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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

treating his subject from the comparative point of view, draw his conclu-
sions as to the bearing of his results on the general question of Eurasian
problems—the latter seemed preferable. For, with the whole chain of
observation and thought fresh in the mind, it would seem to be the province
of the individual investigator to state his inferences, even if only as working
hypotheses.

I confess to having written a chapter on the Aryan problem in the light
of an extended study of the whole field and of our own results. But this I
have suppressed because it seemed a premature as well as a hazardous
venture for one not already an authority on the subject; and the word
Aryan is mentioned only incidentally. The various parts, however, of the
volume contain abundant material for both use and controversy in this con-
nection. In drawing my own conclusions I have tried to keep before the
reader a current statement of the objective facts from which such inferences
were drawn.

The reader may be surprised that no traces of writing are noted among
the finds from Anau, especially since it is assumed that the people who
carried the proto-cuneiform script into Chaldea came from an eastward-
lying region within the area of isolation. It must be frankly confessed that
such traces were not looked for. But even had these earlier peoples of Anau
I and II possessed the art of writing, it would probably have been used only
on wood, bark, or skins; for the straight and curved lines of the earliest
proto-cuneiform script of Chaldea are proof that in its pre-Chaldean stage
it must have been used on materials different from the clay tablets on which
it was possible to develop the later cuneiform. And all traces of organic
substances have disappeared, except only charcoal and niter-saturated
bones. And while we might perhaps expect the strata of Anau III, which
show evidence of Chaldean relations, to contain inscribed clay tablets, these
might easily be confused with the containing earth mass and thus escape
eyes that were not looking for inscriptions.

And now what relation do the results bear to the dream that gave rise
to the expeditions? On the physical side, Messrs. Davis, Huntington, and
R. W. Pumpelly have traced in High Asia the records of several great
glacial expansions during the glacial period. The climatic conditions, which
during that period so greatly expanded these glaciers and buried Russia
under thousands of feet of ice, presumably produced also the inland sea
whose shore lines are still visible.

The evolution of civilization has been traced backward to a time when,
before its datings in Babylon and Egypt, man at Anau already lived in
cities, cultivated wheat and barley, began the domestication and breeding
of the useful animals which are our inheritance, and possessed the funda-