PREFACE. XXXI 
treating his subject from the comparative point of view, draw his conclu- 
sions as to the bearing of his results on the general question of Eurasian 
problems—the latter seemed preferable. For, with the whole chain of 
observation and thought fresh in the mind, it would seem to be the province 
of the individual investigator to state his inferences, even if only as working 
hypotheses. 
I confess to having written a chapter on the Aryan problem in the light 
of an extended study of the whole field and of our own results. But this I 
have suppressed because it seemed a premature as well as a hazardous 
venture for one not already an authority on the subject; and the word 
Aryan is mentioned only incidentally. The various parts, however, of the 
volume contain abundant material for both use and controversy in this con- 
nection. In drawing my own conclusions I have tried to keep before the 
reader a current statement of the objective facts from which such inferences 
were drawn. 
The reader may be surprised that no traces of writing are noted among 
the finds from Anau, especially since it is assumed that the people who 
catried the proto-cuneiform script into Chaldea came from an eastward- 
lying region within the area of isolation. It must be frankly confessed that 
such traces were not looked for. But even had these earlier peoples of Anau 
I and II possessed the art of writing, it would probably have been used only 
on wood, bark, or skins; for the straight and curved lines of the earliest 
proto-cuneiform script of Chaldea are proof that in its pre-Chaldean stage 
it must have been used on materials different from the clay tablets on which 
it was possible to develop the later cuneiform. And all traces of organic 
substances have disappeared, except only charcoal and niter-saturated 
bones. And while we might perhaps expect the strata of Anau III, which 
show evidence of Chaldean relations, to contain inscribed clay tablets, these 
might easily be confused with the containing earth mass and thus escape 
eyes that were not looking for inscriptions. 
And now what relation do the results bear to the dream that gave rise 
to the expeditions? On the physical side, Messrs. Davis, Huntington, and 
R. W. Pumpelly have traced in High Asia the records of several great 
glacial expansions during the glacial period. The climatic conditions, which 
during that period so greatly expanded these glaciers and buried Russia 
under thousands of feet of ice, presumably produced also the inland sea 
whose shore lines are still visible. 
The evolution of civilization has been traced backward to a time when, 
before its datings in Babylon and Egypt, man at Anau already lived in 
cities, cultivated wheat and barley, began the domestication and breeding 
of the useful animals which are our inheritance, and possessed the funda- 
