The total number of human individuals at present amounts to between 1,300 and 1,400 millions. In our Tabular Survey (p. [333]) 1,350 millions has been assumed as the mean number. According to an approximate estimate, as far as such a thing is possible, 1,200 millions of these are straight-haired men, only about 150 millions woolly-haired. The most highly developed species, Mongols and Mediterranese, far surpass all the other human species in numbers of individuals, for each of them alone comprises about 550 millions. (Compare Friederich Müller’s Ethnography, p. 30.) Of course the relative number of the twelve species fluctuates every year, and that too according to the law developed by Darwin, that in the struggle for life the more highly developed, the more favoured and larger groups of forms, possess the positive inclination and the certain tendency to spread more and more at the expense of the lower, more backward, and smaller groups. Thus the Mediterranean species, and within it the Indo-Germanic, have by means of the higher development of their brain surpassed all the other races and species in the struggle for life, and have already spread the net of their dominion over the whole globe. It is only the Mongolian species which can at all successfully, at least in certain respects, compete with the Mediterranean. Within the tropical regions, Negroes, Kaffres, and Nubians, as also the Malays and Dravidas, are in some measure protected against the encroachments of the Indo-Germanic tribes by their being better adapted for a hot climate; the case of the arctic tribes of the polar regions is similar. But the other races, which as it is are very much diminished in number, will sooner or later completely succumb in the struggle for existence to the superiority of the Mediterranean races. The American and Australian tribes are even now fast approaching their complete extinction, and the same may be said of the Papuans and Hottentots.
In now turning to the equally interesting and difficult question of the relative connection, migration, and primæval home of the twelve species of men, I must premise the remark that, in the present state of our anthropological knowledge, any answer to this question must be regarded only as a provisional hypothesis. This is much the same as with any genealogical hypothesis which we may form of the origin of kindred animal and vegetable species, on the basis of the “Natural System.” But the necessary uncertainty of these special hypotheses of descent, in no way shakes the absolute certainty of the general theory of descent. Man, we may feel certain, is descended from Catarrhini, or narrow-nosed apes, whether we agree with the polyphylites, and suppose each human species, in its primæval home, to have originated out of a special kind of ape; or whether, agreeing with the monophylites, we suppose that all the human species arose only by differentiation from a single species of primæval man (Homo primigenius).
For many and weighty reasons we hold the monophyletic hypothesis to be the more correct, and we therefore assume a single primæval home for mankind, where he developed out of a long since extinct anthropoid species of ape. Of the five now existing continents, neither Australia, nor America, nor Europe can have been this primæval home, or the so-called “Paradise,” the “cradle of the human race.” Most circumstances indicate southern Asia as the locality in question. Besides southern Asia, the only other of the now existing continents which might be viewed in this light is Africa. But there are a number of circumstances (especially chorological facts) which suggest that the primæval home of man was a continent now sunk below the surface of the Indian Ocean, which extended along the south of Asia, as it is at present (and probably in direct connection with it), towards the east, as far as further India and the Sunda Islands; towards the west, as far as Madagascar and the south-eastern shores of Africa. We have already mentioned that many facts in animal and vegetable geography render the former existence of such a south Indian continent very probable. (Compare vol. i. p. [361].) Sclater has given this continent the name of Lemuria, from the Semi-apes which were characteristic of it. By assuming this Lemuria to have been man’s primæval home, we greatly facilitate the explanation of the geographical distribution of the human species by migration. (Compare the Table of Migrations XV., and its explanation at the end.)
We as yet know of no fossil remains of the hypothetical primæval man (Homo primigenius) who developed out of anthropoid apes during the tertiary period, either in Lemuria or in southern Asia, or possibly in Africa. But considering the extraordinary resemblance between the lowest woolly-haired men, and the highest man-like apes, which still exist at the present day, it requires but a slight stretch of the imagination to conceive an intermediate form connecting the two, and to see in it an approximate likeness to the supposed primæval men, or ape-like men. The form of their skull was probably very long, with slanting teeth; their hair woolly; the colour of their skin dark, of a brownish tint. The hair covering the whole body was probably thicker than in any of the still living human species; their arms comparatively longer and stronger; their legs, on the other hand, knock-kneed, shorter and thinner, with entirely undeveloped calves; their walk but half erect.
