Note 1191 — Chapter XV · —Mountain Barriers And Their Passes

These piedmont boundaries are most clearly defined in point of race and civilization, where superior peoples from the lowlands are found expanding at the cost of retarded mountain folk. Romans and Rhaetians once met along a line skirting the foot of the eastern Alps, as Russians to-day along the base of the Caucasus adjoin the territories of the heterogeneous tribes occupying that mountain area.1191 [See map page 225.] The plains-loving Magyars of Hungary have pushed up to the rim of mountainous Siebenburgen or Transylvania from Arad on the Maros River to Sziget on the upper Theiss, while the highland region has a predominant Roumanian population. A clearly defined linguistic and cultural boundary of Indo-Aryan speech and religion, both Hindu and Mohammedan, follows the piedmont edges of the Brahmaputra Valley, and separates the lowland inhabitants from the pagans of Tibeto-Burman speech occupying the Himalayan slope to the north and the Khasia Mountains to the south. The highland race is Mongoloid, while the Bengali of an Aryan, Dravidian and Mongoloid blend fill the river plain.1192 Such piedmont boundary lines tend to blur into bands or zones of ethnic intermixture and cultural assimilation. The western Himalayan foothills show the blend of Mongoloid and Aryan stocks, where the vigorous Rajputs of the plains have encroached upon the mountaineer's land.1193 Of almost every mountain folk it can be assumed that they once occupied their highlands to the outermost rim of the piedmont, and retired to the inner rim of this intermediary slope only under compulsion from without.