zas, and Ossetians. An estimated 150 to 200 million people are
native speakers of an Iranian language.[93]Some authors writing for popular consumption have kept on using the
word "Aryan" for all Indo-Europeans in the tradition of H. G.
Wells,[94][95] such as the science fiction author Poul Anderson,[96] and
scientists writing for the popular media, such as Colin
Renfrew.[97] According to F. B. J. Kuiper, echoes of "the 19th century
prejudice about 'northern' Aryans who were confronted on Indian soil
with black barbarians [...] can still be heard in some modern studies."[98]
Aryanism and racism
Invention of the "Aryan race"
Main articles: Aryanism and Aryan race
Origin
Racially-oriented interpretations of the Vedic Aryas as "fair-skinned
foreign invaders" coming from the North led to the adoption of the
term Aryan in the West as a racial category connected to a supremacist
ideology known as Aryanism, which conceived the Aryan race as the
"superior race" responsible for most of the achievements of ancient
civilizations.[9] In 1888 Max Müller, who had himself inaugurated the
racial interpretations of the Rigveda ,[99] denounced talk of an "Aryan
race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair" as a nonsense comparable to a
linguist speaking of "a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic
grammar".[100] But an increasing number of Western writers, especially
anthropologists and non-specialists influenced by Darwinist theories,
came to see the Aryans as a "physical-genetic species" contrasting with
the other human races - rather than as an ethnolinguistic
category.[101][102] During the late-19th and early-20th centuries, a fusion
of Aryanism with Nordicism - promoted by writers such as Arthur de