MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



It follows further, and this point is all-important, that, since 

 the world was peopled by pleistocene man, it was peopled by 

 a generalised proto-human form, prior to all later racial differences. 

 The existing groups, that is, the four primary divisions Ethiopia 

 Mongolic, American and Caucasic, have each had their pleistocene 

 ancestor, from whom each has sprung independently and diver- 

 gently by continuous adaptation to their several environments. 

 The Primary ^ tnev st ^ constitute mere varieties, and not 

 Groups evolved distinct species, the reason is because all come of 



each in its . 



special like pleistocene ancestry, while the divergences have 



been confined to relatively narrow limits, that is, not 

 wide enough to be regarded zoologically as specific differences 1 . 

 No doubt Dr R. Munro is right in suggesting that "during the 

 larger portion of the quaternary (pleistocene) period, if not, 

 indeed, from its very commencement, man had already acquired 

 his human characters." But by " human characters " are here 

 to be understood, not those by which one race may be dis- 



1 Eth. Ch. VII. On the strength of this statement I have been claimed as 

 a polygenist both by Sergi and by Ehrenreich, the latter remarking that "mil 

 dieser jedenfalls naturgemassen Auffassung bekennt sich Keane, so eifrig er den 

 Monogenismus verficht, doch im Grande zum Polygenismus" (Anthropologische 

 Studien ilber die Urbewohner Brasiliens, Brunswick, 1897, p. 19). As well 

 charge a writer with polygenist views who should say that most of the Whites 

 born in " Greater Britain " are sprung from different groups of emigrants from 

 the British Isles. The founders of the British colonies, though different 

 individually, were of one stock, and so the pleistocene founders of the first 

 human groups were also different individually, but of one stock, from which 

 all mankind has sprung. As polygenist theories are again somewhat rife on 

 the Continent, it may here be pointed out that excessive polygenism tends to 

 discredit the very evolutionary teachings which its advocates profess to uphold. 

 Starting from several absolutely independent centres, it arrives at the same 

 results that are reached by the evolutionist starting from one absolute centre. 

 Hence it is not needed in any scheme of human origins, while a little reflection 

 will show that, without doing any great violence to their principles, these 

 pluralists may readily accommodate their extreme views to the assumption that 

 the primary varietal groups have been developed in different geographical 

 areas (zoological zones) from so many undifferentiated groups of the generalised 

 pleistocene stock. Had they sprung from specifically different pliocene 

 anthropoids, as held by Sergi and others, the differences would now be not 

 merely specific, but generic, which nobody maintains. 



- Address, Anthrop. Section, Brit. Ass. 1893. 



