03. The Horse-riding Nomads in Human Development. An essay in human destiny

The Persian Plateau and the adjoining highlands of Asia Minor and the Middle East became, in recent years, increasingly known as a homogeneous nucleus of human development. It was emphasized by Tu. D. McCown and A. Kerra, that during dominating Neanderthal-influence in Europe ‘Western Europe had become an evolutionary backwater and the centre of active evolutionary progress lay much further to the East, probably in Western Asia’. An analysis of the Tabunskeletons in Palestine has led authors to the belief that the burials of Mount Carmel are representing the inhabitants of a transitional zone, leading from one ancient area of racial differentiation (Neanderthal or Palaeoanthropie Man) to another ancient areca, lying further East, a Neanthropic area where the Proto-Caucasian or Proto-Cro-Magnon type of man was being evolved. In Mid-Pleistocene the inhabitants of Europe were all Neanderthal in type, but this type becomes modified as we proceed from West to East, and in Palestine we found a transitional type leading towards Neanthropic man.