xvin MONGOLIAN RACES 283 



place. Such scanty remains as have yet been discovered of the 

 early inhabitants of Europe present no structural affinities to the 

 Eskimo, although it is not unlikely that similar external con- 

 ditions may have led them to adopt similar modes of life. 

 In fact, the Eskimo are an intensely specialised race, perhaps 

 the most specialised of any in existence, and therefore 

 probably of comparatively late origin. In this case they 

 were not as a race contemporaries with the men whose rude 

 flint tools found in our drifts excite so much interest and 

 speculation as to the makers, who have been sometimes, 

 though with little evidence to justify such an assumption, 

 reputed to be related to the present inhabitants of the 

 northernmost parts of America. 



B. The typical Mongolian races constitute the present popula- 

 tion of Northern and Central Asia. They are not very distinctly, 

 but still conveniently for descriptive purposes, divided into two 

 groups, the Northern and the Southern. 



(a) The former, or Mongolo-Altaic group, are united by the 

 affinities of their language. These people, from the cradle of 

 their race in the great central plateau of Asia, have at various 

 times .poured out their hordes upon the lands lying to the west, 

 and have penetrated almost to the heart of Europe. The Finns, 

 the Magyars, and the Turks, are each the descendants of one of 

 these waves of incursion, but they have for so many generations 

 intermingled with the peoples through whom they have passed 

 in their migrations, or have found in the countries in which 

 they have ultimately settled, that their original physical char- 

 acters have been completely modified. Even the Lapps, that 

 diminutive tribe of nomads inhabiting the most northern parts 

 of Europe, supposed to be of Mongolian descent, show so little 

 of the special attributes of that branch that it is difficult to 

 assign them a place in it in a classification based upon physical 

 characters. The Japanese are said by their language to be 

 allied rather to the Northern than to the following branch of 

 the Mongolian stock. 



(&) The southern Mongolian group, divided from the former 

 chiefly by language and habits of life, includes the greater part 

 of the population of China, Thibet, Burmah, and Siam. 



C. The next great division of Mongoloid people is the Malay 



