HRDLICKA— THE PEOPLING OF ASIA. 543 



or drove to least desirable spots whatever there may have been of 

 the Negrito and of the " australoids," except in Australia; in the 

 east they impinged upon the yellow-brown man coming from the 

 north and stopped him, mixed with him along the lines of inter- 

 penetration, and admixed with him invaded and peopled parts of 

 the Philippines, part of Micronesia, and the Polynesia. 



Resuming now the subject of the peopling of Asia, it may be 

 briefly outlined as follows : 



The question of man's origin in southeastern Asia or the adjoin- 

 ing lands is still doubtful ; man may possibly have originated in some 

 more western portion of the northern or semi-tropical belt. 



No trace of man corresponding in type and antiquity to the 

 Heidelberg or the Neanderthal Man of Europe has as yet been 

 discovered in any part of Asia, and it may be regarded as more 

 than doubtful whether these early forms could have reached these 

 regions. Judging from some archaeological facts and from the 

 presence of the " australoid " type in the south seas, it seems prob- 

 able that western man reached these regions at a period correspond- 

 ing to the later Paleolithic epoch from Europe, westernmost Asia or 

 northern Africa. 



All that part of the continent of Asia north of the Himalayas 

 was unpeopled until, say, twenty to fifteen thousand years ago, 

 An extension northward of any possible earlier man from the 

 south would have been prevented partly by the mountains and 

 partly by a semi-desert condition of the great loess areas of China. ^ 



The earliest people of whom there is any evidence who reached 

 and peopled the southern coasts and as yet undetermined parts 

 of the Asiatic mainland and what are now the ofif-lying islands, 

 were the Negrito of probably African derivation. 



Not long before or after the Negrito there was an extension 

 into the South Seas of the " australoid " strain of western popula- 

 tion. The rest of the population of southern Asia is the result of 

 wave upon wave of extension and invasion from the west, north- 

 west and the northern inland regions, with subsequent admixtures. 



1 That such a condition of these vast regions did exist during the earlier 

 part of the Quaternary, is attested by the results of paleontological and 

 geological researches of Dr. J. G. Anderson, of the Geological Survey of 

 China. 



