HOLMES DISTRIBUTION OF THE HUMAN RACE. 21 



there may be some possibility that, at a very remote epoch, it 

 extended along the mountain ranges from the Himalayas to the 

 Caucasus and the Alps. 



Geological considerations suggest that, in Miocene and Pliocene 

 times, a much smaller area of land in Europe was permanently 

 raised above water than now ; that all northern Siberia was un- 

 der the ocean, and the Arctic seas extended into the basin of the 

 Caspian ; that, as the continent sunk on the south, northern Sibe- 

 ria was raised above the ocean ; that Russia, Sweden and Nor- 

 way, and Great Britain, were at times mere islands, and a large 

 part of Germany was under water ; and that the European area 

 was much less adapted to human habitation than the higher parts 

 of Asia. In the greater elevation, colder climate, and peculiar 

 conditions of high central Asia (not the most elevated and barren 

 plateaus, but the fertile river valleys and well-watered mountain 

 slopes, which are still the seats of very ancient white peoples), 

 operating, as it well may be, from Pliocene to recent times, we 

 may find a sufficient explanation of the changes of form and color 

 which make up the difference between the white type of this 

 northern area and the more or less colored races of southeastern 

 and northeastern Asia. The Miaotse now living on the eastern 

 Himalayas are described as a white people, speaking the Chinese 

 language. Such causes and conditions must have been less oper- 

 tive in the European area in the preglacial times, when warmer 

 temperatures prevailed over those parts of it that were likely to 

 be occupied by the earliest men. But the greater elevation of 

 central Asia might give rise to a colder climate and quite differ- 

 ent conditions in Pliocene times, though that elevation were then 

 considerably less than it now is. 



This eastern derivation of the white race is confirmed by all 

 that is known of the language, myths, and superstitions, common 

 to all the Indo-Germanic peoples, and traceable back to a date 

 long anterior to the later development of the Vedic and Zend- 

 Avesta religions in Asia. It is still more strongly confirmed by 

 the fact that so many of the domestic animals, the cereals, and 

 the cultivated fruit-trees, were first brought into Europe from 

 central Asia, their native habitat ; though Prof. Heer found that 

 many of the plants and seeds discovered in the Swiss lake-dwell- 

 ings more nearly resembled those of Egypt and northern Africa 



