and the Natural History of Man. 291 



are given at length in the work,* of which this paper is de- 

 sjo-ned to make known the principal conclusions with respect to 

 philology, ethnography, and the natural history of man, — it 

 will be seen that the countries more immediately surrounding 

 that central point, namely, Assyria, Chaldea, Egypt, Phoenicia, 

 and Asia Minor, are those whose inhabitants were in the earliest 

 ages possessed of the highest degree of culture ; whilst, on the 

 t)thcr hand, at the points most distant from the same centre, the 

 Papuans, the Hottentots, the Esquimaux, and other savage 

 races, have degenerated almost to the lowest state compatible 

 with the retention of rational endowments. 



A second principle resulting from the same hypothesis is, 

 that (except where invasions have introduced foreign tribes, as 

 in the case of the Hindoos in India,) the more degenerate races 

 whose positions are considerably removed from the centre, must 

 have derived their origin from that centre through the me- 

 dium of the more civilized people geographically situate be- 

 tween it and them, and must consequently have received from 

 them their languages, their religion, and their customs; al- 

 though, in consequence of the recession from the centre of these 

 more'degenerate races, and their gradual corruption and debase- 

 ment, the changes in all those particulars, as well as in tlieir 

 physical structure and appearance, may have become such as to 

 render it a task of the utmost difficulty to trace the resemblance 

 and the connexion between them and their more civilized ances- 

 tors. Thus the primitive inhabitants of the whole of Southern 

 and Eastern Asia must have sprung from ancestors who origi- 

 nally occupied the countries situate to the northward of the Per- 

 sian Gulf; so the aborigines of Africa must be descended from 

 the earliest settlers of Arabia, Ethiopia, and Egypt ; whilst the 

 tribes who peopled the islands and continent of Europe, and 

 who from thence also spread themselves eastward into the north- 

 ern portions of Asia, must have had their origin in Asia Minor. 

 It is also to be inferred, that, where different races have, in 

 their corresponding removal from the centre, undergone a cor- 

 responding degradation, at the same time that they have been 

 subjected to the operation of similar physical conditions, the 

 results will be analogous in those races, both with respect to 

 • Originea BibUcce, or Researches in Primeval History, vol. i. London, 1834. 



