What do aryan, aryanism, aryanism, arianism and aryan mean? This is a complicated question. Aryan is a word that can refer to more than one thing. It has been used over the years in an attempt to describe different groups of people with white skin. Some think of Aryans as ancient Germanic tribes who invaded Europe in the Iron Age, while others see Aryans as the ancient Indo-European peoples who came before them
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However, in The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), the belief is that the Aryans are not only ancient European tribes but also Indo-Aryans. The Aryan invasion theory is based on the idea that modern Germans descend from ancient Indo-Europeans who migrated into Northern Europe in prehistory or at least during the Bronze Age (c. 3000–1500 BCE).
The concept of an Aryan (or Aryan race) was first adopted by writers who drew upon the writings of German historians who portrayed Germans as part of an ethnically pure German race. These writers included Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), Wilhelm Marr (1792–1830), and Richard Wagner (1813–1883). The theory was popularized by Arthur de Gobineau in his Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853).
According to this racist view, there were racial divisions among the early Germanic peoples, but these divisions were abolished just prior to or during the Roman period when all Europeans were supposedly mixed together into one homogeneous race.