The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

We know that in Asia there is a vast region bounded on the south and south-west by the Himalayas, on the west by the Bolor mountains, on the north-west by the Ala-Tau, on the north by the Altai range and its offshoots, on the east by the Kingkhan, on the south and south-east by the Felina and Kuen-Loun. Judging from the present state of things, this great central region might be regarded as having contained the cradle of the human species.

In fact, the three fundamental types of all the human races are represented in the populations grouped round this region. The black races are the furthest removed from it, but have, nevertheless, marine stations, where we find them either pure or as mixed races, from the Kioussiou to the Andaman Islands. Upon the continent they have intermixed with almost every inferior caste and class of the two peninsulas of the Ganges; they are still found pure in both, ascend as high as Nepaul, and extend west as far as the Persian Gulf and Lake Zareh, according to Elphinstone.

The yellow race, either pure or in places mixed with white elements, seems to be the only one which occupies the space in question; it peoples all the north, east, south-east, and west. In the south it is more mixed, but forms, nevertheless, an important element in the population.

The white race, from its allophylian representatives, seems to have disputed the central area itself with the yellow race. In early times, we find the Yu-tchi and the Ou-soun to the north of the Hoang-ho; and in the present day cases of white populations have been observed in Little Thibet and in Eastern Thibet. The Miao-Tsé occupy the mountain region of China; the Siaputh are proof against all attack in the gorges of the Bolor. Upon the confines of the area we meet with the Aïnos and the Japanese of high caste, the Tinguianes of the Phillippine Islands; in the south with the Hindoos. In the south-west and west the white element, either pure or mixed, reigns supreme.

No other region of the globe presents a similar union of extreme human types distributed round a common centre. This fact, alone is sufficient to suggest to the mind of the naturalist the conjecture which I have expressed above; but we may appeal to other considerations.

One of the most important is drawn from philology. The three fundamental forms of human language are found in the same countries and under similar relations. In the centre, and south-east of our area, the monosyllabic languages are represented by those of China, Cochinchina, Siam and Thibet. As agglutinative languages, we find in the north-east and north-west the group of Ougro-Japanese, in the south that of the Dravidian and Malay, and in the west the Turkish languages. Lastly, Sanscrit with its derivatives, and the Iranian languages represent in the south and south-west the inflectional languages.

It is to the linguistic types gathered round the central region of Asia that all human languages must be referred; whether from their vocabulary or their grammar, some of these Asiatic languages bear a close resemblance to languages spoken in regions often very distant, or separated from the area in question by entirely different languages. We know that several philologists, M. Maury among others, establish an intimate connection between the Dravidian languages and Australian idioms, and that M. Picot has discovered numbers of Aryan words in our oldest European languages.

Finally, it is from Asia again that our earliest domesticated animals are derived. Isidore Geoffroy is entirely agreed with Dureau de la Malle upon this point.

Thus, the present epoch alone considered, everything points to this great central plateau, or rather to this great enclosure. There, we are inclined to say, the first human beings appeared and multiplied till the populations overflowed as from a bowl and spread themselves in human waves in every direction.