208 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



As, therefore, we cannot attain, in our state of knowledge, 

 satisfactory conclusions on this head, it becomes the duty of all 

 to assert, at least, the rights of humanity, in their indisputable 

 plenitude, although to us, in particular, as mere naturalists, it 

 is a bounden duty to confine ourselves to known historical and 

 scientific facts. 



PRIMAEVAL LOCATION OF MAN, OR POSITION OF THE TYPI- 

 CAL STOCKS. 



As the more detailed characters of the typical stocks, their 

 real or primaeval location, and the diffusion of subsequent races, 

 cannot be readily understood without some retrospect of the 

 geographical conditions of the earth, not only with regard to 

 the convulsions already mentioned, but likewise as they bear 

 upon the position of the great chains of mountains, seas, and 

 deserts, and tbe direction of leading rivers, it is important not 

 to overlook them, wherever the influence they must have exer- 

 cised in the question under review is clearly ascertainable. 



Mankind, when first it becomes historically known, is already 

 diffused over the greater part of the eastern hemisphere, and, 

 probably, far beyond it, even to the western ; yet it appears 

 to have departed from the vicinity of a common centre, or, at 

 least, to have primaevally formed several stocks, clustered in 

 the vicinity of that high central region of Asia which com- 

 prises the external rampart, and, perhaps, interior of the vales 

 of Thibet, and the so-called Khangai* of the Gobi desert; for 

 this was, approximately, either the seat of Man's first develop- 

 ment, so far as it can be now traced, or the space where a por- 

 tion of human beings found safety, when convulsions and 

 changes of surface, which may have swept away a more 

 ancient zoology, had passed over the earth, and were introduc- 

 tory to a new order of things. 



* Khangai, 01 oasos. verdant river courses, and lakes, which occur iu 

 reveral places. 



