Six culture areas are distinguished: (1) Paleo -Siberian, depending on sea-mammals and fish in n.-e. Siberia, though formerly a more widespread food-gathering complex in northern forest zone with tailored clothes, tipi, earth lodge, snowshoes, shamanism, possibly including ancestors of Turks, Mongols, Tungus; (2) Southwest Asian Sedentary, where farming was invented based on wheat and barley, under despotic bureaucracies, extending from the Mediterranean to Central India, and now practicing legalistic Mohammedanism; (3) Pastoral Nomadic wide Central Asian steppe area with seasonal migrations for pasture, framed felt tents, patrilineal kinship dominance and Islam or Lamaistic Buddhism superimposed on original shamanistic animism; (4) Chinese Sedentary derived from western Asia, based on millet and wet rice, bureaucratic, with religions combining philosophy and ancestor worship; (5) Southeast Asian based on irrigated wet rice or dry rice farming, pigs and chickens, with village "democratic" social unit and animistic religion often submerged under Indian or Chinese governmental and religious systems, and great local variety; (6) Primitive Nomadic s.-e. Asia negritoid and australoid food-gatherers. Korean, Japanese, Hindu, and Tibetan areas are major regions of culture blend. This tentative scheme points out the need for anthropological work on Asia in cooperation with linguists and orientalists.