1922, in ''A Short History of the World (H.G. Wells), A Short History of the World'', Wells depicted a highly diverse group of various "Aryan peoples" learning "methods of civilization" and then, by means of different uncoordinated movements that Wells believed were part of a larger dialectical rhythm of conflict between settled civilizations and nomadic invaders that also encompassed Aegean and Mongol peoples ''inter alia'', "subjugat[ing]" – "in form" but not in "ideas and methods" – "the whole ancient world, Semitic, Aegean and Egyptian alike".

Nazism

Subhumans and delineation of the term Aryan

The Racial policy of Nazi Germany, racial policies of Nazi Germany, the Nuremberg Laws, 1935 Nuremberg Laws, and the Nazi racial theories, racist doctrines of Adolf Hitler considered Jews and Slavs, including Poles, Czechs, Russians, Romani people, Roma and Serbs, "racially inferior sub-humans" (german: Untermensch, lit=sub-human); the term was also applied to mixed race and black people. However, a definition of Aryan that included all non-Jewish Europeans was deemed unacceptable, and the Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy of 1933 bought together important Nazi intellectuals Alfred Ploetz, Fritz Thyssen, and Ernst Rüdin to plan the course of Nazi racial policy, defining an Aryan as one who was "tribally related to the German blood and descendant of a ''Volk''". Nazi scholars endorsed the North European hypothesis in an effort to prove PIE was originally spoken by an "Aryan master race", and associated the Semitic languages with "inferior races". Historical revisionism around race was disseminated through Ahnenerbe, a Nazi think tank. Hitler regularly invoked Ernst Haeckel#Assessments of potential influence on Nazism, Ernst Haeckel's Social Darwinist concepts of higher evolution (german: Höherentwicklung), struggle for existence (german: Existenzkampf), evolution (german: Entwicklung), in his Nazi racial ideology, which is the central theme in the chapter "Nation and Race" of ''Mein Kampf''. Haeckel's Social Darwinism was also praised by Alfred Ploetz, founder of the German Society for Racial Hygiene, who made him an honorary member of the eugenic organization.

Connotation of the term Aryan in Nazi racial theories

Nazi racial theories considered the "purest stock of Aryans" the Nordic race, Nordic people, identified by Biological anthropology, physical anthropological features such as tallness, white skin, blue eyes, narrow and straight noses, Dolichocephaly, doliocephalic skulls, prominent chins, and blond hair, including Scandinavians, Germanic peoples, Germans, English people, English and French.

Nazi eugenics and Nordic supremacy

In 1938, the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture, Reich Ministry of Education released the German biology curriculum which reflected the curriculum developed by the National Socialist Teachers League and emphasized the Social Darwinst interpretation of the evolution of human races. :de:Hans Weinert, Hans Weinert, who had joined the SS and worked for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology publishing theories of Nazi eugenics and racial evolution, claimed the

as a highly evolved race, and Aboriginal Australians as being the lowest rank in the racial hierarchy. Hans F. K. Günther was considered to be the most influential Nazi anthropologist, although he was not professionally trained. Günther's racist writings on Nordicism was suffused with the ideas of Gobineau, who believed the Nordic race had originated in northern Europe and spread through conquest; this had expressed approval of the Nazi eugenics policies, and had critical influence on scientific racism. Günther's theories gained acclamation from Hitler, who later included his books as a recommended reading material for the Nazi Party#Membership, Nazi Party members. After the Nazis came to power, selective breeding for supposed Aryan traits such as athleticism, blond hair and blue eyes was encouraged, while the "inferior races" and people with Physical disorder, physical or mental illness were deemed "life unworthy of life" (german: lebensunwertes Leben, lit= lives unworthy of life) and many were interned in concentration camps.

Ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust

The culmination of Nazi eugenicist and racial hygiene programs of sterilization and extermination aimed at creating an "master race, Aryan master race" and eliminating "inferior non-Aryan types" such as Jews, Slavs, Poles, Roma, homosexuals, and the Disability, disabled. Nazi Germany introduced the Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany, Anti-Jewish legislation that systemically Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, discriminated against Jews by requiring Aryan certificate, Aryan certification for a German Reich citizen. After Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany#Nazi Germany (1933–1945), Chancellor of Germany, the public policies of Nazi Germany became increasingly hostile towards supposed "inferior types", particularly Jews, who were considered to be the highest manifestation of the Semitic race, and segregation of Jewish ghettos in Europe, Jews in ghettos culminated in the policy of extermination the Nazis called the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. The Persecution, state-sponsored persecution systematically murdered over Holocaust victims, six million Jews, 5.7 million Slavs, 1.8–3 million Poles, disabled people, including children through mass shooting, Gas chamber#Nazi Germany, gas chamber, gas van, and Nazi concentration camps, concentration camps, in the process known as the Holocaust. The Aryan race belief was used by the Nazis to justify the persecution, depicting the victims as the "antipode and eternal enemy of the Aryans".

White supremacy

Many White Supremacist, white supremacist Neo-Nazism, neo-Nazi groups and Prison gangs in the United States, prison gangs, notably in the Racism in the United States, United States, view themselves as part of an Aryan race, including the Aryan Brotherhood, Aryan Nations, Aryan Guard, Aryan Republican Army, White Aryan Resistance, Aryan Circle, Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, and White nationalism#Notable organizations, others.

Neo-pagan movements

Indo-European history, real and feigned, plays a significant role in various Modern paganism, neo-pagan movements.

Russian neo-paganism

The Slavophilia, Russian Slavophile movements borrowed various discrete ideas of a presumed "prestigious Aryan origin" of Europeans from Nazi Germany. Although Russian Orthodoxy was the primary religious influence on Russian nationalists, the Papal primacy, primacy of Christianity was treated skeptically by these groups, who later began searching for an ancient text to rationalize a "return to the origins". Various writers in the newspaper ''Zhar-Ptitsa'' showed interest in a purported manuscript—the Book of Veles—which supposedly dated to the first century BCE. F. A. Izenbek, a White Army officer, alleged the discovery of this manuscript during the Russian Civil War. However one of Izenbek's friends, Iurii Miroliubov, had forged the manuscript, and used the term "Vedism" to describe Russian neo-paganism; he later appropriated the Indian religious scripture, the Vedas, to aggrandize the manuscript. Nationalistic white Russian émigrés and neo-Pagans consider the manuscript to be an authentic historical source of Slavic antiquity, who claim a direct link between "ancient Aryans" and themselves as Slavs. However, the manuscript is declared literary forgery by scholars.

Goddess movement

With the rise of first-wave feminism, various authors of the Goddess movement cast the ancient Indo-Europeans as a "patriachal, warlike invaders who destroyed a utopian prehistoric world of feminine peace and beauty" in various Historical drama, archaeological dramas and books such as Riane Eisler's ''The Chalice and the Blade'' (1987) and Marija Gimbutas's ''Civilization of the Goddess'' (1991).

References

Notes Bibliography * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Aryan Race Anthropological categories of peoples Historical definitions of race Indo-European studies Nazi terminology Pseudoscience White supremacy