302 THE ARYAN QUESTION. vi 



state of things have an extremely important bear- 

 ing on the question under discussion. In the first 

 place, an insular climate must be substituted for 

 the present extremely continental climate of west 

 central Eurasia. That is an important fact in 

 many ways. For example, the present eastern eli- 

 matal limitations of the beech could not have ex- 

 isted, and if primitive Aryan goes back thus far, 

 the arguments based upon the occurrence of its 

 name in some Aryan languages and not in others 

 lose their force. In the second place, the European 

 and the Asiatic moieties of the great Eurasiatic 

 plains were cut off from one another by the 

 Ponto-Aralian Mediterranean and its prolonga- 

 tions. In the third place, direct access to Asia 

 Minor, to the Caucasus, to the Persian highlands, 

 and to Afghanistan, from the European moiety 

 was completely barred; while the tribes of eastern 

 central Asia were equally shut out from Persia 

 and from India by huge mountain ranges and table 

 lands. Thus, if the blond long-head race existed 

 so far back as the epoch in which the Ponto-Aralian 

 Mediterranean had its full extension, space for its 

 development, under the most favourable condi- 

 tions, and free from any serious intrusion of for- 

 eign elements from Asia, was presented in north- 

 ern and eastern Europe. 



When the slow erosion of the passage of the 

 Dardanelles drained the Ponto-Aralian waters into 

 the Mediterranean, they must have everywhere 



