450 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



perhaps the best reply to those who have in late years given 

 expression to gloomy forebodings regarding the ultimate fate of 

 the Caucasic races. The "yellow scare" may be dismissed with 

 the reflection that the Caucasian populations, who have inherited 

 or acquired nearly four-fifths of the earth's surface besides the 

 absolute dominion of the high seas, is not destined to be sub- 

 merged by any conceivable combination of all the other elements, 

 still less by the Mongol alone 1 . 



Where have we to seek the primeval home of this most 

 Caucasic vigorous and dominant branch of the human family? 



Cradle North On the assumption that all the primary divisions 

 have been evolved independently in separate zoo- 

 logical zones, each from its own pleistocene precursor 2 , the 

 question may be thus formulated, in what zone was our genera- 

 lised pleistocene ancestor specialised ? Where was the Caucasic 

 type constituted in all its essential features? No final answer 

 can yet be given, but this much may be said, that Africa north 

 of Sudan corresponds best with all the known conditions. Here 

 were found in quaternary times all the physical elements which 

 zoologists demand for great specialisations ample space, a favour- 

 able climate and abundance of food, besides continuous land con- 

 nection at two or three points across the Mediterranean, by which 

 the pliocene and early pleistocene faunas moved freely between 

 the two continents. 



Former speculations on the subject failed to convince, largely 

 because the writers took, so to say, the ground 



X llC v_/ H d ~ 



ternary from under their own feet, by submerging most of 



the land under a vast " Quaternary Sahara Sea," 

 which had no existence, and which, moreover, reduced the whole 

 of North Africa to a Mauritanian island, a mere "appendix of 

 Europe," as it is in one place expressly called. Then this incon- 

 venient inland basin was got rid of, not by an outflow being on 

 the same level as the Atlantic, of which it was, in fact figured as 



1 Sir W. Crooke's anticipation of a possible future failure of the wheat 

 supply as affecting the destinies of the Caucasic peoples (Presidential Address 

 at Meeting Br. Assoc. Bristol, 1898) is an economic question which cannot here 

 be discussed. 



2 p. 2 sq. . 



