"The birthplace, or the primitive station, of the race of men who peopled Europe and Western Asia, is supposed to have been Mount Caucasus. From this conjecture, Europeans and many Asiatic nations, and even some Africans, have received the new designation of Caucasians. The nations of Eastern Asia are imagined, in like manner, to originate in the neighbourhood of Mount Altaï, and they are named after the Mongolians, who inhabit the highest region in that vast chain of hills. The African negroes are derived from the southern face of the chain of Mount Atlas. "They are, however, named simply the Ethiopian race, from the Ethiopians, who were the only black people known to the ancients in very remote times. A mixture of somewhat vague notions, partly connected with physical theories, and in part derived from history, or rather from mythology, has formed the groundwork of this scheme, which refers the origin of human races to high mountainous tracts. The tops of mountains first emerged above the surface of the primeval ocean, and, in the language of some philosophical theorists, first became the scene of the organizing life of nature. From different mountain tops, Wildenow, and other writers on the history of plants, derive the vegetable tribes; which they suppose to have descended from high places into the plains, and to have spread their colonies along the margins of mountain streams. High mountains thus came to be regarded as the birthplaces of living races.