596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



side pet, while coming from northern Africa, doubtless arose from 

 Asiatic forebears in Pliocene or Pleistocene times. What the origin of 

 the various strains of dogs was we know not, though the wild forms 

 most nearly allied are living in Asia to-day, and the greyhound and 

 mastiff almost surely were domesticated in Africa thousands of years 

 ago. I believe that we may safely give to Asia the honor of the birth- 

 place of most of the domesticated species in Pliocene or Pleistocene 

 times. 



Nor does it seem that this remarkable evolutional acceleration dur- 

 ing Pliocene times in central Asia was confined to the mammals alone. 

 The ostrich, the highest type of ratite birds, arose in central Asia. The 

 jungle fowl, the highest of the gallinaceous birds and the ancestral 

 stock of our most valued domestic fowls, arose in India and is still at 

 home there. The peacock is exclusively Asiatic; the gray goose, the 

 parent of our domestic geese, has its home in part at least in Asia ; and 

 the same may be said of the ancestors of the domestic doves ; while the 

 domestic duck may have originated there for aught we yet know. The 

 guinea fowls only are exclusively African, and the turkey American. 



Of the reptiles I will venture to say less. But is it not a significant 

 fact that the highest specialization of the reptilian class appeared dur- 

 ing Pliocene times in the gigantic extinct gavials of central Asia? 

 Certainly the cobra is entitled to a high but unenviable distinction 

 among the snakes. And Megaldbatrachus, the largest of all recent 

 amphibians, lives in Japan and China. Finally, of the domestic plants 

 by far the majority come directly or indirectly from the Asiatic flora. 



Have all these and doubtless many other facts of their kind no 

 significance? Has man been an exception among so many branches of 

 vertebrate evolution? The common inference has been that so many 

 of our domesticated animals and plants come from India because man 

 first reached civilization there, but the inference is, I believe, quite un- 

 justifiable. Man was born and attained elemental civilization in Asia 

 because there was the place of all others upon the earth where evolu- 

 tion in general of organic life reached its highest development in late 

 Cenozoic times. No mammals and few other creatures have been do- 

 mesticated by man in thousands of years, for the simple reason that he 

 had eliminated all but the most advanced and most adaptable long be- 

 fore, and none were left to compete with them. 



That man originated in the western continent is quite impossible. 

 There is not a particle of evidence in support of such an hypothesis, 

 for there is no evidence that either man or any of his ancestry ever 

 inhabited the western continent till late in Pleistocene times. Indeed, 

 so far as North America is concerned, there is much to justify the as- 

 sertion that the Pliocene and Pleistocene were a period of evolutional 

 depression here^ of relative quiescence when the rhinoceroses, tapirs, 



