METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 251 



with both the Arctic and the Mediterranean 

 oceans.* The greater part of North America has 

 been under water, and has emerged. It is highly 

 probable that a large part of the Malayan Archi- 

 pelago has sunk, and that its primitive continuity 

 with Asia has been destroyed. Over the great 

 Polynesian area subsidence has taken place to the 

 extent of many thousands of feet — subsidence of 

 so vast a character, in fact, that if a continent like 

 Asia had once occupied the area of the Pacific, the 

 peaks of its mountains would now show not more 

 numerous than the islands of the Polynesian Archi- 

 pelago f 



What lands may have been thickly populated 

 for untold ages, and subsequently have disappeared 

 and left no sign above the waters, it is of course 

 impossible for us to say; but unless we are to make 

 the wholly unjustifiable assumption that no dry 

 land rose elsewhere when our present dry land sank, 

 there must be half-a-dozen Atlantises beneath the 

 waves of the various oceans of the world. But if 

 the regions which have undergone these slow and 

 gradual, but immense alterations, were wholly or 

 in part inhabited before the changes I have indi- 

 cated began — and it is more probable that they 



[* With reference to certain reclamations that have 

 been made & propos of a speculation set forth in the essay- 

 on the Aryan Question (infrd), I draw attention to the 

 fact that this passage was written twenty-nine years ago. 

 —1894.] 



[t The occurrence of this extensive subsidence is dis- 

 puted.— 1894.] 



