Note 768 — Chapter XII · —Continents And Their Peninsulas

Australia and the double continent of America show each the coincidence of an ethnic realm with an isolated continent. In contrast, when we come to the Old World triad of Europe, Asia and Africa, we find three races, to be sure, but races whose geographical distribution ignores the boundaries of the continents. The White race belongs to all three, and from time immemorial has made the central basin of the Mediterranean the white man's sea. The Mongolian, though primarily at home in Asia, stretches along the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic shores of Norway, and in historical times has penetrated up the Danube to the foot of the Alps. Nor was the Negroid stock confined to Africa, though Africa has always been its geographical core. The Indian Peninsula and Malay Archipelago, once peopled by a primitive Negroid race, but now harboring only remnants of them in the Deccan, Malacca, the Philippines and elsewhere, bridge the distance to the other great Negroid center in Melanesia and the derivative or secondary Negroid area of Australia.768 The Negroid race belongs essentially to the long southern land pendants of the Eastern Hemisphere; and wherever it has bordered on the lighter northern stocks, it has drawn a typical boundary zone of mingled tints which never diverges far from the Equator, from the Atlantic shores of the Sudan to Pacific Fiji.769 [See map page 105.]