INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 165 



ages, and even long after that period, the dependence of the 

 temperature of the air on latitude was wholly unknown, and 

 the relations of east and west then constituted the whole ther- 

 mic meteorology of the Greeks. The countries lying to the 

 east were regarded as near the sun sun- lands, and the in- 

 habitants as " colored by the near sun-god in his course with 

 a sooty luster,* and their hair dried and crisped with the heat 

 of his rays." 



Alexander's campaigns first gave occasion to a comparison, 

 on a grand scaled between the African races which predomin- 

 ated so much in Egypt with the Arian races beyond the Ti- 

 gris and the ancient Indian Aborigine^, who were very dark 

 colored, but not woolly haired. The classification of mankind 

 into varieties, and their distribution over the surface of the 

 earth, which is to be regarded rather as a consequence of his- 

 torical events than as the result of protracted climatic rela- 

 tions (when the types have been once firmly fixed), together 

 with the apparent contradiction between color and places of 

 abode, were subjects that could not fail to produce the most 

 vivid impression on the mind of thoughtful observers. We 

 still find, in the interior of the great Indian continent, an ex- 

 tensive territory, which is inhabited by a population of dark, 

 almost black aborigines, totally different from the lighter-col- 

 ored Arian races, who immigrated at a subsequent period. 

 Among these we may reckon, as belonging to the Vindhya 

 races, the Gonda, the Bhilla in the forest districts of Malava 

 and Guzerat, and the Kola of Orissa. The acute observer 

 Lassen regards it as probable that, at the time of Herodotus, 

 the black Asiatic races, " the Ethiopians of the sun-rising," 

 which resembled the Libyans in the color of their skin, but 

 not in the character of their hair, were diffused much fur- 

 ther toward the northwest than at present.f In like man- 

 ner, in the ancient Egyptian empire, the actual woolly-hair- 



* Thus says Theodectes of Phaselis: see vol. i., p. 353. Northern 

 tracts of land were considered to lie more toward the west, and south- 

 ern countries to the east. Consult VSlcker, Ueber Homerische Geogra- 

 phie und Wtltkunde, s. 43 and 87. The indefinite meaning of the word 

 Indies, even at that age, as connected with ideas of position, of the com- 

 plexion of the inhabitants, and of precious products, contributed to the 

 extension of these meteorological hypotheses ; for Western Arabia, the 

 countries between Ceylon and the mouth of the Indus, Troglodytic 

 Ethiopia, and the African myrrh and cinnamon lands south of Cape 

 Aroma, were all termed India. (Humboldt, Examen Crit., t. ii., p. 35.) 



t Lassen, Ind. Alterthumskvnde, bd. i.. 8. 369, 372-375, 379, und 389; 

 Bitter, Asien, bd. iv., 1, s. 446. 



