302 THE ARYAN QUESTION VI 



plains were cut off from one another by the 

 Ponto-Aralian Mediterranean and its prolonga- 

 tions. In the third place, direct access to Asia 

 Minor, to the Caucasus, to the Persian highlands, 

 and to Afghanistan, from the European moiety 

 was completely barred ; while the tribes of eastern 

 central Asia were equally shut out from Persia 

 and from India by huge mountain ranges and 

 table lands. Thus, if the blond long-head race 

 existed so far back as the epoch in which the 

 Ponto-Aralian Mediterranean had its full exten- 

 sion, space for its development, under the most 

 favourable conditions, and free from any serious 

 intrusion of foreign elements from Asia, was pre- 

 sented in northern and eastern Europe. 



When the slow erosion of the passage of the 

 Dardanelles drained the Ponto-Aralian waters into 

 the Mediterranean, they must have everywhere 

 fallen as near the level of the latter as the make 

 of the country permitted, remaining, at first, con- 

 nected by such straits as that of which the traces 

 yet persist between the Black and the Caspian, 

 the Caspian and the Aral Seas respectively. Then, 

 the gradual elevation of the land of northern 

 Siberia, bringing in its train a continental climate, 

 with its dry air and intense summer heats, the 

 loss by evaporation soon exceeded the greatly 

 reduced supply of water, and Balkash, Aral, and 

 Caspian gradually shrank to their present dimen- 

 sions. In the course of this process, the broad 



