monogeny or polygeny—darwin—existing races—colour—hair—skulls and brains—dolichocephali and brachycephali—jaws and teeth—stature—other tests—isaac taylor—prehistoric types in europe—huxley's classification—language no test of race—egyptian monuments—- human and animal races unchanged for 6000 years—neolithic races—pal?olithic—different races of man as far back as we can trace—types of canstadt, cro-magnon, and furfooz—oldest races dolichocephalic—skulls of neanderthal and spy—simian characters—objections—evidence confined to europe—american man—calaveras skull—tertiary man—skull of castelnedolo—leaves monogeny or polygeny an open question—arguments on each side—old arguments from the bible and philology exploded—what darwinian theory requires—animal types traced up to the eocene—secondary origins—dog and horse—fertility of races—question of hybridity—application to man—difference of constitutions—negro and white—bearing on question of migration—apes and monkeys—question of original locality of man—asiatic theory—eur-african—american—arctic—none based on sufficient evidence—- mere speculations—conclusion—summary of evidence as to human origins.

the immense antiquity of man upon earth having been established, other questions of great interest present themselves as to the origin of the race. these questions, however, no longer depend on positive facts of observation, like the discovery of pal?olithic remains in definite geological deposits, but on inference and conjecture from these and other observed facts, most of which are of comparatively recent date and hardly extend beyond the historical period.

392 thus if we start with the existing state of things, we find a great variety of human races actually prevailing, located in different parts of the world, and of fundamental types so dissimilar as to constitute what in animal zoology would often be called separate species,[16] and yet fertile among themselves, and so similar in many physical and mental characters as to infer an origin from common ancestors. and we can infer from history that this was so to a great extent 6000 years ago, and that the length of time has been insufficient to produce any marked changes, either in physical or linguistic types of the different fundamental races.

was this always so, and what inference can be drawn as to the much-disputed question between monogeny and polygeny, that is, between the theory of descent from a single pair in a single locality, and that of descent from several pairs, developed in different localities by parallel, but not strictly identical, lines of evolution?

this is a question which cannot be decided off-hand by à priori considerations. no doubt darwinism points to the evolution of all life from primitive forms, and ultimately, perhaps, from the single simplest form of life in the cell or protoplasm. but this does not necessarily imply that the more highly specialized, and 393 what may be called the secondary forms of life, have all originated from single secondary centres, at one time and in one locality.

on the contrary, we have the authority of darwin himself for saying that this is not a necessary consequence of his theory. in a letter to bentham he says—"i dispute whether a new race or species is necessarily or even generally descended from a single or pair of parents. the whole body of individuals, i believe, became altered together—like our race-horses, and like all domestic breeds which are changed through unconscious selection by man."

the problem is, therefore, an open one, and can only be solved (or rather attacked, for in the present state of our knowledge a complete solution is probably impossible) by a careful induction from ascertained facts, ascending step by step from the present to the past, from the known to the unknown.

the first step is to have a clear idea of what actually exists at the present moment. there are an almost endless number of minor varieties of the human race, but none of them of sufficient importance to imply diversity of origin, with the exception of four, or at the most five or six fundamental types, which stand so widely apart that it is difficult to imagine that they are all descended from a common pair of ancestors. these are the white, yellow, and black races of the old world, the copper-coloured of america, and perhaps the olive-coloured of malaysia and polynesia, and the pygmy races of africa and eastern asia. the difficulty of supposing these races to have all sprung from a single pair will at once be apparent if we personify this pair under the name of adam for the first man and eve for 394 the first woman, and ask ourselves the question, what do we suppose to have been their colour?

but colour alone, though the most obvious, is by no means the sole criterion of difference of race. the evidence is cumulative, and other equally marked and persistent characters, both of physical structure and of physiological and mental peculiarities, stand out as distinctly as differences of colour in the great typical races. for instance, the hair is a very persistent index of race. when the section of it is circular, the hair is straight and lank; when flattened, woolly; and when oval, curly or wavy. now these characters are so persistent that many of the best anthropologists have taken hair as the surest test of race. everywhere the lank and straight hair and circular section go with the yellow and copper-coloured races; the woolly hair and flat section with the black; and the wavy hair and oval section with the white races.

the solid framework of the skeleton also affords very distinctive types of race, especially where it is looked at in a general way as applicable to great masses of pure races, and not to individuals of mixed race, like most europeans. the skull is most important, for it affords the measure of the size and shape of the brain, which is the highest organ, and that on which the differentiation of man from the lower animals mainly depends. the size of the brain alone does not always afford a conclusive proof of mental superiority, for it varies with sex, height, and other individual characters, and often seems to depend more on quality than on quantity. still, if we take general averages, we find that superior and civilized races have larger brains than inferior and savage ones. thus the average brain of the european 395 is about 1500 cubic centimètres, while that of the australian and bushman does not exceed 1200.

