It is the same with their physical types. Certain tribes whom we place in the Turanian group have all the distinctive characteristics of the white races. Others are hardly to be distinguished from the yellow nations. Between these two extremes there are numerous varieties which carry us, without any abrupt transition, from the most perfect European to the most complete Chinese type.[39] In the Aryan family the ties of blood are perceptible even between the most divergent branches. By a comparative study of their languages, traditions, and religious conceptions, it has been proved that the Hindoos upon the Ganges, the Germans on the Rhine, and the Celts upon the Loire, are all offshoots of a single stem. Among the Turanians the connections between one race and another are only perceptible in the case of tribes living in close neighbourhood to one another, who have had mutual relations over a long course of years. In such a case the natural affinities are easily seen, and a family of peoples can be established with certainty. The classification is less definitely marked and clearly divided than that of the Aryan and Semitic families; but, nevertheless, it has a real value for the historian.[40] According to the doctrine which now seems most widely accepted, it was from the crowded ranks of the immense army which peopled the north that the tribes who first attempted a civilized life in the plains of Shinar and the fertile slopes between the mountains and the left bank of the Tigris, were thrown off. It is thought that these tribes already possessed a national constitution, a religion, and a system of legislation, the art of writing and the most essential industries, when they first took possession of the lands in question.[41] A tradition still current among the eastern Turks puts the cradle of the race in the valleys of the Altai, north of the plateau of Pamir.[42] Whether the emigrants into Chaldaea brought the rudiments of their civilization with them, or whether their inventive faculties were only stirred to action after their settlement in that fertile land, is of slight importance. In any case we may say that they were the first to put the soil into cultivation, and to found industrious and stationary communities along the banks of its two great rivers. Once settled in Chaldaea, they called themselves, according to M. Oppert, the people of SUMER, a title which is continually associated with that of "the people of ACCAD" in the inscriptions.[43] NOTES: [28] _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. p. 15 (London, 1883, Chapman and Hall). Upon the Chaldaean _chadoufs_ see LAYARD, _Discoveries_, pp. 109, 110. [29] _Genesis_ xi. 2. [30] _Genesis_ x. 8-12. [31] _Genesis_ x. 6-20. [32] _Genesis_ x. 22: "The children of Shem." [33] _Genesis_ xi. 27-32.