The general consent of mankind points to the region of Central Asia as
having been the original seat from which the human race dispersed
itself over the globe; and accordingly, it is this region, and
especially the western portion of it, which we find to have been the
theatre of the earliest recorded transactions. In short, it was in
Central Asia that the first large mass of ripened humanity was
accumulated――a great central nucleus of human life, so to speak,
constantly enlarging, and from which emissaries incessantly streamed
out over the globe in all directions. In process of time this great
central mass having swollen out till it filled Asia and Africa, broke
up into three fragments――thus giving parentage to the three leading
varieties into which ethnographers divide the human species――the
Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian or Negro――the Caucasians
overspreading southern and western Asia; the Mongolians overspreading
northern and eastern Asia; and the Ethiopians overspreading Africa.
From these three sources streamed forth branches which, intermingling
in various proportions, have constituted the various nations of the
earth.
Differing from each other in physiological characteristics, the three
great varieties of the human species have also differed widely in
their historical career. The germs of a grand progressive development
seem to have been implanted specially in the Caucasian variety, the
parent stock of all the great civilized nations of ancient and modern
times. History, therefore, concerns itself chiefly with this variety:
in the evolution of whose destinies the true thread of human progress
is to be found. Ere proceeding, however, to sketch the early
development of this highly-endowed variety of our species in the
nations of antiquity, a few observations may be offered regarding the
other two the Ethiopian and Mongolian――which began the race of life
along with the Caucasian, and whose destinies, doubtless, whatever may
have been their historical functions hitherto, are involved in some
profound and beautiful manner with the bearing of the race as a whole.