Man and His Migrations

by R. G. Latham

In what part of the world did this originate? How was it diffused over the surface of the earth? At what period in the world’s history was it evolved? Where does it thrive best? Where does it cease to thrive at all? What forms does it take if it degenerate? What conditions of soil or climate determine such degenerations? What favour its improvement? Can it exist in Nova Zembla? In Africa? In either region or both? Do the long nights of the Pole blanch, does the bright glare of the Equator deepen its colour? &c. Instead of multiplying questions of this kind, I will ask to what they apply. They apply to every being that multiplies its kind upon earth; to every animal of the land or sea; to every vegetable as well; to every organized being. They apply to the ape, the horse, the dog, the fowl, the fish, the insect, the fruit, the flower. They apply to these—and they apply to man as well. They—and the like of them—Legion by name—common alike to the lords and the lower orders of the creation, constitute the natural history of genus Homo; and I use the language of the Zoologist for the sake of exhibiting in a prominent and palpable manner, the truly zoological character of this department of science. Man as an animal is the motto here; whilst Man as a moral being is the motto with the Historian.

It is not very important whether we call this Natural or Physical History. There are good authorities on both sides. It is only important to see how it differs from the History of the Historian.

Man’s Civil history has its divisions. Man’s Natural history has them also.

The first of these takes its name from the Greek words for man (anthrôpos) and doctrine (logos), and is known as Anthropology.

When the first pair of human beings stood alone on the face of the earth, there were then the materials for Anthropology; and so there would be if our species were reduced to the last man. There would be an Anthropology if the world had no inhabitants but Englishmen, or none but Chinese; none but red men of America, or none but blacks of Africa. Were the uniformity of feature, the identity of colour, the equality of stature, the rivalry of mental capacity ever so great, there would still be an Anthropology. This is because Anthropology deals with Man as compared with the lower animals.

We consider the structure of the human extremities, and enlarge upon the flatness of the foot, and the flexibility of the hand. The one is subservient to the erect posture, the other to the innumerable manipulations which human industry demands. We compare them with the fins of fishes, the wings of birds; in doing which, we take the most extreme contrasts we can find. But we may also take nearer approximations, e.g. the hands of the higher apes. Here we find likeness as well as difference; difference as well as likeness. We investigate both; and record the result either in detail or by some general expression. Perhaps we pronounce that the one side gives the conditions of an arboreal life, the other those of a social state; the ape being the denizen of the woods, the man of towns and cities; the one a climber, the other a walker.

Or we compare the skull of the man and the chimpanzee; noticing that the ridges and prominences of the external surface, which in the former are merely rudimentary, become strongly-marked crests in the latter. We then remember that the one is the framework for the muscles of the face; the other is the case for the brain.

All that is done in this way is Anthropology.

Every class of organized beings has, mutatis mutandis, its anthropological aspect; so that the dog may be contemplated in respect to the fox which equals, the ape which excels, or the kangaroo which falls short of it in its approach to a certain standard of organization; in other words, as species and genera have their relative places in the ladder of creation, the investigation of such relations is co-extensive with the existence of the classes and groups on which it rests.

Anthropology deals too much with such matters as these to be popular. Unless the subject be handled with excessive delicacy, there is something revolting to fastidious minds in the cool contemplation of the differentiæ of the Zoologist