vi THE ARYAN QUESTION. 303 



fallen as near the level of the latter as the make of 

 the country permitted, remaining, at first, con- 

 nected by such straits as that of which the traces 

 yet ]3ersist between the Black and the Caspian, 

 the Caspian and the Aral Seas respectively. Then, 

 the gradual elevation of the land of northern 

 Siberia, bringing in its train a continental climate, 

 with its dry air and intense summer heats, the 

 loss by evaporation soon exceeded the greatly re- 

 duced supply of water, and Balkash, Aral, and 

 Caspian gradually shrank to their present dimen- 

 sions. In the course of this process, the broad 

 plains between the separated inland seas, as soon 

 as they were laid bare, threw open easy routes to 

 the Caucasus and to Turkestan, which might well 

 be utilised by the blond long-heads moving east- 

 ward through the plains, contemporaneously left 

 dry, south and east of the Ural chain. The same 

 process of desiccation, however, would render the 

 route from east central Asia westward as easily 

 practicable; and, in the end, the Aryan stock might 

 easily be cut in two, as we now find it to be, by the 

 movement of the Mongoloid brunet broad-heads to 

 the west. 



Thus we arrive at what is practically Latham's 

 Sarmatian hypothesis — if the term " Sarmatian " 

 is stretched a little, so as to include the higher 

 parts and a good deal of the northern slopes of 

 Europe between the Ural and the German Ocean; 

 an immense area of country, at least as large as 



