Taylor wrote many books about the effects of the environment in shaping race. He also wrote extensively about migration of the races. Taylor saw theories that explained the genealogy of races as beginning in Africa and then expanding out through the world and evolving in positive ways as antiquated thinking from the 19th century. In his 1937 book
Environment, Race, and Migration, Taylor outlines a theory that the "
Mongolian" race is the race truest to their past in the hearth of modern humans: Central Asia.
Australoid and
Negroid races were the first to branch off during humanity's evolution from the Neanderthal and were racially adapted to live in the world's margins. The
Negrito race was never related to Neanderthals, and were thus likely developed more directly from apes. "During the million years of Post-Pliocene" time, humans were forced to migrate during four major migrations related to the expansion of the "Great Ice Sheet." As humans moved to different areas of the world they adapted to the environment they encountered. Taylor openly disagrees with
Wegener's theory of
Continental Drift, writing that the human races evidently migrated into world's regions separately and over time. They moved out over the world, the world didn't move them. (Note: this was written in a period before knowledge of
plate tectonics). Taylor links skin pigment to temperature and collects extensive data from the period on geology, topology, meteorology, and anthropology. Taylor saw geography in a synthesising role between explanations of the physical world and the diffusion and evolution of the human species. In regards to anthropology, Taylor looks at records of hair texture and size, nose size, ear size, cephalic indices, skin color, and height. He links sexual attraction amongst different races to evolved and diverged cultural preferences for beauty. Taylor comes up with the theory of the "tri-peninsular world", in which the world is divided into three peninsulas descending south from a common point in the Arctic (Americas, Europe and Africa, Asia and Australia). In these peninsulas, Taylor finds climate and race similarities. In regards to racial variation within smaller regions, Taylor offers this passage about Europe's races: The most suitable parts of the world for habitation are, according to Taylor, in Europe, Western Siberia, the Americas, and Eastern China. These are the places that, if not already overcrowded, are where the world's masses must one day move into. Places least adaptable to European styles of agriculture and settlement are considered by Taylor "useless". In the final section of the book Taylor lays out the possibilities of future expansion of the white race, which he sees as the only race which will expand. Though he voices that no Europeans would wish to extinguish or force native people from their lands, "these primitive people are doomed to extinction..." Whites would eventually settle all "useful lands." Taylor disagreed with theories that put the Nordic race as the apotheosis of mankind. By his theory,
Asiatic races would be the most pure. He gives great accolades to the Chinese race. He links Europe's historical accession in the global sphere to command of the seas and easy access to plentiful surface coal. Taylor takes a seemingly contradictory viewpoint by both decrying miscegenation and saying that white Australian women who married Chinese men were OK to do so. Mixing of more advanced races was, ostensibly, acceptable, while miscegenation with more primitive races was to be abhorred. All citations are from the book
Environment, Race, and Migration. ==Move to North America and return to Australia==