the shape as well as the size of the skull affords another test of race which is often appealed to. the main distinction taken is between dolichocephalic and brachycephalic, or long and broad skulls. here also we must look at general averages rather than at individuals, for there is often considerable variation within the same race, especially among the mesocephalic, or medium between the two extremes, which is generally the prevalent form where there has been much intermixture of races. but if we take widely different types there can be no doubt that the long or broad skull is a characteristic and persistent feature. the formation of the jaws and teeth affords another important test. some races are what is called prognathous, that is, the jaws project, and the teeth are set in sockets sloping outwards, so that the lower part of the face approximates to the form of a muzzle; others are orthognathous, or have the jaws and teeth vertical. and the form of the chin seems to be wonderfully correlated with the general character and energy of the race. it is hard to say why, but as a matter of fact a weak chin generally denotes a weak, and a strong chin a strong, race or individual. thus the chimpanzee and other apes have no chin, the negro and lower races generally have chins weak and receding. the races who, like the iberians, have been conquered or driven from plains to mountains, have had poor chins; while their successive conquerors, of aryan race,—celts, romans, teutons, and scandinavians,—might almost be classified by the prominence and solidity of this feature of the face.

396 stature is another very persistent feature. the pygmy races of equatorial africa described by stanley have remained the same since the early records of egypt, while the pure aryan races of the north temperate zone, gauls, germans, and scandinavians, have from the first dawn of history amazed the shorter races of the south by their tall stature, huge limbs, blue eyes, and yellow hair. here and there isolated tall races may be found where the race has become thoroughly acclimatized to a suitable environment, as among some negro tribes, and the araucanian indians of patagonia; but as a rule the inferior races are short, the bulk of the civilized races of the world of intermediate stature, and the great conquering races of the north temperate zone decidedly tall.

other tests are afforded by the shape of the eye-orbits and nasal bones, and other characters, all of which agree, in the words of isaac taylor in his origin of the aryans, in "exhibiting two extreme types—the african with long heads, long orbits, and flat hair; and the mongolian with round heads, round orbits, and round hair. the european type is intermediate, the head, the orbit, and the hair being oval. in the east of europe we find an approximation to the asiatic type; in the south of europe to the african."

taking these prominent anthropological characters as tests, we find four distinct types among the earliest inhabitants of europe, which can be traced back from historic to neolithic times. they consist of two long-headed and two short-headed races, and in each case one is tall and the other short. the dolichocephalic are recognized everywhere throughout western europe and on the mediterranean basin, including north africa, as 397 the oldest race, and they are thought still to survive in the original type in some of the people of wales and ireland and the spanish basques; while they doubtless form a large portion, intermixed with other races, of the blood of the existing populations of great britain and ireland, of western and southern france, of spain, portugal, sicily, sardinia, north africa, and other mediterranean districts. this is known as the iberian race, and it can be traced clearly beyond history and the knowledge of metals, into the neolithic stone age, and may possibly be descended from some of the vastly older pal?olithic types such as that of cro-magnon. the type is everywhere a feeble one, of short stature, dolichocephalic skull, narrow oval face, orthognathic teeth, weak chin, and swarthy complexion. we have only to compare a skull of this type with one of ruder and stronger races, to understand how the latter must have survived as conquerors in the struggle for existence in the early ages of the world, before gunpowder and military discipline had placed civilization in a better position to contend with brute force and energy. huxley sums up the latest evidence as to the distinctive types of these historic and prehistoric races of europe as follows—

1. blond long-heads of tall stature who appear with least admixture in scandinavia, north germany, and parts of the british islands.

2. brunette broad-heads of short stature in central france, the central european highlands, and piedmont. these are identified with the ligurian race, and their most typical modern representatives are the auvergnats and savoyards.

3. mongoloid brunette broad-heads of short stature 398 in arctic and eastern europe, and central asia, represented by the lapps and other tribes of northern russia, passing into the mongols and chinese of eastern asia.

4. brunette long-heads of short stature—the iberian race.

huxley adds, "the inhabitants of the regions which lie between these five present the intermediate gradations which might be expected to result from their intermixture. the evidence at present extant is consistent with the supposition that the blond long-heads, the brunette broad-heads, and the brunette long-heads—i.e. the scandinavian, ligurian, and iberian races—have existed in europe very nearly in their present localities throughout historic times and very far back into prehistoric times. there is no proof of any migration of asiatics into europe west of the basin of the dnieper down to the time of attila. on the contrary, the first great movements of the european population of which there is any conclusive evidence are that series of gaulish invasions of the east and south, which ultimately extended from north italy to galatia in asia minor." i may add, that in more recent times many of the principal movements have been from west to east, viz. of germans absorbing slavs, and slavs absorbing or expelling fins and tartars.

