to have spread in the remote, almost prehistoric, ages across Northern European Russia even as far as modern Finland, where it has since been absorbed. Certain tribes of these Finns are mentioned by name in the earliest Chinese annals, as being a fair-haired, blue-eyed race, and from this and other information it is clear that they inhabited large tracts of what is now Western and Central Siberia about the second and third century A.D. From the third to the sixth century of the Christian era considerable racial movements seem to have taken place, accompanied by numerous wars and contentions for the possession of the best places in Western and Central Siberia. A new racial element began to appear, and the so-called Turkish races, with round brachycephalic skulls, broad cheek-bones and straight hair, began to press up from the south. During the fourth and fifth centuries certain of these Turks, known as "Hunni," were found contending with and alternately ousting and mingling with the Finnish aborigines of Southern Siberia. By the eleventh century the Khan of the Hunni had acquired authority over the whole Altai districts, and many of the races in the Upper Obi and Chulim rivers became modified by this new Turkish element, as is seen from the skulls in their burial-mounds of this date. Two people known as Hakaz and Hunni exerted considerable power from the fourth to the ninth centuries A.D. in these districts, and they traded with Arabia, Tibet and China, as we see from the pottery found in their burial-mounds. Thus it came about that the Finns of Southern Siberia became modified by the Turkish stock, and a population was formed in which both Turkish and Finnish elements were found in every
