Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/345

 fruitful table-land of Mexico, toward which that stem, which in the north had attained among its kindred to a higher culture and greater strength, directed its victorious march. We find here many succeeding peoples of whom it is as yet not clearly shown whether they were fundamentally distinct, or in some particulars structurally related. The last of these invaders, the Aztecs, came from the north, and, as the language proves, are represented there to-day. According to the most recent investigations, the gigantic mounds which are found in North America are to be attributed to a people nearly related to the Aztecs of Mexico, and represent the rude precursors of the colossal structures of Central America. At any rate we must recognize in the northern division of the American Continent an ethnic drift whose direction was from north to south.

As to South America, the plateaux of Peru formed the destination of the migrations, as did Mexico in North America. Here also we encounter successive peoples, the last of whom—the conquering Incas—were found by the Spaniards on the discovery of Peru. Like the Aztecs in Mexico, the Quichuas were in no respect the originators of the indigenous culture, but have appropriated the same from a nation which preceded them. Although it is not improbable that the civilization of Mexico and Peru is at bottom congenital, as old elements of civilization could have been transported over the isthmus and on either side independently developed—in such a case the Muisca of Colombia might have formed the intermediate link—yet it is certain that the Mexicans and Peruvians were isolated, and as in the Old World with China and the rest of Asia, the one had no positive knowledge of the civilization of the other.

In regard to the two continents of Europe and Asia, which in fact form but one, inasmuch as the separation by the chain of mountains lying between them could not serve as an isolating boundary, we recognize, apart from the early Malayan, four autochthonous races, viz.: the Hyperboreans in the extreme north, stretching along the borders of the Arctic Sea; the Dravida race, in southern India; the Upper Asiatic race, filling central and eastern Asia; and, finally, the midland races, which at present occupy the south of Asia from India westward, the northeast and north of Africa, and, with the exception of the extreme north and some spots in the middle and south, all Europe.

The Hyperborean race was formerly much more imposing than it is at present, reduced as it is to an insignificant remnant. They formerly settled farther south, and were pushed to the extreme north by the expanding Upper Asiatic race. The circumstance of finding in central Asia representatives of this race, though to be sure deprived in large measure of their national characteristics, confirms this. We refer to the Yenisei Ostiaks, together with other small stems which are philologically diverse from the Ural Altaïans, and presumably are allied to the Yukagiren, Koriaks, Tchuktchis, and Ainos.