Aryan

The hypothetical parent language of an ancient people believed to have lived between Central Asia and Eastern Europe and to have reached Persia and India in one direction and Europe in another, some time in the 2nd century BC, diversifying into the various Indo-European language speakers of later times.

In Nazi Germany before the World War II, full rights were granted only to people classified as Aryans, who could trace their Aryan descent back for at least 100 years. The aim of this policy was anti-Semitic and was a cardinal feature of Adolf Hitler's conception of a Third Reich comprising only white-skinned, blue-eyed, fair-haired, or pure ‘Nordic’ peoples.

At the time, an estimated 600,000 Jews lived in Germany and persecution of so many German citizens required some ethnological justification. The hypothesis that the German people were the purest modern representatives of the Aryan race was derived from the teachings of the French anthropologist Joseph Arthur, Compte de Gobineau, who explained history as an eternal conflict between the long-headed, or dolichocephalic, and the broad-headed, or brachycephalic, races. At the apex of the world's races he placed the big, blond, dolichocephalic Aryan race. Later writers relegated the Jews, or Semitic races, to the ‘inferior’ mulatto class. The theory has since been completely discredited.

The term Aryan derives from Sanskrit arya, originally a national name indicating the Brahmans (highest caste), and later meaning ‘of noble or good family’.