In Gimbutas's case I (Arvidsson) think that many readers of her work have sensed that there is another agenda behind her theoretical constructions, i… - Stefan Arvidsson

In other words, Müller presented the European cradle as self-m ade . The ideological victory was a given: if Hellas was to function as the example for a culturally high-standing German nation-state, it was essen­ tial that the model not have been constituted by foreign cultures. Influences from neighboring peoples that could not be denied (especially the alphabet) were explained by the claim that the Greeks, on their own, had imported the item in question. With the Greek war of independence (1821-29), where the Greeks fought the Ottoman Empire, Müller’s isolation of the Hellenes from the surrounding peoples became timely, and for the bourgeoisie, with their classical schooling, it seemed increasingly absurd that Greece and the West ever could have received anything valuable from the Orient. 51

The most severe attack against Müller came during the 1850s from the anthropologist Robert G. Latham, who argued that physical appearance and intelligence level must become the basis for the classification of humanity. It cannot be reasonable, according to Latham, to link a people like the Indians, who have never conquered anything, with the European world rulers. And a people who have produced Shakespeare cannot have much in common with one that has not accomplished anything more sublime than the Ramayana. Latham therefore declared that the Indians and Europeans belonged to separate races: the Europeans belonged to the Japhetic race, while the Indians belonged to the Mongolian. 47

The discourse about the Indo-Europeans was also dependent on the most powerful movement of the nineteenth century, imperialism. To an even greater extent than concerned the view of Semites, racism was present in the scholars' depictions of how the Indo-European colonizers in ancient times conquered a dark, primitive original population. The Indo-Europeans were presented as humanity's cultural heroes, who, undefeated throughout history, spread knowledge and ruled over lower peoples, and who therefore seemed predestined to remain rulers even in the future. The “Aryan” colony of India came to have a special place in this context. The scholars' racist at­titude made them seek evidence in the Vedic texts that the ancient Aryan immigrants (aryas) had had a racial consciousness, and that the caste society was a kind of apartheid system from the very beginning. But reference to the higher castes as “Aryan brothers" could also be used for humanitar­ian aims. By referring to the relationship between Europeans and Indians, people imagined that they could more easily reform the Hindu culture and modernize or “Indo-Europeanize" Indian society. (310-11)