268 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



extreme north their territory stretches from the shores of the 

 Pacific with Japan and parts of Sakhalin continuously westwards 

 across Korea, Siberia, Central and North Russia to Finland and 

 Lapland. But its southern limits can be indicated only approxi- 

 mately by a line drawn from the Kuen-lun range westwards 

 along the northern escarpments of the Iranian plateau, and round 

 the southern shores of the Caspian to the Mediterranean. This 

 line, however, must be drawn in such a way as to include Afghan 

 Turkestan, much of the North Persian and Caucasian steppes, 

 and nearly the whole of Asia Minor, while excluding Armenia, 

 Kurdestan, and Syria. 



Nor is it to be supposed that even within these limits the 



North Mongol territory is everywhere continuous. 



Contact with In East Europe especially, where they are for the 



most part comparatively recent intruders, the 

 Mongols are found only in isolated and vanishing 

 groups in the Lower and Middle Volga basin, the Crimea, and 

 the North Caucasian steppe, and in more compact bodies in 

 Rumelia, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Throughout all these districts, 

 however, the process of absorption or assimilation to the normal 

 European physical type is so far completed that many of the 

 Nogai and other Russian " Tartars," as they are called, the Volga 

 and Baltic Finns, the Magyars, Bulgars, and Osmanli Turks, 

 would scarcely be recognised as members of the North Mongol 

 family but for their common Finno-Turki speech, and the historic 

 evidence by which their original connection with this division is 

 established beyond all question. 



In Central Asia also (North Irania, the Aralo-Caspian and 

 Tarim basins) the Mongols have been in close contact with 

 Caucasic peoples probably since the New Stone Age, and here 

 intermediate types have been developed, by which an almost 

 unbroken transition has been brought about between the yellow 

 and the white races. 



It is often assumed that these Central Asiatic lands could not 



have been occupied by Neolithic man, because of 



Ma" in* Siberia tne g reat inland seas, which formerly flooded the 



and Mongolia. w hole region, and drained through the Obi north to 



the Arctic Ocean, till a new outlet was found to the Mediterranean 