This ape-like man very probably did not as yet possess an actual human language, that is, an articulate language of ideas. Human speech, as has already been remarked, most likely originated after the divergence of the primæval species of men into different species. The number of primæval languages is, however, considerably larger than the number of the species of men above discussed. For philologists have hitherto not been able to trace the four primæval languages of the Mediterranean species, namely, the Basque, Caucasian, Semitic, and Indo-Germanic to a single primæval language. As little can the different Negro languages be derived from a common primæval language; hence both these species, Mediterranean and Negro, are certainly polyglottonic, that is, their respective languages originated after the divergence of the speechless primary species into several races had already taken place. Perhaps the Mongols, the Arctic and American tribes, are likewise polyglottonic. The Malayan species is, however, monoglottonic; all the Polynesian and Sundanesian dialects and languages can be derived from a common, long since extinct primæval language, which is not related to any other language on earth. All the other human species, Nubians, Dravidas, Australians, Papuans, Hottentots, and Kaffres are likewise monoglottonic. (Compare p. [333].)
Out of speechless primæval man, whom we consider as the common primary species of all the others, there developed in the first place—probably by natural selection—various species of men unknown to us, and now long since extinct, and who still remained at the stage of speechless ape-men (Alalus, or Pithecanthropus). Two of these species, a woolly-haired and a straight-haired, which were most strongly divergent, and consequently overpowered the others in the struggle for life, became the primary forms of the other remaining human species.
The main branch of woolly-haired men (Ulotrichi) at first spread only over the southern hemisphere, and then emigrated partly eastwards, partly westwards. Remnants of the eastern branch are the Papuans in New Guinea and Melanesia, who in earlier times were diffused much further west (in further India and Sundanesia), and it was not until a late period that they were driven eastwards by the Malays. The Hottentots are the but little changed remnants of the western branch; they immigrated to their present home from the north-east. It was perhaps during this migration that the two nearly related species of Caffres and Negroes branched off from them; but it may be that they owe their origin to a peculiar branch of ape-like men.
The second main branch of primæval straight-haired men (Lissotrichi), which is more capable of development, has probably left a but little changed remnant of its common primary form—which migrated to the south-east—in the ape-like natives of Australia. Probably very closely related to these latter are the South Asiatic primæval Malays, or Promalays, which name we have previously given to the extinct, hypothetical primary form of the other six human species. Out of this unknown common primary form there seem to have arisen three diverging branches, namely, the true Malays, the Mongols, and the Euplocomi; the first spread to the east, the second to the north, and the third westwards.
The primæval home, or the “Centre of Creation,” of the Malays must be looked for in the south-eastern part of the Asiatic continent, or possibly in the more extensive continent which existed at the time when further India was directly connected with the Sunda Archipelago and eastern Lemuria. From thence the Malays spread towards the south-east, over the Sunda Archipelago as far as Borneo, then wandered, driving the Papuans before them, eastwards towards the Samoa and Tonga Islands, and thence gradually diffused over the whole of the islands of the southern Pacific, to the Sandwich Islands in the north, the Mangareva in the east, and New Zealand in the south. A single branch of the Malayan tribe was driven far westwards and peopled Madagascar.
The second main branch of primæval Malays, that is, the Mongols, at first also spread in Southern Asia, and, radiating to the east, north, and north-west, gradually peopled the greater part of the Asiatic continent. Of the four principal races of the Mongol species, the Indo-Chinese must perhaps be looked upon as the primary group, out of which at a later period the other Coreo-Japanese and Ural-Altaian races developed as diverging branches. The Mongols migrated in many ways from western Asia into Europe, where the species is still represented in northern Russia and Scandinavia by the Fins and Lapps, in Hungary by the kindred Magyars, and in Turkey by the Osmanlis.