The Breeding-places of the Mongol and the Negro

(1) It is commonly accepted as a maxim that Asia and America are the domain of the Mongol and the Mongoloid, as Africa is the domain of the Negro. But, like most general-isations, it is conditioned by serious exceptions. Arabia and Asia Minor are altogether Semitic, and the Semites are Caucasians; whilst the discovery last century that Sanskrit, the original and basis of so many new Hindu dialects, and Persian are cousins to Greek and English has gradually claimed all Southern Asia east of the Euphrates and north of the Persian Gulf for the same division of mankind.

(2) But it is becoming no less clear that the west and east and north of Asia were at one time also Caucasian; and thus nothing but the central plateau of Asia, before its gradual desiccation and elevation beyond the zone of temperature that affords sustenance to vast numbers, is left as the true and original domain of the Mongoloid. Bastioned by mountains, and at first surrounded by seas, it served for thousands of years as an isolated area for the production of that special type, as the Indo-African Continent that the Indian Geological Survey think stretched in late Tertiary times across the Indian Ocean served to breed the Negro. As this bridge sank and India and Indonesia united with Asia, three isolated areas, trans-Saharan Africa, Papuasia, and page 19Australia evolved three negroid varieties with traces of a primeval dwarf negroid, the Negritto.

(3) The negroid we may conclude has always remained in situ; he has never become a migrant, and never mastered the art of navigation. It was only comparatively late in the history of mankind that the Mongoloid broke from his bastioned plateau, and still later that in two instances he became maritime; not, in fact, till late neolithic times did he venture out of his domain or approach the sea. And nothing can account for the movement but the growing impossibility of finding food for his masses in his birthplace.

The Caucasians the Migratory Division of Mankind

(4) It is different with the Caucasian. Climatic changes or earth-movements must have early forced upon him the migratory habit. He is probably, with his tall frame, long head, and hair elliptical in section, a primeval offshoot of the African Negro, isolated from his original by some such fence as the growing desiccation of the Sahara. And his first breeding-ground was the region around the Mediterranean, which was in Tertiary and early Quaternary times bridged in three places, Gibraltar, across Sicily, and across the Isles of Greece.

(5) In North Africa and Southern Europe the prevailing type is an olive-complexioned, dark-haired variety of the long-head. But there is liberally sprinkled not only on the northern shores of the Mediterranean, but amongst the Berbers of North Africa, a blue-eyed and fair-haired long-head. And the large numbers of this type are not to be accounted for merely by the intrusion of the Goths and Vandals into the Mediterranean region during the late Roman Empire. Long before the Goth, long before the Roman, appeared on the scene, there is evidence of a light-complexioned race page 20around the Mediterranean. On the Egyptian temples of fifteen centuries before our era there is figured a people with red cheeks, blue eyes, and red or light hair; and this is called Libyan or North African. Nay, Professor Flinders Petrie describes the "new race" whose remains he discovered near Abydos, in Egypt, some ten years ago, as "very tall and powerful, with strong features, a hooked nose, long pointed beard, and brown wavy hair, closely akin to the allied races of the Libyans and the Amorites"; and the graves out of which the remains came are five thousand years old. And away to the west, in the Canary Islands, one type of Guanche that has been found among the human remains, in their caves, is tall, long-headed, and light in complexion, eyes and hair. No wonder that the Kabyles, the Highlanders of Algeria, are in many cases fair-complexioned and blonde-haired, and that the Berbers of North Morocco are often fair, blue-eyed, and yellow-bearded, whilst down into the Sahara many of the Tuaregs are of the same type.

The Evolution of the Northern Blonde and his
Appearance in the South

(6) It is more than likely that this blonde Caucasian was evolved in a region more dominated by winter and its snows than by summer. The blanching of the epidermis was doubtless due primarily to the reduction in vitality produced in the extremities and the outer layer by excessive cold, where tallowy or oily foods did not, as in the Esquimaux and the Fuegians, keep the liver and the adjacent pigment-forming organs abnormally large; this at least is the primary cause of the white winter plumage or fur of Arctic animals that change their coats with the season; later the selection of evironment may have aided; but, with the humans, sex-page 21ual selection must have been ultimately all-powerful, once the majority of them had taken on the blonde appearance.

(7) That so many of this type should have found their way so far south as North Africa, we may take it for granted, is due to some natural compelling cause, such as climatic change. Now, the most striking change in climate was that produced by the great ice-sheet that twice, at least, crept far southwards over Europe and twice receded. During the advance of the glaciation, Northern Europe must have been difficult for man to live in, and great migrations southwards resulted. To these are doubtless due the inter-minglings of blonde and brunette long-heads in the region of the Mediterranean, and to the last advance, perhaps, also the short-statured broad-head of North Africa being much the same as the Alpine round-head that came in from the East along the mountains of Central Europe. To the glacial stimulus advancing and receding is also doubtless owing the migratory nature of the Caucasian, whilst his early development of maritime capacity has natural causation in the island seas round which he was bred.

