70 MIGRATIONS. 
have been, there can be little doubt that the long-headed people were located there 
in isolation from the rest of the world since preglacial, or at least since early inter- 
glacial, time. 
As I have stated in chapter m1, this conclusion follows necessarily from the 
total absence, during the first two cultures at Anau, of all traces of stone arrow- 
points and spear-heads and celts, although they made from flint well-formed 
flakes, apparently for the cutting edge of sickles, and fashioned from stone mace- 
heads and slingstones and vessels of alabaster. Arrow-points, spear-heads, and 
axes of stone abounded during the last interglacial epoch from the Dnieper to 
the Atlantic and throughout Northern Africa; and it is not conceivable that, if 
the ancestors of the Anau long-heads had ever possessed this important acquire- 
ment, they would have lost or abandoned it before they were able to replace it 
with metals. This isolation, as already stated, was caused by the glacial period, 
during which a large inland sea, formed by the waters from the ice-cap that 
covered Russia and from the glaciers of the Caucasus, Hindu-Kush, Tian Shan and 
Altai Mountains, cut off communication with Europe. At the same time the 
glacier-covered mountains of Armenia, of the Elburz, and of the lofty Zagros 
ranges, second in height only to the Hindu-Kush, intercepted intercourse with 
Asia Minor. I would therefore consider the area of isolation to have included the 
Iranian Plateau from the Zagros ranges on the west to the then impassable glacier- 
covered Hindu-Kush on the east; and the Transcaspian plains from the Inland 
Sea on the west to the then also impassable Tian Shan on the east. The Inland 
Sea, according to the observations of Konshin, Muschketoff, and other Russian 
geologists, extended eastward beyond the Aral, leaving a strip of lowland plains 
on the south, which, bordering on the Kopet Dagh range, widened out on the east, 
to connect with the Siberian steppes, then probably tundra-covered. 
Excepting the connection with the Siberian steppes, there were only three 
points by which this area of isolation could be entered by land. In the east the 
so-called Djungarian Gate may have then as now been open to the plains of 
Eastern Turkestan and Mongolia. In the extreme southeast communication with 
India may have been possible along the seacoast. And in the southwest it is 
possible that the way was open through Susiana to Chaldea and Arabia. 
Somewhere within this broad region our long-headed people became isolated 
while still in that very primitive stage of culture in which the making and use of 
stone arrow-points and spear-points were still unknown, and here under the spur 
of necessity they gradually evolved the organized settled life and agriculture of 
which we find them possessed when they founded the North Kurgan at Anau. 
The area thus outlined is both vast and varied in topographic and climatic 
character, and the isolation might well have been shared by peoples of different 
primitive stocks. The Iranian Plateau is traversed in the west by very high 
mountain ranges inclosing extensive high and well-watered valleys, difficult of 
intercommunication and 3,000 to 7,000 feet above the sea. The central portion 
consists of great open areas, which, though now extremely desert wastes, must 
during the glacial period, and for a long time after, have been bordered by grassy 
plains traversed by large streams. And the northern part—the modern Khor- 
