120 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



and was carried to Java about the eighth or ninth century of our era. 

 It did not displace the older Hindu pantheism — but flourished alongside. 

 Around A.D. 1400 the Moslems (Stratum 6) conquered Java, and the Indian 

 religions found a refuge in the island of Bali further east, where they still 

 flourish. It is not, of course, suggested that the Polynesians migrated 

 from India, for they probably lived originally in south-east Asia. But 

 their culture probably followed the same route as that used by the Buddhist 

 and Moslem teachers in historic times. 



We may dwell for a few minutes on the recent discoveries in the vicinity 

 of Persia. In Mesopotamia the earliest culture of Sumer is known as 

 ' al Ubaid ' (Childe 1934), and this contained copper tools and is younger 

 than cultures from Susa and the adjacent Persian Plateau. 



To the north near Nineveh is the ' Tell HalaflF Culture ' with wheeled 

 vehicles, but with no metal. This is much older than anything dis- 

 covered in Sumer near the Persian Gulf. Still older are the lowest 

 cultures of Samarra in the same region, where they occur in debris 

 seventy feet below a temple dated about 2450 B.C. Childe corroborates 

 my statement (of 1919) as to the cradleland of man, with his comment 

 that the early cultures of China resemble those of Anau in Turkestan 

 (Fig. 11). It is significant that Zoroaster, the first great religious teacher, 

 lived in this same vital region. Thus we see that the centre of the zones 

 of the races of man in Turkestan (as charted in Fig. 7) is also likely to be 

 near the cradle of civilisation. 



F. Correlations in the Distributions of Languages. 



The evolution of nations is one of the most interesting and important 

 problems engaging the attention of the social scientist. A common 

 language is often the chief ' cement ' which links the various races and 

 ' cults ' to form a nation. Hence languages merit our careful study. 

 Few problems in Science are so difficult as those concerning the inter- 

 relations of the main language-groups. Since here we have to do with 

 an evolving complex arising in something like a cradleland and affected 

 by wide migrations, it seems likely that some light on the subject may be 

 obtained by charting the data in the form of the ' Zones and Strata ' 

 technique. 



The distribution of the main groups of languages is given in a generalised 

 fashion in Fig. 12. The ecology of language indicates that the order of 

 evolution in the Occidental area is in the following sense, the marginal 

 languages being the earliest : — Bantu, Hamitic, Semitic, Basque, Su- 

 merian, ' K ' Aryan, ' P ' Aryan, and latest or ' Satem ' Aryan. The 

 problem is, of course, complicated (as in -Biology) by the fact that 

 independent evolution takes place after the branching of the parent 

 languages. Thus it seems likely that Proto-Gothic branched off from the 

 Aryan stock before Sanskrit. Yet English (a descendant of Proto- 

 Gothic) is a more advanced language (i.e. more analytic, simpler and easier 

 to learn) than is Sanskrit. 



The following summary (Worrell 1927) gives simple definitions of the 

 language classes. In primitive languages like Bantu, parts of speech were 

 differentiated by the attachment of different relationship-words — which. 