A Wave of Dark-haired Caucasians overflowed
Southern Asia and Australia in the Old Stone Age

(8) Even in the old stone age, more than a hundred thousand years ago, he found his way into Southern Asia, into India and Ceylon, the Indo-Chinese Peninsula and Indonesia. For the greater part of the population of India had been Caucasianised long before the Sanskrit-speakers arrived, most of the primitive negroids and the late mongoloid migrations having been absorbed. And in the Veddahs of the hill region of Ceylon we have a waif left of the ancient palaeolithic wave that swept ever the coasts of the East, and overflowed into Indonesia, Papuasia and Australia. The page 22plentiful wavy hair, long head, and largely European features to be found amongst the peoples of those parts indicate a Caucasian element. And that it entered into them in palaeolithic times, when it used only rude chipped weapons and could not yet migrate over broad seas, is evident from the palaeolithic and unmaritime culture of the Australians and the hill-Veddahs. It is not unlikely that much of the Caucasianism of the pre-Mongol element in the north and the east of Asia is also palaeolithic. The absence of the blonde type from the Australians and the palaeolithic peoples of Southern Asia may be due to the predominance of the original element in them; but it is more likely that this primeval palaeolithic wave eastwards from the Mediterranean was due to the intrusion of the blondes driven before the advancing ice-sheet, and consisted solely of the brunettes that that wave displaced.

In the Caucasian Migrations into Southern Asia
during the new stone age blondes appear

(9) The neolithic migrations into Asia, many thousands of years ago, undoubtedly included many of the blonde type. On the southern route some of them might have come from North Africa; on the northern route they would be drawn from their original home, North Europe. On the coast of Syria the Amorites are said to have been of the red or blonde type. And though all Irania, which covers not only modern Persia, but Afghanistan and Beluchistan, had the round head of the European Alpine type as its primary stratum of population, this was overlaid at least in the east by a blonde type that spoke Aryan dialects, the cousins of English. Away on the slopes of the Hindu Kush and on the Pamir plateau the tall blonde is not uncommon, with ruddy cheeks, brown, blue, or grey eyes, and full beard of light, wavy or curly hair. And page 23down in the south-east of Asia, in Burmah and Indo-China and Southern China we again encounter people that have often the oval face and the regular European features, and not infrequently the fair skin, as, for example, the Kakhyens about the head-streams of the Irawadi, the Kiu-tse of Annam and the Man-tse of Southern China.

(10) It is this Southern Caucasian wave that, when it reached Indonesia, took to the sea again and carried its language and maritime habits to Madagascar, and down through the Malay Archipelago; it had probably absorbed much negroid blood before it was itself absorbed by the mongoloid wave that swept down the peninsula, and that became, with the new elements that modified it, the Malay.

But the Caucasian Blondes are more Predominant
along the Northern Route

(11) But it is on the northern route that there is most evidence of the lighter Caucasian strain. The light colour and European features of the Turks and the Finns is not due merely to their absorbing Europeans in later times in Europe. At the beginning of our era the Finnish tribes had not yet reached Finland, but dwelt east of the Gulf of Finland, whilst it is only in recent historical times that the Turks invaded Europe. Long before either of these races reached the Ural Mountains or the Caspian Sea they had grown light in colour and often blue-eyed, in short had become Caucasianised. They are, therefore, classed as a separate division of the Mongoloids, as the Ural-Altai division. The Turks, though in their original home the Altai Mountains, about the headwaters of the Yenesei, as much influenced in appearance by the blonde Caucasians as their neighbours the Finns were, have become more brunette in their progress south-westwards page 24through contact with the darker type of the Caucasians. But the Finn has become as blonde and blue-eyed as the Scandinavian, in spite of his round Mongol head and his Turanian language. The steppes between the Central Asiatic plateau and the Urals were evidently in prehistoric times as full of Caucasians, and those chiefly blonde Caucasians, as the steppes of Russia were. And it was by their gradual absorption that the Turks and Finns on their progress westward have become so European in appearance whilst retaining the Mongol head.

(12) Farther east, too, on the boundary between Siberia and Mongolia, to the south and east of Lake Baikal, relics of a long-headed race have been found, skulls which differ completely from the round heads of the Mongols now universal there. The absence of European features amongst this people now means that the long-heads were driven out by their Mongol conquerors. In Manchuria, on the contrary, the Dauri, who live on the Amur, alongside the Manchus, have a strong intermixture of Caucasian' blood; they are tall, oval-faced, regular-featured, narrow-cheeked, large-nosed, and brown-haired. And when we get to Korea, we find the upper classes and many in the south marked by the light eyes, large nose, fair skin, full beard, brown hair, and tall stature of the North European. And in the early Chinese records there are numerous references to white tribes, with whom the emperors had to deal. The Wusuns, a nation in Central Mongolia, are oftenest spoken of, and they are described in the annals of the Han dynasty as a tall, fair race, with red hair and green eyes. Against them, amongst others, the Great Wall was erected early in the second century before our era. They were driven westwards, first into Dzungaria on the boundary between Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, and finally into the basin of the Tarim River to the east of the Thian Shan Mountains.

(13) Thus have we brought our Caucasians in two places to the shores of the Pacific in neolithic as well as in palaeolithic times; and on the northern route at least many of them are of the blue-eyed, blonde type of Northern Europe. Was the ocean an obstruction they could not master?