A brilliant study of Ellsworth Huntington[13] has shown that there are certain optimum conditions of climate which are most suitable for efficient work. These conditions, which were determined by an analysis of the output of work in American factories, were then found to be just those which prevail in the most progressive regions of the globe, which are located in the temperate storm-belts, and it is shown in certain instances that fluctuations in the position of this storm-belt coincided with fluctuations in the centres of civilization. A few additional examples of this may be given. The beginnings of civilization may reasonably be placed with the transition from the Palæolithic to the Neolithic type, a transition which involved much more than just the polishing of stone weapons. It involved also the beginnings of agriculture, crude pottery, and later, the domestication of animals. One of the earliest Neolithic cities known is probably that of Anau, near Askabad in Transcaspia, excavated by Pumpelly in 1904. From the thickness of the accumulated debris the date of first settlement is placed at or before 8000 B.C., i.e. 10,000 years ago, or during the period which in Europe is assigned to the concluding stages of the Wurm glaciation. Pumpelly’s time-estimates are based on careful comparison with accumulations in Merv and other cities. At present the mean annual rainfall in that part of Turkestan is below ten inches a year, and the country is practically desert, and is entirely unfitted for agriculture. But with the remains of the ice-sheet still over Scandinavia and depressions following a more southerly course along the Mediterranean basin and into southern Asia, the rainfall was considerably heavier, and the climate in general was more suited to a progressive race. At the outset we find this Neolithic race living in rectangular houses built of uniform sun-dried bricks; they were skilful potters, cultivating cereals, but at first without domestic animals. The beginning of Neolithic civilization in Crete is placed by Evans at about 12000 B.C., while on the basis of excavations by de Morgan at Susa in Persia, Montelius places the origin of Neolithic culture in this part of Asia as early as about 18000 B.C. At Susa the deposits are 130 feet thick, and of these the upper 40 feet cover a period of 6000 years. Thus we see that what may be considered as the great step from savagery to civilization took place while the present centres of progress in Europe and America were still in the Ice Age. At this time the climate of southern Asia must have resembled the present climate of north-west Europe in heavier rainfall and the day-to-day fluctuations of weather—in fact, the districts where civilization began probably had at that time the most stimulating climate in the northern hemisphere.