Note 749 — Chapter XII · —Continents And Their Peninsulas

Asia's size and central location to the other continents were formerly taken as an argument for its correspondingly significant position in the creation and history of man. Its central location is reflected in the hypothesis of the Asiatic origin of the Indo-European linguistic group of peoples; and though the theory has been justly called into question, these peoples have undoubtedly been subjected to Asiatic influences. The same thing is true of the native American race, both as to Asiatic origin and influences; because the approximation of Siberia to Alaska is too close to exclude human relations between the two continents. The Malays, too, were probably sprung from the soil of southeastern Asia and spread thence over their close-packed Archipelago. Even the native Australians betray a Malayan and therefore Asiatic element in their composition,749 while the same element can be traced yet more distinctly in the widely scattered Polynesians and the Hovas of Madagascar. This radiation of races seems to reflect Asia's location at the core of the land-masses. Yet the capacity to form such centers of ethnic distribution is not necessarily limited to the largest continents; history teaches us that small areas which have early achieved a relatively dense population are prone to scatter far their seeds of nations.