There has been much question as to where man first lived. Some believe that the first men were white and lived in Europe and North Africa; others think the negroes of Africa are the oldest men; a few have argued that the American Indian was the original race; most, however, have thought that Asia was man’s first home. Whether this is so or not, Asia to-day contains a swarming population composed of many peoples, differing much in appearance, dress, life, and customs.

The Asian peoples belong chiefly to the Mongolic or yellow race. It is a well-marked type. Medium stature, broad and round head, flat face, with nose rather low, broad and high cheek bones, hair coarse and straight and jet black, skin yellowish, dark eyes apparently set slantwise in the face, are its characters. The yellow race includes the Chinese, Japanese, Coreans, the peoples of Indo-China, and most of the wandering tribes of Siberia. There are probably more of this race than of any other on the globe; next to them in numbers is the white race; then the negroes; then the island peoples; last and least, the American Indians.

Asia may justly be called the continent of yellow peoples. But it would be a mistake to think that no other peoples but Mongolic peoples live there. In almost every part of the great continent are peoples of white or Caucasic types. Thus, in the far northeast of Asia we have the curious Ghilyaks; in Japan, the Ainu; in China, various mountain tribes; in Southeastern Asia, similar peoples; in India, the Todas. All these tribes are white, bearded, with hairy bodies, rather long heads, and straight eyes. These tribes are small in numbers, rather quiet and timid, with little energy, and quite unlike European whites. They usually live in mountainous, out-of-the-way places, and it almost seems as if they are the scattered fragments of an ancient, white population, who occupied much of Asia before the yellow race was important, and who have been crowded back and almost destroyed by it.

In India, Persia, and other parts of Western Asia, are many white peoples who are like true European whites in their Aryan languages and in their forms and features. In Western Asia there are, and long have been, many dark white populations who are vigorous and active, with features much more European than Mongolian. These dark whites speak languages related to each other, but not Aryan. To these peoples, including the old Hebrews, and the modern Arabs, and many other ancient and modern peoples, the name Semites is applied. So you see that in Asia there are not only the yellow, Mongolian peoples, but three different kinds of whites,—the ancient feeble race, the Aryans, and the Semites.

Nowhere do we find more interesting ruins telling of past grandeur than in Asia. We think of Rome as old; of Greece as older; but in Mesopotamia are ruins far older than those of Greece and Rome. There are the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, so often mentioned in the Bible. Both are old, but lately explorers have found yet older ruins dating back six or seven thousand years. And these are not ruins of small and unimportant places, but of grand cities, whose people were already civilized, with fixed laws, curious religions, and many arts and industries. Nowhere in the world have ruins of older cities been found, and it is believed that the people who built them were yellow Mongolians.

In Asia most of the great religions were born. The oldest religious systems of which we know were those of Mesopotamia. In India Buddhism began. Buddha was a teacher who felt that the old religion of India, Brahmanism, was wrong. So he taught a new religion. There are more believers in Buddhism to-day than in any other religion. It is the chief religion of China, Japan, Tibet, Southeastern Asia, and Ceylon; but in India itself, where Buddha lived and taught, the people are not Buddhists. In China there arose a great teacher, Confucius. He taught no religion, but to-day there are Confucian temples all through China. Judaism, the worship of Jehovah by the Jews, began in Asia. There, too, in JudÆa also, Christianity was born. Christ dwelt and taught there, and there the first Christian churches were founded. But just as Buddha’s land is not Buddhist, so Palestine to-day is not Christian. It is a part of the Mohammedan world. Mohammedanism, too, is Asiatic, beginning in Arabia almost thirteen hundred years ago. Perhaps the original home of man, Asia has certainly been the first seat of civilization, and the cradle of religions.