PREFACE. 



IN the preface to the Ethnology, which formed the first 

 volume of the Cambridge Geographical Series, a promise was held 

 out that it might be followed by another dealing more systemati- 

 cally with the primary divisions of mankind. The present volume 

 appears in part fulfilment of that promise. In the Ethnology were 

 discussed those more fundamental questions which concern the 

 human family as a whole its origin and evolution, its specific 

 unity, antiquity and primitive cultural stages, together with the 

 probable cradle and area of dispersion of the four varietal divisions 

 over the globe. Here these divisions are treated more in detail, 

 with the primary view of establishing their independent specialisa- 

 tion in their several geographical zones, and at the same time 

 elucidating the difficult questions associated with the origins and 

 inter-relations of the chief sub-groups, and thus bridging over the 

 breaks of continuity between " Man Past and Present." 



The work is consequently to a large extent occupied with that 

 hazy period vaguely called prehistoric, when most of the now 

 living peoples had already been fully constituted in their primeval 

 homes, and had begun those later developments and migratory 

 movements which followed at long intervals after the first peopling 

 of the earth by pleistocene man. By such movements were 

 brought about great changes, displacements, and dislocations, 

 involving fresh ethnical groupings, with profound modifications, 

 or even total effacements of racial or linguistic characters, and 

 complete severance from the original seats of the parent stocks. 

 In some cases the connecting ties are past recovery, so that the 

 ethnical, like the geological, record must always remain to some 

 extent a mutilated chapter in the history of the world and of 

 humanity. But in our times many of the more serious gaps have 