the next question is, how far can we trace back the existence of the present widely different fundamental types of mankind by the light of ascertained and certain facts?

the most important of these facts is, that egyptian monuments enable us to say, that the existing diversities 399 of the typical races of mankind are not of recent origin, but have existed unchanged from the first dawn of history, say 7000 years ago. the egyptians themselves have come down from the old empire, through all the vicissitudes of conquests, mixtures of races, changes of religion and language, so little altered that the fellah of to-day is often the image of the egyptians who built the pyramids. the wooden statue of an officer of chephren who died some 6000 years ago, was such a striking portrait of the village magistrate of to-day, that the arab workmen christened it the "sheik-el-beled." and these old egyptians knew from the earliest times three at least of the fundamental types of mankind: the nahsu, or negroes to the south, who are represented on the monuments so faithfully that they might be taken as typical pictures of the modern negro; the lebu to the west, a fair-skinned and blue-eyed white race, whose descendants remain to this day as kabyles and berbers, in the same localities of north africa; and to the east various tribes of arabs, syrians, and other asiatics, who are always painted of a yellowish-brown colour, and whose features may often be traced in their modern descendants.

the same may be said of the wild and domestic animals of the various countries, which are the same now, unless where subsequently imported, as when they were first known to the ancient egyptians.

we start, therefore, with this undoubted fact, that a period of 6000 or 7000 years has been insufficient to make any perceptible change in the types of pure races, whether of the animal or of human species. and doubtless this period might be greatly extended if we had historical records of the growth of egyptian 400 civilization in the times prior to menes, for in the earliest records we find accounts of wars both with the nahsu and the lebu, implying large populations of those races already existing both to the south and west of the valley of the nile.

these positive dates carry us back so far that it is of little use to investigate minutely the differences of races shown by the remains of the neolithic period. they were very marked and numerous, but we have no evidence to show that they were different from those of more recent times, or that their date can be certainly said to be much older than the oldest egyptian records. all we can infer with certainty is, that whether the neolithic period be of longer or shorter duration, no changes have taken place in the animal fauna contemporary with man which cannot be traced to human agency or other known causes. no new species have appeared, or old ones disappeared, in the course of natural evolution, as was the case during the quaternary and preceding geological periods.

the neolithic is, however, a mere drop in the ocean of time compared with the earlier periods in which the existence of pal?olithic man can be traced by his remains; and as far back as we can go we find ourselves confronted by the same fact of a diversity of races. as we have seen in the chapter on quaternary man, europe, where alone skulls and skeletons of the pal?olithic age have been discovered, affords at least three very distinct types—that of canstadt, of cro-magnon, and of furfooz.

the canstadt type, which includes the men of neanderthal and spy, and which was widely diffused, having been found, as far south as gibraltar, is apparently the oldest, and certainly the rudest and most 401 savage, being characterized by enormous brow-ridges, a low and receding forehead, projecting muzzle, and thick bones with powerful muscular attachments. it is very dolichocephalic, but the length is due mainly to the projection of the posterior part of the brain, the total size of which is below the average. the cro-magnon type, which is also very old, being contemporary with the cave-bear and mammoth, is the very opposite of that of canstadt in many respects. the superciliary ridges are scarcely marked, the forehead is elevated, the contour of the skull good, and the volume of the brain equal or superior to that of many modern civilized races. the stature was tall, the nose straight or projecting, and the chin prominent. the only resemblance to the canstadt type is, that they are both dolichocephalic chiefly on the posterior region, and both prognathous; but the differences are so many and profound that no anthropologist would say that one of these races could have been derived directly from the other. still less could he say that the small round-headed race of furfooz could have been a direct descendant of either of the two former. it is found in close vicinity with them over an extensive area, but generally in caves and deposits which, from their geological situation and associated fauna, point to a later origin. in fact, if we go by european evidence alone, we may consider it proved that the oldest known races were dolichocephalic, that the brachycephalic races came later, and that as long ago as in neolithic times, considerable intercrossing had taken place, which has gone on ever since, producing the great variety of intermediate types which now prevail over a great part of europe.

this inference of the priority of the canstadt type 402 is strengthened by its undoubted approximation to that of the most savage existing races and of the anthropoid apes. if we take the skulls and skeletons of neanderthal and spy, and compare them with those of modern civilized man, we find that while they are still perfectly human, they make a notable approximation towards a savage and simian type in all the peculiarities which have been described by anthropologists as tests. the most important of all, that of the capacity and form of the brain, is best illustrated by the subjoined diagram of the skulls of the european, the neanderthal, and the chimpanzee placed in superposition.

l'homme avant l'histoire. (from debierre.)

