This usage was common among knowledgeable authors writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An example of this usage appears in "The Outline of History", a bestselling 1920 work by H. G. Wells. In that influential volume, Wells used the term in the plural ("the Aryan peoples"), but he was a staunch opponent of the racist and politically motivated exploitation of the singular term ("the Aryan people") by earlier authors like Houston Stewart Chamberlain and was careful either to avoid the generic singular, though he did refer now and again in the singular to some specific "Aryan people" (e.g., the Scythians). In 1922, in "A Short History of the World", Wells depicted a highly diverse group of various "Aryan peoples" learning "methods of civilization" and then, by means of different uncoordinated movements that Wells believed were part of a larger dialectical rhythm of conflict between settled civilizations and nomadic invaders that also encompassed Aegean and Mongol peoples "inter alia", "subjugat" – "in form" but not in "ideas and methods" – "the whole ancient world, Semitic, Aegean and Egyptian alike".