Vol. XII, No. 8 



WASHINGTON 



August, 1901 



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ASIA, THE CRADLE OF HUMANITY* 



By W J McGee, Vice-President National Geographic 



Society 



NEVER have I been so over- 

 whelmed with the magnitude 

 of a task as in beginning this 

 attempt to epitomize Asia in an hour. 



Asia is the Continent of continents; a 

 giant land to which Africa is but an ap- 

 pendage and all Europe only an excres- 

 cence. Earger as to mainland than 

 both Americas combined, Asia with her 

 insular extension southeastward might 

 swallow the great landmass of Africa 

 with Europe in addition. Of the 50, 

 000,000 square miles of land on the face 

 of the earth, Asia holds fulh^ 15,000,000, 

 or three-tenths of all — indeed, stretch- 

 ing as she does from the equator to the 

 very shadow of the pole and within a 

 few degrees of half waj^ around the 

 globe, she is as a world in herself, and 

 can be likened to the rest of the planet 

 only by means of superlatives : Her 

 climate ranges from the utmost type 

 of torridity to extremest cold, from 

 heaviest equatorial torrents to bleakest 

 aridity, from recurrent tropical typhoon 

 to poleward calm. Her features are 

 stupendous as her expanse is vast : The 

 Himalaya Mountains and the Pamir 



Plateau — the Asian highlander's " Roof 

 of the World" — make p3'gmies of all 

 other elevations on earth. The world's 

 most extensive plain forms central and 

 ^ northern Asia, and comprises the great- 

 est tundra and vastest forest on the 

 planet ; one of the two largest deserts 

 of the world (Gobi, with its extension 

 in Takla-Makan) lies at the eastern 

 base of this unparalleled upland, though 

 out of the world's ten rivers exceed- 

 ing 2,500 miles in length six are in Asia 

 as against two in Africa and one in 

 either America — and even this reckon- 

 ing misses three of the mightiest among 

 the world's waterways (Ganges, Brah- 

 maputra, and Indus), rivers raised to 

 foremost rank by unequaled loftiness of 

 basin and swiftness of flow. Gauged 

 by any measure, Asia is Titanic, the 

 land of all lands in length and breadth, 

 the queen of continents. 



Great as is physical Asia, human Asia 

 is far greater ; for as the home of man- 

 kind and the cradle of culture, she out- 

 counts all the rest of earth. Out of 

 the world' s population of i , 500,000,000, 

 nearly 900,000,000, or six-tenths of the 



The closing lecture of the Afternoon Course of 1901 on "The Growth of Asia." 



