VI THE ARYAN QUESTION 301 



least 60 feet higher than it does at present." 1 In- 

 stead of the separate Black, Caspian, and Aral 

 seas, there was one vast Ponto-Aralian Mediter- 

 ranean, which must have been prolonged into arms 

 and fiords along the lower valleys of the Danube, 

 the Volga (in the course of which Caspian shells 

 are now found as far as the Kuma), the Ural, and 

 the other affluent rivers while it seems to have 

 sent its overflow, northward, through the present 

 basin of the Obi. At the same time, there is 

 reason to believe that the northern coast of Asia, 

 which everywhere shows signs of recent slow up- 

 heaval, was situated far to the south of its present 

 position. The consequences of this state of things 

 have an extremely important bearing on the 

 question under discussion. In the first place, an 

 insular climate must be substituted for the present 

 extremely continental climate of west central 

 Eurasia. That is an important fact in many ways. 

 For example, the present eastern climatal limita- 

 tions of the beech could not have existed, and if 

 primitive Aryan goes back thus far, the argu- 

 ments based upon the occurrence of its name 

 in some Aryan languages and not in others lose 

 their force. In the second place, the European 

 and the Asiatic moieties of the great Eurasiatic 



1 This is proved "by the old shore-marks on the hill of Kash- 

 kanatao in the midst of the delta of the Oxus. Some authorities 

 put the ancient level very much higher 200 feet or more (Keane, 

 Asia, p. 408). 



