The Cro-Magnon race very probably came along the northern or southern shores of the Mediterranean, and then pushed northward into France; though the evidence is far from compelling. The race is evidently Asiatic in its physical characters, reminding us of tribes still living along the Himalayas, most strikingly of the Sikhs. If they entered from the south, northern Africa was a station on their march, not their original home. The Solutrean culture may have been brought by the Brünn people, who probably came through Hungary and up the Danube, but its origin and route of migration is still very obscure. Breuil's arguments for the migration of Magdalenian culture from Poland across Europe are very strong, and his view seems to accord well with the facts, though Osborn seems to lean toward a somewhat different interpretation.[141] The broad-headed people of Furfooz and Grenelle apparently came by the central European route. The only race showing any Negroid characters is that of Grimaldi, apparently accompanying the Cro-Magnons, few in number and having little or no influence on the population of Europe. Evidently the Mediterranean region was far more precocious than northern Europe, and the genuine Mediterranean race may have arrived here bringing the Neolithic culture almost or quite as early as the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic Epoch in France. Sergi is of the opinion, though he does not press it, that the Mediterranean race originated in Africa, perhaps in the region of the great lakes, and that its most primitive representatives of to-day are the Hamitic peoples along the southern shore of the Mediterranean.[142] His definition of the race is based less upon mere breadth and length of skull than upon contours and form and development of regions. It was a work of observation, insight, and genius, and was a landmark in the progress of the science of anthropology. The area of distribution of the race takes the form of a Y, the arms following the north and south shores of the Mediterranean while the stem or lower portion extends through Asia Minor. It includes the Hamitic peoples, also the Pelasgi and the Hittites, but leaves out the Semites. Huxley had described the distribution of his Melanochrooi, or dark Europeans, very similarly, except that in his group the stem of the Y lay farther south and extended into Arabia. In locating the origin of the Mediterranean race in Africa, Sergi was doubtless influenced by the opinion of Darwin and others that man's birthplace was in Africa. Nearly all paleontologists to-day favor the Asiatic origin; and the stem of the Y stretching eastward toward Asia Minor or Arabia points to a possible or probable primitive route of migration. The Asiatic cradle is really in better accord with Sergi's theory, and meets some objections or difficulties better, than the African.