it will be seen at a glance that the neanderthal skull, especially in the frontal part, which is the chief seat of intelligence, is nearer to the chimpanzee than to modern man. and all the other characters correspond to this inferiority of brain. the enormous superciliary ridges; the greater length of the fore-arm; the prognathous jaws, larger canine teeth, and smaller chin; the thicker bones and stronger muscular attachments; the rounder ribs; the flatter tibia, and many 403 other characters described by pal?ontologists, all point in the same direction, and take us some considerable way towards the missing link which is to connect the human race with animal ancestors.

still there are other considerations which must make us pause before asserting too positively that in following quaternary man up to the canstadt type, we are on the track of original man, and can say with confidence that by following it up still further we shall arrive at the earlier form from which man was differentiated. in the first place, europe is the only part of the world where this canstadt type has hitherto been found. we have abundant evidence from pal?olithic stone implements that man existed pretty well over the whole earth in early quaternary times, but have hitherto no evidence from human remains outside of europe from which we can draw any inference as to the type of man by whom these implements were made. it is clear that in europe the oldest races were dolichocephalic, but we have no certainty that this was the case in asia, in so many parts of which round-headed races exclusively prevail, and have done so from the earliest times. again, we have no evidence as to the origin of another of the most strongly marked types, that of the negro, or of the negrito, negrillo, bushmen, australian, or other existing races who approach most nearly to the simian type. the only evidence we have of the type of races who were certainly early quaternary, and may very possibly go back to an older geological age than that of the men of neanderthal and spy, comes from the new world, from california, brazil, and buenos ayres, and points to a type not so savage and simian as that of canstadt, but rather to that which 404 characterizes all the different varieties of american man, though here also we find evidence of distinct dolichocephalic and brachycephalic races from the very earliest times. another difficulty in the way of considering the canstadt type as a real advance towards primitive man and the missing link, arises from the totally different and very superior type of cro-magnon being found so near it in time, as proved by the existence in both of the cave-bear, mammoth, and other extinct animals. we can hardly suppose the cro-magnon type to have sprung by slow evolution in the ordinary way of direct succession, from such a very different type as that of canstadt during such a short interval of time as a small portion of one geological period. again, it is very perplexing to find that the only tertiary skulls and skeletons for which we possess really strong evidence, those of castelnedolo, instead of showing, as might be expected, a still more rude and simian aspect than that of canstadt, show us the canstadt type indeed, but in a milder and more human form.

all that can be said with certainty is, that as far as authentic evidence carries us back, the ancestral animal, or missing link, has not been discovered, but that man already existed from an enormous antiquity, extending certainly through the quaternary into the pliocene, and probably into the miocene period, and that at the earliest date at which his remains have been found the race was already divided, as at present, into several sharply distinguished types.

this leaves the question of man's ultimate origin completely open to speculation, and enables both monogenists and polygenists to contend for their respective views with plausible arguments, and without fear 405 of being refuted by facts. polygeny, or plural origins, would at first sight seem to be the most plausible theory to account for the great diversities of human races actually existing, and which can be shown to have existed from such an immense antiquity. and this seems to have been the first guess of primitive nations, for most of them considered themselves as autochthonous, sprung from the soil, or created by their own native gods. but by degrees this theory gave place to that of monogeny, which has been for a long while almost universally accepted by the civilized world. the cause of this among christians, jews, and mahometans has been the acceptance of the narratives in genesis, first of adam and secondly of noah, as literally true accounts of events which actually occurred. this is an argument which has completely broken down, and no competent and dispassionate thinker any longer accepts the hebrew scriptures as a literal and conclusive authority, on facts of history and science which lie within the domain of human reason. the question, therefore, became once more an open one, but as the old orthodox argument for monogeny faded into oblivion, a new and more powerful one was furnished by the doctrine of evolution as expounded by darwin. the same argument applies to man as to the rest of the animal world, that if separate species imply separate creations, these supernatural creations must be multiplied to such an extent as to make them altogether incredible; as for instance 150 separate creations for the land shells alone of one of the group of madeira islands; while on the other hand genera grade off into species, species into races, and races into varieties, by such insensible degrees, as to establish an irresistible inference that they have all been 406 developed by evolution from common ancestors. no one, i suppose, seriously doubts that this is in the main the true theory of life, though there may still be some uncertainty as to the causes and mode of operation, and of the different steps and stages of this evolution. monogeny therefore in this general sense of evolution from some primitive mammalian type, may be accepted as the present conclusion of science for man as it has come to be for the horse, dog, and so many other animals which are his constant companions. their evolution can in many cases be traced up, through successive steps, to some more simple and generalized type in the eocene; and it may be permitted to believe that if the whole geological record could be traced as far back as that of the horse, in the case of man and the other quadrumana, their pedigree would be as clearly made out. this, however, does not conclude the question, for it is quite permissible to contend that in the case of man, as in that of the horse, though the primary ancestral type in the eocene may be one, the secondary types from which existing races are more immediately derived may be more than one, and may have been evolved in different localities. thus in the case of the dog, it is almost certain that some of the existing races have been derived from wolves, and others from jackals and foxes; but this is quite consistent with the belief that all the canine genus have been evolved from the marsupial carnivora of the eocene, through the arctocyon, who was a generalized type, half dog and half bear. in fact, we have the authority of darwin himself, as quoted in the beginning of this chapter, for saying that this would be quite consistent with his view of the origin of species.

