THE HUMAN RACE 1683 



It is from this central tableland of Asia, radiating 

 so to say around this point of origin, that man has 

 progressively occupied every part of the earth. 



Migration commenced at a very early period; the 

 facility with which our species becomes habituated 

 to every climate and accommodates itself to varia- 

 tions of temperature, taken in connection with the 

 nomadic character which distinguished primitive 

 populations, explains to us the displacement of the 

 earlier inhabitants of the earth. Soon, means of navi- 

 gation, although rude, were added to the power of 

 traveling by land, and man passed from the continent 

 to distant islands, and thus peopled the archipelagoes 

 as well as the mainland. By means of transport, 

 effected in canoes formed from the trunks of trees 

 barely hollowed out, the archipelagoes of the In- 

 dian Ocean, and finally Australia, were gradually 

 peopled. 



The American continent formed no exception to 

 this law of the invasion of the globe by the emigra- 

 tion of human phalanxes. It is a matter of no great 

 difficulty to pass from Asia to America, across Beh- 

 ring Strait, which is almost always covered with 

 ice, thus permitting of almost a dry passage from 

 one continent to the other. Thus it is that the in- 

 habitants of Northern Asia have found their way 

 into the north of the New World. 



This communication of one terrestrial hemisphere 

 with the other is less surprising when we consider 

 what modern historical works have shown, namely, 

 that already about the Tenth Century, which would 

 be nearly 400 years before Christopher Columbus, 



