The Human Race

by Louis Figuier

In “Primitive Man” we have given the history of the first steps of humanity.

We have traced the origin and progress of civilization, from the moment when man was cast, feeble, wretched and naked, in the midst of a hostile and savage brute population, to the day when his power, resting upon a firm basis, changed little by little the face of the inhabited earth.

We shall not refer to this at greater length, since in “Primitive Man” we have treated it fully, and in unison with the actual discoveries of science. But there is a very different problem to the solution of which we shall apply ourselves in the following pages. Did man see the light at any one spot of the earth, and at that alone, and is it possible to indicate the region which was, so to say, the cradle of humanity? Or, are we to believe that, in the first instance, man appeared in several places at the same time? That he was created and has always remained in the very localities he now inhabits? That the Negro was born in the burning regions of Central Africa, the Laplander or the Mongolian in the cold regions to which he is now confined?

1.—MEN AND WOMEN OF ANATOLIA.

To this question a satisfactory reply can be given by reference to facts furnished by natural history. But in seeking a triumph for our opinion we shall have to combat the arguments of a hostile doctrine. As we said in the early part of this Introduction, we must ever be prepared to encounter difficulties, to dissipate uncertainties, and to vie with other theories in each point of the history of humanity which we may seek to fathom.

There is a school of philosophers who assert that man was manifold in his creation, that each type of humanity originated in the region to which it is now attached, and that it was not emigration followed by the action of climate, circumstances, and customs which gave birth to the different races of man.

This opinion has been upheld in a work by M. Georges Pouchet, son of the well-known naturalist of Rouen. But, one has only to read his essay upon la pluralité des races humaines, to be convinced that the author, like others of his school, as ardent in demolition as powerless in construction, having chosen to act the easy part of a critic, exhibits unprecedented weakness when called upon to supply a system in the place of that he contradicts.

If there existed several centres of human creation, they should be indicated, and it should be shown that the men who dwell there now-a-days have never been connected with other populations. M. Georges Pouchet preserves prudent silence upon this question; he avoids defining the locus of any one of these supposed multiple creations. Such a faulty argument speaks volumes for the doctrine.