ABSTRACT
The effect of foreign contacts, by action and reaction, through trade or mere cultural borrowing, can be assessed. The influences of environment on the march of local history can hardly escape the observer, and may sway his present judgments, since they are sure to persist. Nordic man does not appear in the Middle East till historical times. He belongs by origin to the great central Asian grass-lands, but with gradual specialization to northern conditions in Asia and then in Europe. Primeval Alpine man is of darker colouring, abundant body-hair, lightish eyes, medium height and strong build, with short or roundish head, high curved occiput, short narrow nose, broad face. There are suggestions of an inroad of Asiatic (Syrian or Arabian) tribes into Egypt, perhaps in the third millennium. There was trade and raiding out of Egypt towards Sinai, Syria, Nubia, and intercourse between Syria, Cilicia and 'Iraq.