407 now the controversy between monogenists and polygenists has turned mainly on these comparatively recent developments of secondary types. it has been fought to a great extent before the immense antiquity of the human race had been established, and it had become almost certain that its original starting-point must be sought at least as far back as in the eocene period.

the main argument for monogeny has been that the different races of mankind are fertile among themselves. this is doubtless true to a great extent, and shows that these races have not diverged very far from their ancestral type. but the researches of darwin and his successors have thrown a good deal of new light on the question of hybridity. species can no longer be looked upon as separated from one another and from races by hard-and-fast lines, on one side of which is absolute sterility and on the other absolute fertility; but rather as blending into one another by insensible gradations from free intercrossing to sterility, according as the differences from the original type became more pronounced and more fixed by heredity.

to revert to the case of dogs, we find free interbreeding between races descended from different secondary ancestors, such as wolves, jackals, and foxes, though freer, i believe, and more permanent as the races are closer; but as the specific differences become more marked, the fertility does not abruptly cease, but rapidly diminishes. thus buffon's experiment shows that a hybrid cross between the dog and the wolf may be produced and perpetuated for at least three generations, and the leporine cross between the hare and rabbit is almost an established race. on the other hand, we see 408 in the mule the last expiring trace of fertility in a cross between species which have diverged so far in different directions as the horse and the ass.

the human race repeats this lesson of the animal world, and shows a graduated scale of fertility and permanence in crosses, between different types according as they are closely or distantly related. thus if we take the two extremes, the blond white of north temperate europe and the negro of equatorial africa, the disposition to union is almost replaced by repugnance which is only overcome under special circumstances, such as slavery, and an absence of women of their own race; while the offspring, the mulatto, is everywhere a feeble folk, with deficient vitality, diminished fertility, and prone to die out, or revert to one or other of the original types. but where the types are not so extremely divergent the fertility of the cross increases, as between the brunet white of southern europe and the arab or moor with the negro, and of the european with the native indian of america.

perhaps the strongest argument for polgyeny is that derived from the different constitutions of different races as regards susceptibility to climatic and other influences.

at present, and as far back as history or tradition enables us to trace, mankind has, as in the case of other animals, been very much restricted to definite geological provinces. thus in the extreme case of the fair white and the negro, the former cannot live and propagate its type south of the parallel of 40°, or the latter north of it. this argument was no doubt pushed too far by agassiz, who supposed the whole world to be divided into a number of limited districts, in each of which a separate creation both of men, animals, and plants had 409 taken place suited to the environment. this is clearly inconsistent with facts, but there is still some force in it when stripped of exaggeration, and confined to the three or four leading types which are markedly different. especially it bears on the argument, on which monogenists mainly rely, of the peopling of the earth by migration from one common centre. no doubt migration has played a very great part in the diffusion of all animal and vegetable species, and their zoological provinces are determined very much by the existence of insurmountable barriers in early geological times. no doubt also man is better organized for migration than most other terrestrial animals, and history and tradition show that in comparatively recent times he has reached the remotest islands of the pacific by perfectly natural means. but this does not meet the difficulty of accounting, if we place the origin of man from a single pair anywhere in the northern hemisphere, for his presence in pal?olithic times in south africa and south america. how did he get across the equatorial zone, in which only a tropical fauna, including the tropical negro, can now live and flourish? or vice versa, if the original adam and eve were black, and the garden of eden situated in the tropics, how did their descendants migrate northwards, and live on the skirts of the ice-caps of the glacial period? or how did the yellow race, so tolerant of heat and cold, and of insanitary conditions, and so different in physical and moral characters from either the whites or the blacks, either originate from them, or give rise to them? the nearest congeners of man, the quadrumana, monkeys and apes, are all catarrhine in the old world, and all platyrhine in america. why, if all are descended from the same 410 pair of ancestors, and have spread from the same spot by migration? we can only reconcile the fact that it is so with the facts of evolution, by throwing the common starting-point or points of the lines of development much further back into the eocene, or even further; and if this be true for monkeys, why not for man?

