Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

In fact, we are driven to it by necessity. No other origin of species than by transformation of earlier forms has been suggested, even by those who reject it. I do not speak of specific creation, for that supposition does not belong to science, but to an obscurant mysticism, which is the negative of all true knowledge.

But within the limits of the transformation theory there is more than one method by which varying forms are produced, and one of these may prove applicable to man, in whose earliest remains we have so far found no positive indications of a lower physical character than he now has.[36] So far, the “missing link” is as much out of sight as ever it was; so far, man appears to have been always what he is to-day.

May he not, as a species, have come into being through a short series of well-marked varieties, each produced by what is called “heterogenesis,” that is, the birth of children unlike their parents? All children are unlike their parents, more or less; and though at present this unlikeness is strictly within the limits of the several races, it is the opinion of some who have studied the matter, that in earlier geologic epochs changes in organic forms were more rapid and more profound than at present.

I am aware that this suggestion of heterogenesis looks like a return to the ancient doctrine called generatio equivoca, which, in its old form, is certainly obsolete. But there is no question that in many existing plants and animals we find singular evidence that from a given form another may arise, widely different in structure, and perpetuate itself indefinitely. I am convinced that the importance of these facts has never been properly appreciated by students of the origin of species, and of the origin of men in particular.

This, or any hypothesis of evolution, renders the supposition quite needless that the various races had distinct ancestral origins. Any evolutionist who accepts the view that man is but a differentiation from some anthropoid ape, is straining at a gnat after swallowing the camel, if he hesitates to believe that the comparatively slight differences between the races may not have originated from like influences. Furthermore, the resemblances between the various races are altogether too numerous and exact to render it likely that they could have been acquired through several ancestries running back to various lower zoological forms; a consideration greatly strengthened by the fact that man is the only species of his genus, and there is even no genus of his class closely related to himself. The chances that such a perfected animal should have been twice or oftener developed from the apes, monkeys or lemurs—his nearest cousins—are so small that we must dismiss the supposition.

It seems to me, indeed, that any one who will patiently study the parallelisms of growth in the arts and sciences, in poetry and objects of utility, throughout the various races of men, cannot doubt of their psychical identity. Still more, if he will acquaint himself with the modern science of Folk-lore, and will note how the very same tales, customs, proverbs, superstitions, games, habits, and so on, recur spontaneously in tribes severed by thousands of leagues, he will not think it possible that creatures so wholly identical could have been produced by independent lines of evolution.

The Birthplace of the Species.—Accepting the theories therefore of the evolutionists and the monogenists as the most plausible in the present state of science, it is quite proper to inquire where primeval man first appeared, and what were his social conditions and personal appearance.

To some it may seem premature to put such questions. They are needlessly timid. It is never too soon to propound any question in science; always too soon to declare that any has been finally and irrevocably answered.

Beginning our search for the birthplace of the species, we may consider that it will be indicated by the cumulative evidence of three conditions. We may look for it, (1) where the oldest relics of man or his industries have been found; (2) where the remains of the highest of the lower mammals, especially the man-like apes, have been exhumed, as it is assumed that man himself descended from some such form; and (3) where we know from palæontologic evidence a climate prevailed suited to man’s unprotected early conditions.

The first of these lines of investigation leads us to the science of “pre-historic archæology.” We shall discover that a study of this branch of learning is indispensable not only in this connection, but to solve many other questions in ethnography. Here its answer is unexpected. We have been taught by long tradition and venerable documents to look for the first home of primeval man “somewhere in Asia,” as Professor Max Müller generously puts it. He is inclined to think that from the highlands of that continent the tribes dispersed in various directions, some going to the extreme north, and then southward into Europe. Others would have it that the species itself came into life in the boreal regions, in that epoch when a mild climate prevailed there.