By the late 19th century the steppe theory of Indo-European origins was challenged by a view that the Indo-Europeans originated in ancient Germany or Scandinavia – or at least that in those countries the original Indo-European ethnicity had been preserved. The word Aryan was consequently used even more restrictively – and even less in keeping with its Indo-Iranian origins – to mean "Germanic", "Nordic" or Northern Europeans. This implied division of Caucasoids into Aryans, Semites and Hamites was also based on linguistics, rather than based on physical anthropology; it paralleled an archaic tripartite division in anthropology between "Nordic", "Alpine" and "Mediterranean" races. The German origin of the Aryans was especially promoted by the archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna, who claimed that the Proto-Indo-European peoples were identical to the Corded Ware culture of Neolithic Germany. This idea was widely circulated in both intellectual and popular culture by the early twentieth century, and is reflected in the concept of "Corded-Nordics" in Carleton S. Coon's 1939 "The Races of Europe".