one point seems quite clear, that monogeny is only possible by extending the date of human origins far back into the tertiaries. on any short-dated theories of man's appearance upon earth—as for instance that of prestwich, that pal?olithic man probably only existed for some 20,000 or 25,000 years before the neolithic period—some theory like that of agassiz, of separate creations in separate zoological provinces, follows inevitably. if the immense time from the miocene to the recent period has been insufficient to differentiate the hylobates and dryopithecus very materially from the existing anthropoid apes, a period such as 40,000 or 50,000 years would have gone a very little way in deriving the negro from the white, or the white from the negro. to deny the extension of human origins into the tertiaries is practically to deny darwin's theory of evolution altogether, or to contend that man is an exception to the laws by which the rest of the animal creation have come into existence in the course of evolution.

the question of the locality in which the human species first originated depends also very materially on the date assigned for human origins. the various speculations which have been hazarded on this subject are almost all based on the supposition that this origin took place in comparatively recent times when geographical and other causes were not materially different 411 from those of the present day. it was for ages the accepted belief that all mankind were descended primarily from a single pair of ancestors, who were miraculously created in mesopotamia, and secondarily from three pairs who were miraculously preserved in the ark in armenia. this of course never had any other foundation than the belief in the inspired authority of the bible, and when it came to be established that this, as regards its scientific and prehistoric speculations, was irreconcilable with the most certain facts of science, the orthodox account of the creation fell with it. the theory of asiatic origin was, however, taken up on other grounds, and still lingers in some quarters, mainly among philologists, who, headed by max müller, thought they had discovered in sanscrit and zend the nearest approach to a common aryan language. tracing backwards the lines of migration of these people, the sanscrit-speaking hindoos and the zend-speaking iranians, they found them intersecting somewhere about the upper oxus, and jumped at the conclusion that the great elevated plateau of pamir, the "roof of the world," had been the birthplace of man, as it was of so many of the great rivers which flowed from it to the north, south, east, and west. this theory, however, has pretty well broken down, since it has been shown that other branches of the aryan languages, specially the lithuanian, contain more archaic elements than either sanscrit or zend; that language is often no conclusive test of race; that aryan migrations have quite as often or oftener been from west to east than from east to west; and that all history, prehistoric traditions, and linguistic pal?ontology point to the principal aryan races having been located in northern and central europe and in central and 412 southern russia very much as we find them at the present day.

the question of the locality of human origins is now being debated on very different grounds, and although it is not denied that max müller's "somewhere in asia" may turn out to be a correct guess, it is denied that there is at present a particle of evidence to support it. for really the whole question is very much one of guesswork. the immense antiquity which on the lowest possible estimate can be assigned for the proved existence of man, carries us back to a period when geological, geographical, and climatic conditions were so entirely different, that all inferences from those of the present period are useless. for instance, certainly half the himalayas, and probably the whole, were under the sea; the pamir and central asia, instead of being the roof of the world, may have been fathoms deep under a great ocean; greenland and spitzbergen were types of the north temperate climate best suited for the highest races of man.

in like manner language ceases to be an available factor in any attempt to trace human origins to their source. it is doubtless true that at the present day different fundamental types of language distinguish the different typical races of the human family. thus the monosyllabic type, consisting of roots only without grammar, characterizes the chinese and its allied races of the extreme east of asia; the agglutinative, in which different shades of meaning were attached to roots, by definite particles glued on to them as it were by prefixes or suffixes, is the type adopted by most of the oldest and most numerous races of mankind in the old world as their means of conveying ideas by sound; while in the 413 new world the common type of an immense variety of languages is polysynthetic, or an attempt to splutter out as it were a whole sentence in a single immensely long word made up of fragments of separate roots and particles, a type which in the old world is confined to the euskarian of the spanish basque. and at the head of all as refined instruments for the conveyance of thought, the two inflectional languages, the aryan and semitic, by which, though in each case by a totally different system, roots acquire their different shades of meaning by particles, no longer mechanically glued on to them, but melted down as it were with the roots, and incorporated into new words according to definite grammatical rules.

but this carries us back a very little way. judging by philology alone, the chinese, whose annals go back only to about 2500 b.c., would be an older race than the egyptians or accadians, whose languages can be traced at least 2000 years further back. and if we go back into prehistoric and geological times we are absolutely ignorant whether the neolithic and pal?olithic races spoke these languages, or indeed spoke at all. some pal?ontologists have fancied that there was evidence for some of the older pal?olithic races being speechless, and christened them "homo alalus," but this is based on the solitary fact that a single human jaw, that of naulette, is wanting in the genial tubercle, absent also in anthropoid apes, to which one of the muscles of the tongue is attached. but apart from this being a single instance, some of the best anatomists deny that this genial tubercle is really essential to speech, which the latest physiological researches show to be dependent on the development of a small tract in the third frontal 414 convolution of the right side of the brain, any injury to which causes aphasia, or loss of the power of speech, though its physical organs of the larynx remain unimpaired.

