240 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



took place at an early, but unascertained period, probably 

 somewhat more than two thousand years before the Christian 

 era." Thus we see that this family of mankind also touches 

 upon the Great Asiatic Plateau, and, like the preceding, has 

 traditions tracing its origin to that region. 



The territory which ancient history represents as in the 

 possession of the Syro-Arabian races is comparatively limited ; 

 but it adjoins on the north to the Euxine and Kurdistan, 

 another portion of the skirts of the Asiatic table-land. 



From the African and American families we have no report 

 as to their primeval history ; but in the centre of the great 

 regions occupied by each, we see a vast table-land, which may 

 have been its first seat, and from which there may have been a 

 spreading out into lower regions, as seems to have been the 

 case in Asia. 



It therefore appears that, if, at a time when the sea was 

 relatively to the land two thousand feet higher than at present, 

 six centres of human population had been established, four of 

 them on various parts of the Asiatic table-land, one on that of 

 Central Africa, and another on either the Andean or Mexican 

 table-land, the phenomena of their subsequent diffusion in the 

 course of the time during which the sea was subsiding, and 

 the dry land enlarging, might have been expected to be pre- 

 cisely what we have seen. That such is, indeed, a near approach 

 to the actual history of primeval humanity, seems far from 

 unlikely. It is a circumstance worthy of special note, that 

 Europe is regarded by all ethnologists as a region which has 

 been colonized from Asia. If there had existed in Europe a 

 language-distinguished variety of mankind, having no con- 

 nexion with any table-land, it would have been a serious 

 deduction from the probability of this hypothesis. But Europe 

 being at once a low, therefore a comparatively recently-exposed 

 region, and one which has notoriously received its people in 

 successive migrations from the east, is a relation of facts 

 obviously favourable to the view here set forward. An im- 

 portant zoological fact perfectly harmonizes with it, that in 

 near local connexion with the three great table-lands in ques- 

 tion are the three seats of the Quadrumana on earth, the 

 order of animals with which the human race is most in affinity. 



It will be well, however, to keep in mind that philological 

 researches do not as yet enable us to pronounce authoritatively 

 whether mankind have had one origin, or three, or six. It 

 only appears that the six families enumerated, besides many 



