Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/314

302 monosyllabic languages, in which each word has but one syllable; agglutinated languages, in which the words are welded together; and, finally, flexible languages, which resemble the languages now generally spoken in Europe.

Now, we find around this central plateau of Asia the monosyllabic language, par excellence, all over the Chinese Empire; on the north an assemblage of peoples speaking agglutinative languages, and extending even to Europe. Then, again, we have the portion occupied by the Aryan race, speaking the flexible languages. So the three linguistic types are represented around this table-land of Asia, the same as the three fundamental physical types. It seems that, almost from his cradle, man has presented all the essential modifications that he could undergo.

I pass to another question. Man, starting from a single and limited spot, has spread all over the globe. Consequently, he has peopled the globe by way of emigration and colonization. Such is the conclusion drawn from actual facts interpreted by science alone. But, is it possible to people the earth by human migration? Some say no; and make this assertion an objection to the ideas that I have just indicated.

I own that, for my part, this objection has always surprised me.

Migrations—colonizations! why, they occur everywhere in history, and particularly in our own history.

Go back as far as we may, we see populations in movement from one end of continents to the other; so that, to say a priori that man has always lived where we find him, is to contradict all historical documents.

However, some have insisted that certain migrations were beyond human power and intelligence. I will give you two examples to show that migrations are always possible, even when the conditions in the midst of which they take place seem made expressly to arrest them.

We must distinguish, in migrations, those over land from those across seas.

As to migrations by land, it is very evident that, when men have to war only against brute Nature, nothing can prevent their passage, especially when they can choose their moment. But I add that men will emigrate, even when they have to combat all difficulties united, not only the rigors of physical Nature, but also the action of man, who alone absolutely arrests man.

For example, I will cite a fact borrowed from the history of a people of whom I here show you some drawings:

Toward 1616, according to Chinese dates, a horde of Calmucks, for some reason which we do not know, left the country bordering upon China, crossed the whole of Asia, and established themselves on the banks of the Volga. There they accepted the sovereignty of Russia, and for more than a century rendered good service to the empire. But there came a time when the Calmucks found that the