it is probable, however, that from the very first man had a certain faculty, like other animals, of expressing meaning by sounds and gestures, and the researches of romanes, and quite recently those of professor garner on the language of monkeys and apes, make this almost certain. but at what particular moment in the course of the evolution of man this faculty ripened into what may be properly called language is a matter of the purest conjecture. it may have been in the tertiary, the quaternary, or not until the recent period.

all we can say is, that when we first catch sight of languages, they are already developed into the present distinct types, arguing, as in the case of physical types, either for distinct miraculous creations, or for such an immensely remote ancestry as to give time for the fixation of separate secondary types before the formation of language. thus, if we confine ourselves to the most perfect and advanced, and apparently therefore most modern form of language of the foremost races of the world, the inflectional, we find two types, the semitic and aryan, constructed on such totally different principles that it is impossible for one to be derived from the other, or both to be descended from a common parent. the semitic device of expressing shades of meaning by internal flexion, that is, by ringing the changes of vowels between three consonants, making every word triliteral, is fundamentally different from the aryan device for attaining the same object by fusing roots and added particles into one new word in which equal value is 415 attached to vowels and consonants. we can partly see how the latter may have been developed from the agglutinative, but not how the stiff and cramped semitic can have been derived either from that or from the far more perfect and flexible type of the aryan languages. it has far more the appearance of being an artificial invention implying a considerable advance of intellectual attainment, and therefore of comparatively recent date. in any case we may safely accept the conclusion that there is nothing in language which assists us in tracing back human origins into geological times, or indeed much further than the commencement of history.

we are reduced, therefore, to geological evidence, and this gives us nothing better than mere probabilities, or rather guesses, as to the original centre or centres of human existence upon the earth. the inference most generally drawn is in favour of the locality where the earliest traces of human remains have been found, and where the existence of the nearest allied species, the apes and monkeys, can be carried back furthest. this locality is undoubtedly eur-africa, that is the continent which existed when europe and africa were united by one or more land connections. and in this locality the preference must be assigned to western europe and to africa north of the atlas; in fact to the portion of this ancient continent facing the atlantic, and western mediterranean, then an inland sea. thus far central and south-western france, spain, portugal, italy, and algeria have afforded the oldest unequivocal proofs of the existence of man, and of the coexistence of anthropoid apes. accordingly darwin inclined to the view that north africa was probably the scene of man's first appearance, and the latest authority on the subject, 416 brinton, in his races and peoples, gives at length reasons for assigning this to somewhere in eur-africa.

but it must be remembered that this inference rests entirely on the fact that the district in question has been more or less explored, while the rest of the earth can hardly be said to have been explored at all, for anything prior to those quaternary paleolithic implements which prove the existence of man already spread over nearly the whole of the habitable globe. nor would the origin of the white race in eur-africa, even if it were established, help us to account for the existence of the negro race on the other side of the atlas and the sahara, or of the yellow race in eastern asia, or of the american race. indeed america may fairly compete with eur-africa for the honour of being the original seat of the human race, for the geological conditions and the animal fauna of the auriferous gravels of california point to the calaveras skull and other numerous human remains and implements found in them being of tertiary age, and quite possibly as old or even older than anything which has been found in europe.[17] the wide diffusion of the same peculiar racial type over the whole continent of america down to cape horn, and its capability of existing under such different conditions of climate and environment, also point to its being an extremely ancient and primitive race, and the generic distinction between the apes and monkeys of the old and new worlds is a remarkable circumstance which is 417 not accounted for by any monogenist theory of the origin of the order of quadrumana.

it is to be observed also, that although all american races have a certain peculiar type in common, still there are differences which show that secondary types must have existed from a very early period, intercrossing between which must have given rise to numerous varieties. thus, according to morton, dolichocephaly was most prevalent among the tribes who inhabited the eastern side of the continent facing the atlantic both in north and south america, while brachycephaly prevailed on the western, side facing the pacific. great differences of colour and stature are also found often among contiguous tribes, and irrespective of latitude. on the whole, however, the american type approximates in many important particulars, such as colour, hair, and anatomical structure, more nearly to the yellow races of eastern asia than to any other, though it is a fairly open question which of the two may have been the earliest to appear in the immensely remote ages of the tertiary period.

another theory is that man probably originated in some continent of the arctic circle, where, as we know from fossil remains of the miocene and eocene periods, greenland and spitzbergen enjoyed a mild climate and forest vegetation, admirably adapted for the evolution of a temperate mammalian fauna, including the human species. this is a very plausible theory, but at present it is a mere theory, like that of a lost atlantis, or submerged continents in the pacific or indian oceans. the only thing approaching to evidence to support it is, as far as i am aware, that sir joseph hooker and other 418 eminent botanists think that the diffusion of the forest trees and other flora of america can be traced along lines radiating from the extreme north, along the mountain chains and elevated plateaux which form the backbone of the continent from alaska to tierra del fuego. there seems a probability also that the evolution of the human race, which turns mainly on the development of the erect stature, which is the basis of the larger brain and other anatomical differences between man and the other quadrumana, must have taken place not in tropical regions of dense forests, where climbing would have had a decided advantage over walking in the struggle for life, but rather in some region of wide plains and open forests, where it would be an advantage to see enemies or prey at a distance, or over tall grass or ferns.

