The Brown race spread in East Africa from Somaliland to the Mediterranean and all its coasts, to Western Europe, and the British Isles; in the other direction to Arabia, the shores of the Persian Gulf, and eastward along the coast to India, where it mingled with the pre-Dravidian (proto-Australian) population to give rise to the mongrel Dravidian people. The spread of these Brown people farther east into the Malay Archipelago explains the origin of the Indonesians, who occupied the islands before the coming south of the Mongols, but after the proto-Australians and the proto-Negroes had passed through towards Australia and Melanesia respectively.
From very early times there has been an intermingling of the different races. In East Africa every degree of intermingling of the Hamitic branch of the Brown race has been taking place for more than sixty centuries with negroes, both of the Sudanese and the Bantu stocks. At a later time Arabs poured into Africa and added their quota to the mixture. In India the original pre-Dravidian (proto-Australian) aborigines became diluted with a large influx of the Brown race to form the Dravidian people, who acquired a high civilization from the west. At a later date people of the Central race speaking an Aryan language swarmed through the north-western frontier and introduced their language and culture into India.
Before this happened the Brown race had
extended farther east and provided the basis for the population of Indonesia, supplanting to a great extent the earlier proto-Australian and Negroid peoples there. Then the Malays came down from the north and added to the Indonesian mixture a strong Mongolian element. Colonists from the Malay Archipelago settled in Madagascar and added to its mixture of Brown (Semites and Hamites) and Black (Bantu) elements representatives of the Mongolian (Malay) race. In the course of their maritime expeditions the Malay Archipelago gave to Japan a not inconsiderable contribution both of people and culture.
But the area of the most complex admixture of races in ancient times was Siberia. With the melting of the ice barriers at the close of the Glacial epoch the proto-Mongolian and proto-Central peoples came into intimate contact; and to this mixture was added a proto-Nordic element, as well as a not inconsiderable influx of members of the Brown race, who came from the south through Turkestan to exploit the gold and copper of the Yenesei region. The presence of their dolichocephalic skulls in a region where brachycephaly is the rule has been a perpetual puzzle to anthropologists, who at the present time attempt to solve the problem by assuming the presence of an aboriginal race of long-headed people, who were exterminated by the Mongols and the Turks. The greed for the riches of the head-waters of the Yenesei has made Siberia the home of strife for fifty centuries. This has led not only to a puzzling admixture of races in the affected area, but has started raids of Mongols and Turks, which at various times extended as far as Europe (Huns and Avars), India, and China. So mixed are the races in Siberia that it is not easy to determine whether some of them should be classed as mainly Turki or mainly Mongol; and this applies also to the colonies (Bulgars, Magyars, Finns, Lapps, &c.) which at various times the Asiatic invaders left behind them in Europe, each of which has been profoundly altered by admixture since then.
In the great Mongolian domain that occupies so great a part of Northern and Eastern Asia there are certain definitely alien elements. The Yakuts (of the region near the Lena River) are definitely Turki in race, and the curious hairy Ainus (of Yezo, Sakhalin, and some of the Kurile Islands) are certainly members of the Central race.
A peculiar branch of the northern Mongols is clearly differentiated from the rest to form the Eskimo people who occupy Greenland and Arctic America. They present a marked contrast to the American Indians. The American Indian may be regarded essentially as a branch of the proto-Mongolian race mixed to some extent with a proto-Central element. But on the Pacific littoral there has been considerable admixture with a variety of peoples from Eastern Asia and Oceania for several centuries (c. 300 B.C. to A.D. 1000). Although the peoples conform on the whole to a definite type as regards the characters of their hair and features, there is a considerable range of variation as regards height, skull-form, and other racial features. The people of the states where a high civilization prevailed ten centuries ago—Mexico, Central America, Peru, and Chile—are clearly differentiated from the rest of the American population by the more obtrusive evidence of admixture with Polynesian and Asiatic peoples. In addition to the peoples of the north-west coast (Haidas and Salish) and of the ancient civilizations (Mayas and Aztecs) of Central America and Mexico, the population of North America can be divided (see map) into the following tribes: (1) Athabascan, (2) Algonquin, (3) Iroquoian, (4) Siouan, (5) Shoshonean (in the map called 'Kiowan'), (6) Muskhogean, and (7) Pueblo (not indicated in the map, but in Arizona, north of Mexico).
In South America the centre of the ancient civilization was in the region of the Quichua (Inca) and Aymara peoples. The semi-civilized Chibcha people occupied the table-land of Bogota. To the south of Peru the coastal people (Araucanians) were to some extent influenced by the more highly civilized Incas to their north. The presence of gold in the Matto Grosso region of Brazil attracted men from Peru, and set in motion migrations of people towards the Rio de la Plata in the south and towards Venezuela in the north. Among the linguistically distinct peoples found in the latter area are the Tupi, Arawaks, and Caribs. A very primitive people, the Botocudo, occupy the eastern coast of Brazil south of the River San Francisco.
From the beginning man was a maker of implements of stone and bone: but for a vast number of centuries he was merely a hunter who did not attempt anything more in the way of industry. Civilization probably originated in the Nile Valley when men found barley growing there naturally, and discovered that it provided them with a supply of food which could maintain them throughout the year. When the population in the valley increased, so that the natural supply of barley became inadequate, men learned to imitate the inundation, and by scraping channels in the sand to render the desert fertile. Thus was agriculture and irrigation invented, and thus were men led to organize the labour of the community under the direction of a leader who was primarily an irrigation engineer, but eventually became a king
and the god Osiris, the dead king, whose reputation as the bestower of life-giving water became apotheosized as the giver of life and immortality.