VI.] THE SOUTHERN MONGOLS. 171 



In the Family Tree of HOMO MONGOLICUS' the common stem 

 is seen to ramify into two main branches : the Afongolo-Tatar to 

 the left, and the Tibeto- Indo-Chinese with a secondary branch, 

 Oceanic Mongols, to the right. These two, that is, the main and 

 secondary branch to the right, which jointly occupy the greater 

 part of south-east Asia with most of Malaysia, Madagascar, the 

 Philippines and Formosa, will form the subject of 

 the present chapter. Allowing for encroachments g oiDomain 011 

 and overlappings, especially in Manchuria and 

 North Tibet, the northern " divide " towards the Mongolo-Tatar 

 domain is roughly indicated by the Great Wall and the Kuen-lun 

 range westwards to the Hindu-Kush, and towards the south-west 

 by the Himalayas from the Hindu-Kush eastwards to Assam. 

 The Continental section thus comprises the whole of China proper 

 and Indo-China, together with a great part of Tibet with Little 

 Tibet (Baltistan and Ladakh), and the Himalayan uplands includ- 

 ing their southern slopes. This section is again separated from 

 the Oceanic section by the Isthmus of Kra the Malay Peninsula 

 belonging ethnically to the insular Malay world. " I believe," 

 writes Mr Warington Smyth, " that the Malay never really ex- 

 tended further north than the Kra isthmus 2 ." 



From the considerations advanced in Ethnology, Chap, xn., 

 it seems a reasonable assumption that the lacustrine Tibetan 

 tableland with its Himalayan escarpments, all standing in pleisto- 

 cene times at a considerably lower level than at 



Tibet, the 



present, was the cradle of the Mongol division Mongol 

 of mankind. Here were found all the natural 

 conditions favourable to the development of a new variety of the 

 species moving from the tropics northwards ample space such 

 as all areas of marked specialisation seem to require ; a different 

 and cooler climate than that of the equatorial region, though, 

 thanks to its then lower elevation, warmer than that of the bleak 

 and now barely inhabitable Tibetan plateau ; extensive plains, 

 nowhere perhaps too densely wooded, intersected by ridges of 



1 Ethnology, p. 300. 



Geograph. Jouni., May, 1898, p. 491. This statement must of course be 

 taken as having reference only to the historical Malays and their comparatively 

 late migrations. 



