r arrivals
pushing the earlier farther and farther toward the south, so that the
oldest and purest forms of Chinese would be found just where they are,
the tonal languages of the Indo-Chinese peninsula being in that case
regarded as the languages of the vanguard of the migration. Also, the
ideograms referred to represent animals and plants of the temperate
zone rather than of the tropics, but even if it could be shown, which
it cannot, that these animals and plants now belong exclusively to the
tropics, that would be no proof of the tropical origin of the Chinese,
for in the earliest times the climate of North China was much milder
than it is now, and animals such as tigers and elephants existed in the
dense jungles which are later found only in more southern latitudes.

Expansion of Races from North to South

The theory of a southern origin (to which a further serious objection
will be stated presently) implies a gradual infiltration of Chinese
immigrants through South or Mid-China (as above indicated) toward
the north, but there is little doubt that the movement of the races
has been from north to south and not _vice versa_. In what are now
the provinces of Western Kansu and Ssuch'uan there lived a people
related to the Chinese (as proved by the study of Indo-Chinese
comparative philology) who moved into the present territory of Tibet
and are known as Tibetans; in what is now the province of Yuennan were
the Shan or Ai-lao (modern Laos), who, forced by Mongol invasions,
emigrated to the peninsula in the south and became the Siamese; and in
Indo-China, not related to the Chinese, were the Annamese, Khmer, Mon,
Khasi, Colarains (whose remnants are dispersed over the hill tracts
of Central India), and other tribes, extending in prehistoric times
into Southern China, but subsequently driven back by the expansion
of the Chinese in that direction.

Arrival of the Chinese in China

Taking into consideration all the existing evidence, the objections to
all other theories of the origin of the Chinese seem to be greater
than any yet raised to the theory that immigrants from the Tarim
valley or beyond (_i.e._ from Elam or Akkadia, either direct or _via_
Eastern Turkestan) struck the banks of the Yellow River in their
eastward journey and followed its course until they reached the
localities where we first find them settled, namely, in the region
covered by parts of the three modern provinces of Shansi, Shensi,
and Honan