East Siberian. Yukaghir; Chukchi; Koryak; Kamchadale; Gilyak.
Domain of the Northern Mongols.
By "Northern Mongols" are here to be understood all those branches of the Mongol Division of mankind which are usually comprised under the collective geographical expression Ural-Altaic, to which corresponds the ethnical designation Mongolo-Tatar, or more properly Mongolo-Turki[569]. Their domain is roughly separated from that of the Southern Mongols (Chap. VI.) by the Great Wall and the Kuen-lun range, beyond which it spreads out westwards over most of Western Asia, and a considerable part of North Europe, with many scattered groups in Central and South Russia, the Balkan Peninsula, and the Middle Danube basin. In the extreme north their territory stretches from the shores of the Pacific with Japan and parts of Sakhalin continually westwards across Korea, Siberia, Central and North Russia to Finland and Lapland. But its southern limits can be indicated only approximately by a line drawn from the Kuen-lun range westwards along the northern escarpments of the Iranian plateau, and round the southern shores of the Caspian to the Mediterranean. This line, however, must be drawn in such a way as to include Afghan Turkestan, much of the North Persian and Caucasian steppes, and nearly the whole of Asia Minor, while excluding Armenia, Kurdestan, and Syria.
Early Contact with Caucasic Peoples.
Nor is it to be supposed that even within these limits the North Mongol territory is everywhere continuous. In East Europe especially, where they are for the most part comparatively recent intruders, the Mongols are found only in isolated and vanishing groups in the Lower and Middle Volga basin, the Crimea, and the North Caucasian steppe, and in more compact bodies in Rumelia, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Throughout all these districts, however, the process of absorption or assimilation to the normal European physical type is so far completed that many of the Nogai and other Russian "Tartars," as they are called, the Volga and Baltic Finns, the Magyars, and Osmanli Turks, would scarcely be recognised as members of the North Mongol family but for their common Finno-Turki speech, and the historic evidence by which their original connection with this division is established beyond all question.
In Central Asia also (North Irania, the Aralo-Caspian and Tarim basins) the Mongols have been in close contact with Caucasic peoples probably since the New Stone Age, and here intermediate types have been developed, by which an almost unbroken transition has been brought about between the yellow and the white races.
Primitive Man in Siberia and Mongolia.
During recent years much light has been shed on the physiographical conditions of Central Asia in early times. Stein's[570] explorations in 1900-1 and 1906-8 in Chinese Turkestan, the Pumpelly Expeditions[571] in 1903 and 1904 in Russian Turkestan, the travels of Sven Hedin[572] in 1899-1902, and 1906-8, of Carruthers[573] in N.W. Mongolia, and the researches of Ellsworth Huntington[574] (a member of the first Pumpelly Expedition) in 1905-7 all bear testimony to the variation in climate which the districts of Central Asia have undergone since glacial times. There has been a general trend towards arid conditions, alternating with periods of greater humidity, when tracts, now deserted, were capable of maintaining a dense population. Abundant evidence of man's occupation has been found in delta oases formed by snow-fed mountain streams, or on the banks of vanished rivers, where now-a-days all is desolation, though, as T. Peisker[575] points out, climate was not the sole or even the main factor in many areas. In some places, as at Merv, the earliest occupation was only a few centuries before the Christian era, but at Anau near Askhabad some 300 miles east of the Caspian, explored by the Pumpelly Expedition, the earliest strata contained remains of Stone Age culture. The North Kurgan or tumulus, rising some 40 or 50 feet above the plain, showed a definite stratification of structures in sun-dried bricks, raised by successive generations of occupants. H. Schmidt, who was in charge of the excavations, was able to collect a valuable series of potsherds, showing a gradual evolution in form, technique and ornamentation, from the earliest to the latest periods. One point of great significance for establishing cultural if not physical relationships in this obscure region is the resemblance between the geometrical designs on pots of the early period and similar pottery found by MM. Gautier and Lampre[576] at Mussian, and by M. J. de Morgan[576] at Susa, while clay figurines from the South Kurgan (copper culture) are clearly of Babylonian type, the influence of which is seen much later in terra-cotta figurines discovered by Stein[577] at Yotkan.
With the progress of archaeological research, it becomes daily more evident that the whole of the North Mongol domain, from Finland to Japan, has passed through the Stone and Metal Ages, like most other habitable parts of the globe. During his wanderings in Siberia and Mongolia in the early nineties, Hans Leder[578] came upon countless prehistoric stations, kurgans (barrows), stone circles, and many megalithic monuments of various types. In West Siberia the barrows, which consist solely of earth without any stone-work, are by the present inhabitants called Chudskiye Kurgani, "Chudish Graves," and, as in North Russia, this term "Chude" is ascribed to a now vanished unknown race which formerly inhabited the land. To them, as to the "Toltecs" in Central America, all ancient monuments are credited, and while some regard them as prehistoric Finns, others identify them with the historic Scythians, the Scythians of Herodotus.