It would seem, therefore, that sufficient facts have been forthcoming to prove that man was in existence at any rate in late Tertiary times; and since he was then perfectly developed, it would not seem unreasonable to assign to him a very much greater antiquity.
During these long ages, tectonic forces, and the ever active denuding agents of the atmosphere, in all their phases, have wrought considerable transfigurations in the surface of the globe. Some portions of the earth’s crust have been swallowed by the ocean, whilst others have been wrenched from the depths by upheaving processes. Thus the geography of our present world would be a terra incognita to the earliest progenitors of the human kind, who lived in the dim dawn of man’s ascending tendencies, while, on the other hand, we would require a new army of intrepid explorers to pave the way for civilization if we were suddenly placed back into the world as it stood in the beginning of primeval days.
Old land connections then existed between entities which now are parted by abysmal depths. Such evidence of once-existing continental links is afforded by what has been termed a “biological consanguinity” between organic creations on both sides of gaps now occupied by ocean water.
There is no novelty about all this. Our best scientists have long recognized that such connections have existed beyond all doubt. They become evident when one enquires into the present geographical distribution of botanical and zoological species, and when one correlates geological strata in different parts of the world, on the basis of palæontological evidence contained in them.
The same principles apply when we consider the probable original home of man, and the subsequent migrations and racial evolutions of the pristine hordes, which followed.
That once a chain of land linked together the shores of Australia, South Africa, and India seems certain. The continental masses, which in past eras supplied this link, zoologists have christened Lemuria, while geologists refer to the lost land as Gondwana. It is somewhere within the area once occupied by this submerged continent, perhaps not far remote from Australia, that we must look for the cradle of the species Homo. Although most of the evidence has been irretrievably lost to scientific investigation, much might yet be expected from any of the contiguous continents or islands in this region, upon which occur Tertiary or later sedimentary formations. The discovery of the oldest fossil, which appears to be human—the Pithecanthropus erectus—in Java, was by no means accidental. Professor Dubois, before leaving for that island to undertake a fossil-hunting expedition there, declared that in all probability he would discover the remains of a primitive creature related to man.
From some point, then, upon this ancient, vanished continent, perhaps no great distance north of our present Australia, we believe migrations of the earliest representatives of the human species took place. The directions in which these migrations took place would be governed according to the lie of the land as it was then determined by the impassable waters of the ocean. In all probability, the families or groups wandered in various directions, at first keeping more or less in contact and on friendly terms with each other, but as time, and eventually ages, wore on, these migratory groups, by selective culture, environment, climate, and, maybe, sundry other causes, became differentiated into peculiarly distinct strains, all of which we are nowadays able to reduce to three fundamental races.
One of these migrations was along a western course, which led the wandering groups into the region now represented by the continent of Africa. This established the Negroid element.
Another strain moved northwards and spread itself, like the rays of a rocket, across the land now known as Asia. Some of these “rays” reached what is now Lapland, while others found their way, via the region of modern Esquimaux Land, across to what we now call North America. This march evolved the Mongoloids.