FIG. 114.—Polished stone axe
found in Cambodia. Prehistoric
type peculiar to Indo-China.
It must not be forgotten that many of these monuments date from the historic epoch and belong, as proved by the runiform inscriptions of Mongolia discovered by Yadrintsef and deciphered by Thomson, to the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era.[398]
The kitchen-middens of Omori, near Tokio, and of several other localities in Japan examined by Morse, Milne, and Tsuboi, afford evidence of the existence in this country of a fairly civilised race which was acquainted with pottery, but employed only bone and partly polished stone implements. The excavations of ancient underground dwellings in the islands of Yezo (Morse, Tsuboi) and Saghalien (Poliakoff) lead us to believe that this race extended much farther to the north. It is possible that it was related to the men whose polished flint implements have been found in Siberia in the valley of the Tunka, in that of the Patcha, one of the tributaries of the river Amur (Uvarof), and in the shell-heaps of the Pacific coast near Vladivostok (Margaritof).[399] Polished stone hatchets have been found in the north-east of China in the vicinity of tumuli resembling the American “mounds” (Williamson); others have been picked up in the Yunnan (Sladen), and in Burma (Theobald); Moura, Jammes, and Morel exhumed in Cambodia, between Lake Tonlé-Sap and the Mekong, side by side with objects of bronze, several polished stone implements of a peculiar type (Fig. [114]), a kind of square-tongued axe (shouldered celt), which has since been found again in several other places in Indo-China as far as the upper Laos (Lefèvre-Pontalis) and Burma.[400] In the district of Somron-Sen (Cambodia), previously explored by Jammes, as well as in the neighbourhood of Saigon, Corre discovered similar implements close to shell-heaps containing, besides pottery and stone tools, human bones, but no skulls.
Lastly, in India, the “cromlechs,” “mounds,” and finds of stone objects similar to those which are found in Europe, may be counted in hundreds. It is certain that the stone “circles” of the central provinces and the “Kouroumbarings” of Southern India date from a period anterior to the Aryan immigration. As in Europe, so in Asia the age of metals borders very closely on the historic period of which the Chinese annals have preserved for us a record. The monuments of Chaldea, Assyria, Asia Minor, India, and Cambodia, also reveal ethnographical facts of great interest (see, for instance, note [2], p. [419]).
PRESENT INHABITANTS AND RACES OF ASIA.
It is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to draw up a complete table of the migrations which have taken place on the Asiatic continent in historic times. I shall mention those in connection with some peoples whose history is partially known (Chinese, Turks, Mongols, Thai).
So also, in the present state of anthropological knowledge, we can only discern in the midst of the numerous Asiatic populations, in a quite general way, the elements furnished by the following eleven races:—Five races peculiar to Asia (Dravidian, Assyroid, Indo-Afghan, Ainu, Mongolian), and six races which are also met with in other parts of the world: Negrito, Indonesian, Arab, Ugrian, Turkish, and Eskimo (leaving out of account the Assyroid and Indo-Afghan races, which are found again among the Jews and the European Gypsies). I have already given (p. [285] et seq.) the principal characters of these races; it only remains to say a few words as to their geographical distribution in Asia.
The Eskimo race is quartered in the north-east of the continent; that of the Ainus in Saghalien, Yezo, and perhaps in northern Japan; while the Ugrian race is represented by its Yeniseian variant. The Mongolian race (with its two secondary races, northern and southern) is found almost all over Asia. The Turkish race is limited more particularly to the inland regions of Central Asia. The Indonesians are numerous in Indo-China, and in the islands from Japan to the Asiatic Archipelago, while the Dravidians and Indo-Afghans abound in India. The latter are also met with in anterior Asia, side by side with the Assyroids and Arabs. Some representatives of the Negrito race inhabit the Malay peninsula and the Andaman Islands; the elements of this race are also found among the inhabitants of Indo-China and perhaps India.
As to existing populations of the Asiatic continent, I shall rapidly pass them in review, grouping them, according to geographical region, under six heads: peoples of Northern Asia; of Central Asia; of Eastern Asia; of Indo-China; of India; and lastly, of Anterior or Western Asia.