The word Aryan has a long history. Initially, it was used to refer to groups of people who spoke a variety of related languages, including most of the European ones and several Asian ones. Over time, however, the word took on new and different meanings. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, some scholars and others transformed the Aryans into a mythical “race” that they claimed was superior to other races. In Germany, the Nazis promoted this false notion that glorified the German people as members of the "Aryan race," while denigrating Jews, Black people, and Roma View This Term in the Glossary and Sinti (Gypsies) as “non-Aryans.”
