All we can say with any certainty is, that if the Darwinian theory of evolution applies to man, as it does to all other animals, and specially to man's closest kindred, the other quadrumana, the common ancestor must be sought very much further back, in the Eocene, which inaugurated the reign of placental mammalia, and in which the primitive types of so many of the later mammals have been found. Nor will this appear incredible when we consider that man's cousins, the apes and monkeys, first appear in the Miocene, or even earlier in the Eocene, and become plentiful in the later Pliocene, and that even anthropoid apes, and one of them, the Hylobates, scarcely if at all distinguishable from the Gibbon of the present day, have been found at Sansan and other Miocene deposits in the south of France, at Œningen in Switzerland, and Pikermi in Greece; while if Professor Ameghino's discoveries are to be credited, anthropoids already existed in the Eocene, and their development may be traced from the oldest Eocene forms.
[CHAPTER XII.
RACES OF MANKIND.]
Monogeny or Polygeny—Darwin—Existing Races—Colour—Hair—Skulls and Brains—Dolichocephali and Brachycephali—Jaws and Teeth—Stature—Other Tests—Isaac Taylor—Prehistoric Types in Europe—Huxley's Classification—Language no Test of Race—Egyptian Monuments—- Human and Animal Races unchanged for 6000 years—Neolithic Races—Palæolithic—Different Races of Man as far back as we can trace—Types of Canstadt, Cro-Magnon, and Furfooz—Oldest Races Dolichocephalic—Skulls of Neanderthal and Spy—Simian Characters—Objections—Evidence confined to Europe—American Man—Calaveras Skull—Tertiary Man—Skull of Castelnedolo—Leaves Monogeny or Polygeny an open Question—Arguments on each side—Old Arguments from the Bible and Philology exploded—What Darwinian Theory requires—Animal Types traced up to the Eocene—Secondary Origins—Dog and Horse—Fertility of Races—Question of Hybridity—Application to Man—Difference of Constitutions—Negro and White—Bearing on Question of Migration—Apes and Monkeys—Question of Original Locality of Man—Asiatic Theory—Eur-African—American—Arctic—None based on sufficient Evidence—- Mere Speculations—Conclusion—Summary of Evidence as to Human Origins.
The immense antiquity of man upon earth having been established, other questions of great interest present themselves as to the origin of the race. These questions, however, no longer depend on positive facts of observation, like the discovery of palæolithic remains in definite geological deposits, but on inference and conjecture from these and other observed facts, most of which are of comparatively recent date and hardly extend beyond the historical period.
Thus if we start with the existing state of things, we find a great variety of human races actually prevailing, located in different parts of the world, and of fundamental types so dissimilar as to constitute what in animal zoology would often be called separate species,[16] and yet fertile among themselves, and so similar in many physical and mental characters as to infer an origin from common ancestors. And we can infer from history that this was so to a great extent 6000 years ago, and that the length of time has been insufficient to produce any marked changes, either in physical or linguistic types of the different fundamental races.
Was this always so, and what inference can be drawn as to the much-disputed question between monogeny and polygeny, that is, between the theory of descent from a single pair in a single locality, and that of descent from several pairs, developed in different localities by parallel, but not strictly identical, lines of evolution?
This is a question which cannot be decided off-hand by à priori considerations. No doubt Darwinism points to the evolution of all life from primitive forms, and ultimately, perhaps, from the single simplest form of life in the cell or protoplasm. But this does not necessarily imply that the more highly specialized, and what may be called the secondary forms of life, have all originated from single secondary centres, at one time and in one locality.
On the contrary, we have the authority of Darwin himself for saying that this is not a necessary consequence of his theory. In a letter to Bentham he says—"I dispute whether a new race or species is necessarily or even generally descended from a single or pair of parents. The whole body of individuals, I believe, became altered together—like our race-horses, and like all domestic breeds which are changed through unconscious selection by man."
The problem is, therefore, an open one, and can only be solved (or rather attacked, for in the present state of our knowledge a complete solution is probably impossible) by a careful induction from ascertained facts, ascending step by step from the present to the past, from the known to the unknown.