74 THE SPLENDOUR OF GREECE 



pass through the narrow neck of Central America. 

 Very primitive man — of whom the Yahgan of Tierra 

 del Fuego is possibly a surviving specimen — may have 

 crossed on foot from Europe to America by land in 

 the North Atlantic which has, to our knowledge, 

 since disappeared. Many now think this. But the 

 American Indian is an offshoot from Asia by way of 

 Alaska, and in his dispersion over the continent he 

 would get more or less congested in the " bottle- 

 neck" from Southern Mexico to Panama. We have 

 every reason to believe, from the earliest remains, 

 that native American civilization developed here, and 

 spread to Mexico and Peru. This development seems 

 to fall within the Christian Era. 1 



In the case of China we may possibly have another 

 independent theatre of the evolution of civilization 

 under the same conditions. Man was probably 

 evolved somewhere in Asia, and Asia was not glaciated 

 during the Ice Age to anything like the same extent 

 as Europe. There was undoubtedly a large abori- 

 ginal population — or several populations differently 

 developed in different regions — and the more fertile 

 areas would tend to become centres of struggle in the 

 early days of agriculture. It would be quite easy to 

 understand the evolution of civilization in the best 

 part of China and on the plains of India. 



It is, however, not certain that even the Chinese 

 civilization was a quite independent development. 

 The archaeology of Asia is not yet well studied, and 

 the beginnings of Chinese civilization are obscure. 



1 There is a theory that civilization reached Peru from the Pacific 

 Islands. But the Polynesians never were civilized, and the distance 

 is prohibitive. Moreover, American archaeology points to a develop- 

 ment from Central America. 



