HRDLICKA— THE PEOPLING OF ASIA. 587 



homes? Their traditions, such as they are, lean generally to the 

 west or northwest. Nothing points to a possibility that they might 

 have come across the great mountain ranges from the south; and 

 they did not come along the coast or by the sea from the southeast, 

 for the Malayan people of these territories, though mongoloid, are 

 according to all indications only extensions of the stock into these 

 regions from farther north. Everything points to the probability 

 of the invasion having proceeded from the north southward. We 

 have a very valid evidence for this in the presence in these regions 

 of the scattered Negrito. The Negrito is a weak race physically as 

 well as mentally. In both respects he is decidedly inferior to the 

 Malay. His wide scattering over the islands of southeastern Asia 

 with traces of his presence over a considerable part of the southern 

 stretches of the mainland, indicates plainly that the Negrito must at 

 one time have occupied these regions unopposed, for he could not 

 possibly have prevailed over and penetrated though any stronger 

 people. It was only subsequently that he was partly annihilated, 

 partly mixed with the yellow-brown Malays and partly scattered by 

 them into the mountains and least desirable places, as they advanced 

 into his territory from the north. And this must have been about the 

 same time that the streams of the ancestors of the present Hindu popu- 

 lation reached and settled in India, breaking up the Negrito in that 

 sphere and preventing the Malay from extending also into that 

 territory. In Hither India, in Persia and in Asia Minor there are 

 no traces of any mongoloid population except such as can be ac- 

 counted for by border extensions or through historic introductions. 



We have therefore nothing substantial on which to base a pos- 

 sible origin of the mongoloid peoples in the southern or south- 

 western parts of Asia. 



The mongoloid peoples, we have now seen, cannot be regarded 

 as having evolved in their present abodes — for nothwithstanding 

 certain speculations there is not a trace of any evidence and very 

 little probability that there has ever been anything in the central or 

 northwestern parts of the continent from which man could evolve; 

 and there are no indications that man has lived in these vast regions 

 except in the relatively recent post-glacial period. 



The mongoloid people, it is quite plain, did not originate where 



