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.