28 Tuer MIGRATIONS OF MAN. 
North Germany, Celtic Aryan or “ Alpine ’’ in the middle, and 
“Dolmenbuilder ’’ along the Mediterranean and in Western Ire- 
land and Great Britain. Northern Italy was also invaded and 
conquered by Aryans, who traversed the Alpine passes.* But 
throughout this tangled and confused story of bloodshed and of 
conquest it is clear that two main highways stand out distinctly 
enough. There is the Danube Valley route, by which Aryan, 
Croat, Magyar, and Turk have pressed into Central Europe, and 
there is also the North African highway leading by Spain to 
- France and England. 
Now if one marks on a map of the world all these various 
migrations, these highways of man, then it very soon appears that 
they all lead to a very interesting district. Its boundary may be 
roughly described as follows:—-From the head of the Persian 
Gulf to the Isthmus of Suez, then along the Eastern Shore of the 
Mediterranean to the Gulf of Iskanderun, across Asia Minor to 
Trebizond and the Caucasus, by the Northern Slopes of the 
Caucasus to the Caspian Sea, along the South Border of the 
Caspian to Balfrush, and thence back to the mouth of the 
Euphrates in the Persian Gulf. This tract of land where three 
continents meet is the most interesting place in the whole wide 
world. It is a meeting-place of Floras, for it contains not only 
temperate forests of oak, of cedar, and of cypress, but Alpine 
plants, grassy steppes, arid deserts, Acacia scrub, and also soil 
so fertile and so inexhaustibly bountiful that the first gardener 
digging with a fire-hardened stick could rely upon an enormous 
harvest. Mangroves and the tropical forests with bamboos are at 
anyrate not far away. ‘There are seashores swarming with shell- 
fish, mighty rivers for the fisherman: it was once full of wild 
animals of almost every description. It is the original home of 
nearly all our useful plants and of most domestic animals, at 
anyrate of those belonging to the old world. It is the zone of 
religions ; it contains Babylon and Nineveh; Persia and Egypt 
border it, and, besides all this, the great highways by which 
vagrant man has wandered even to the uttermost ends of the 
earth converge and terminate here. So the original home of 
mankind must surely be exactly where it is placed in the oldest 
book of the world. 
* Ripley Races of Europe, and Sergi /. c. 
