RECENT GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATION. 177 



in the Chinese language. Now, however, it appears that the Chinese 

 ambassador at Berlin, Li Fangpau, who in his own country is a dis- 

 tinguished scholar, has read and translated the inscription, which, he 

 says, states that three pieces of linen gauze are packed in the vase for 

 inspection, being what we, in our day, would call sending a sample of 

 merchandise into a foreign country to create a demand for it. E. 

 Burnouf previously declared that the inscription was to the effect that 

 the vase contained pieces of goods (jneces (P'etoffe). The Chinese 

 ambassador fixes the date of the inscription as about 1,200 b. c, and 

 further states that the unknown characters so frequently occurring on 

 the terra-cotta are also in the Chinese language, which would show 

 that, at this remote period, commercial intercourse existed between 

 China and the eastern shores of Asia Minor and Greece. 



There have been a number of discoveries throwing light upon the 

 question of the antiquity of man. The latest conclusions upon this 

 subject have been given by Dr. E. B. Tylor, President of the Anthro- 

 pological Institute of England, one of the most eminent men in this 

 field of inquiry. He states, as the result of the evidence so far ob- 

 tained, that the causes which brought about the differences in the form 

 of the skull, the color of the hair and skin, and the physical constitu- 

 tion of men, had chiefly accomplished their work long anterior to the 

 dawn of history ; since when, he says, some changes may be traced, 

 brought about by migrations or the effects of climate. He declares 

 that the ground taken by Principal Dawson, of Montreal, the eminent 

 geologist, fixing the period of development at about 2,200 years b. c, 

 is bringing it within the historic period, and that it has nothing, as 

 shown by the Egyptian and Assyrian researches, to support it. Mr. 

 Tylor states that the evidence now accumulated strengthens the proba- 

 bility that all men are descended from one original stock, which, he 

 thinks, is inferable from the close resemblance of all human beings in 

 body and mind, and from the freedom with which races intercross and 

 produce mixed races. He thinks that the period anterior to history 

 was one of vast length. He states that anthropologists now consider 

 the Egyptians as belonging to an African rather than to an Asiatic 

 race, as has been previously supposed. The reasonable conclusion, he 

 thinks, is that they were a mixed race, but mainly of African origin, 

 and that they came originally from the southern Somauli-Land, which, 

 according to Egyptian tradition, was the place whence their gods were 

 derived. His further conclusion is that the Chaldeans and Babyloni- 

 ans, as indicated by their early languages, the Accadian and Medic, 

 were of a Tartar or Turanian family, and may possibly have belonged 

 to the yellow races of China, while the Assyrians were of the white 

 race ; and he thinks that the conclusion of many naturalists is correct 

 that the geographical center from which man emanated and s])read 

 over the globe was in the tropical regions of the Old World. 



Dr. R. Fahn, on the contrary, who has been making extensive lin- 



VOL. XVII. 12 



