376 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1947 



The two last-mentioned regions and the African region very nearly 

 come to a corner in southwestern Asia, the African extending as 

 far east as Oman while the Oriental region includes the Indus Valley. 

 The Iranian Plateau intervenes as a tongue of the Palaearctic, and 

 separates not merely the Ethiopian and Oriental regions but many 

 related stocks of the higher fauna as well, including civets and ichneu- 

 mons, chevrotains, pangolins, false vampire bats, elephants, wild asses, 

 buffaloes, lemurs, and Old World monkeys. Particularly it severs the 

 present habitats of the anthropoid apes, man's nearest relatives. This 

 fact indicates some intermediate point as a probable center of distri- 

 bution, and has given rise to the hypothesis of a former continent in 

 the Indian Ocean which has been called Lemuria since the segregation 

 of the lemurs is particularly striking. Without creating a new con- 

 tinent, I think economy of movement calls for an intermediate center 

 of origin. If our areas were ranged concentrically, we should be 

 justified in supposing that the one on the periphery was the oldest and 

 that nearest the center the youngest, and this is measurably true of the 

 Australian and New World regions, but the three others are placed 

 radially and not concentrically. A center in western India or south- 

 ern Iran would therefore be nearest to the greatest number of organic 

 forms and involve the least motion in bringing them to their present 

 habitats. We might imagine one genus to have originated at one end 

 of their later habitat and spread lineally to the other, but to suppose 

 two to have done the same thing and to have covered practically the 

 same territory moving in the same direction would be less likely ; with 

 three, four, or more the unlikelihood increases rapidly. And if the 

 region indicated gave rise to the higher animal forms, the argument is 

 good that the same was the case with mankind. 



Culture centers need not necessarily have arisen near the very spots 

 which witnessed the birth of mankind, but relative nearness to that 

 spot is to be expected. Another argument for southwestern Asia, how- 

 ever, is the fact that cultures are apt to appear where peoples are sub- 

 jected to a variety of environmental influences or to racial admixture. 

 Thus, the high spot in the aboriginal Northwest Coast culture in Amer- 

 ica came just where racial and linguistic diversity was most pro- 

 nounced. The same was true of Southeastern culture, and we have to 

 remember that the Pueblo culture of our Southwest existed among 

 people belonging linquistically to four distinct stocks. Similarly we 

 find that the Maya lay between cultures and languages which are dis- 

 tinctly North American and others clearly connected with South 

 America. Incaic, and the earlier Tiahuanucuan culture arose side by 

 side with two or three somewhat diverse coastal manifestations. We 

 may add that the Maya also lived very nearly on the boundary between 

 the Nearctic and Neotropical biological regions and that two of the 

 principal subregions of the latter, the Brazilian and Chilean, are 