it must be admitted, however, that in our present state of knowledge all these theories of the place, time, and manner of human origins are speculations rather than science. we have proof positive that man was already spread over most parts of the world in the quaternary period, and the irresistible inference that he must have existed long before, is confirmed by conclusive evidence as to the finding of his remains and implements in the earliest quaternary and latest pliocene periods, and very strong evidence for carrying them back into the miocene. anthropoid apes, which are so similar to man in physical structure, and in their ways are as highly specialized from any more general and primitive ancestral form as man himself, undoubtedly did exist in the miocene period, and have come down to us with comparatively little change. it puzzles the best 419 anatomists to find any clear distinction between the present hylobates and the hylobates of the middle miocene, while that between the white man and the negro is clear and unmistakable. why then should "homo" not have existed as soon as "hylobates," and why should any prepossession in favour of man's recent creation, based mainly on exploded beliefs in the scientific value of the myths and guesses of the earliest civilized nations of asia, stand in the way of accepting the enormous and rapidly increasing accumulation of evidence, tracing back the evolution of the mammal man to the same course of development as other mammals?

as regards the course of this evolution, all we know with any certainty is, that as far as we can trace it back, the human species was already differentiated into distinct races, and that in all probability the present fundamental types were already formed. when and where the primitive stock or stocks may have originated, and the secondary ancestral races may have branched off from it, is at present unknown. all we can say is, that the more we examine the evidence, the more it points to extreme antiquity even for these secondary stocks, and makes it probable that we must go, as in the case of the horse and other existing mammals, at least as far back as into the eocene to look for the primitive generalized type or types from which these secondary lines of quadrumanous and human evolution have taken their origin. as regards the secondary types themselves, there is no certainty as to the place or time of their origin, but the balance of evidence points rather in favour of polygeny, that is, of their having followed slightly different lines of evolution 420 from the common starting-point, under different circumstances of environment and in different localities; so that when man, as we know him, first appeared, he was already differentiated into races distinct though not very far apart.

in conclusion, i may remark that these hotly-contested questions as to monogeny or polygeny, and as to the place of man's first appearance on earth, lose most of their importance when it is realized that human origins must be pushed back at least as far as the miocene, and probably into the eocene period. as long as it was held that no traces of man's existence could be found, as cuvier held, until the recent period; or even as some english geologists still contend, until the post-glacial, or at any rate the glacial or quaternary periods, it was evident that the facts could only be explained by the theory of a series of supernatural interferences. agassiz's theory, or some modification of it, must be adopted, of numerous special creations of life at special centres, as of the esquimaux and polar bear in arctic regions, the negro and gorilla in the tropics, and so forth. this theory has been completely given up as regards animals, in favour of the darwinian theory of evolution by natural causes, and no one now believes in a multiplicity of miracles to account for the existence of animal species. is man alone an exception to this universal law, or is he like the rest of creation, a product of what darwinians call "evolution," and enlightened theologians "the original impress"?

the existing species of anthropoid apes, the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, do not differ more 421 widely from one another than do many of the extreme types of the human species. in colour, hair, volume of brain, form of skull, stature, and a hundred other peculiarities, the negro and the european stand further apart than those anthropoids do from one another, and no naturalist from mars or saturn, investigating the human family for the first time, and free from prepossession, would hesitate to class the white, black, yellow, red, and perhaps five or six other varieties, as different species.

in the case of these anthropoid apes no one supposes that they were miraculously created in recent times. on the contrary, we find their type already fully developed in the miocene, and we infer, that like the horse, camel, and so many other existing mammals, their origin may be traced step by step backwards to some lower and generalized type in the eocene. who can doubt that physical man, an animal constructed almost exactly on the same anatomical ground-plan as the anthropoids, came into existence by a similar process? the only answer would be, if it could be proved, that his existence on earth had been so short as to make it impossible that so many and so great specific variations as now exist, and some of which have been proved to have existed early in the quaternary period, could have been developed by natural means and by the slow processes of evolution. but this is just where the evidence fails, and is breaking down more and more every year and with every fresh discovery.

recent man has given place to quaternary man; post-glacial to inter-glacial and pre-glacial; and now the evidence for the existence of man or of some 422 ancestral form of man, in the tertiary period, has accumulated to such an extent that there are few competent anthropologists who any longer deny it.

but with this extension of time the existence of man, instead of being an anomaly and a discord, falls in with the sublime harmony of the universe, of which it is the dominant note.