220 SOME NEW BOOKS [September 



been fully constituted in their primeval homes, and had begun those later 

 developments and migratory movements which followed at long intervals after 

 the first peopling of the earth by pleistocene man. By such movements were 

 brought about great changes, displacements, and dislocations, involving fresh 

 ethnical groupings, with profound modifications, or even total effacements of 

 racial or linguistic characters, and complete severance from the original seats of 

 the parent stocks. In some cases the connecting ties are past recovery, so 

 that the ethnical, like the geological, record must always remain to some extent 

 a mutilated chapter in the history of the world and of humanity. But in our 

 times many of the more serious gaps have been often most unexpectedly made 

 good by the combined efforts of philologists, physical anthropologists, and 

 especially archaeologists, who have come to the welcome aid of the palethnolo- 

 gist, hitherto groping almost helplessly in this dark field of human origins." 



Mr. Keane is a " monogenist," and maintains that all the varieties of the 

 human race can be traced back to one centre of evolution. The first splitting 

 of the main stem was almost simultaneously into the three types — Negro, 

 Mongol, and Caucasian — which still represent mankind on the globe. Homo 

 A in ericanus is a great puzzle to ethnologists, more especially as the tendency 

 of the most recent investigations is decidedly against the theory that palaeo- 

 lithic man of quaternary times ever existed on the North American continent. 

 By successive divergences from these three primary branches under the mould- 

 ing influences of cross-breeding, and climatal, geographical, and other changes 

 in the environment, Mr. Keane accounts for all the varieties of shadings which 

 characterise and distinguish the present inhabitants of the globe. The " cradle- 

 land," from which Homo sapiens first emerged and bade farewell to his con- 

 geners of the brute creation, was, according to the author, a lost continent, 

 "Indo- African," now represented only by Madagascar and a few islands in the 

 Indian Ocean. Of the three divisions of mankind still living, the Negroid 

 ("Negrito") type is regarded as most nearly approaching the original form of 

 tertiary man. On the modus operandi of this primary stage of humanity he 

 quotes from Dr. Munro's writings on the influence which the erect posture 

 played in the higher development of the brain, with regard to which he states 

 (page 7) : — " This greatly strengthens the view always advocated by me that 

 man began to spread over the globe after he had acquired the erect posture, but 

 while in other physical and in mental respects he still differed not greatly from 

 his nearest akin." 



The three chapters dealing with the Caucasic peoples will be found of 

 greatest interest to general readers of anthropology. Here some of the more 

 burning problems of the hour, bearing on early European civilisation, are 

 intelligently discussed ; nor does the author by any means submerge his own 

 individuality in the various controversies which he summarises for his readers. 

 He follows Prof. Sergi in assigning the Iberians, Ligurians, Pelasgians, etc., to 

 an original home in North Africa. The " Mediterranean race," from whom a 

 stream of " migration set steadily and uninterruptedly into Europe throughout 

 both 8tone Ages," was dolichocephalic, short in .stature, and of a dark brown 

 colour. 



The task which Mr. Keane has set before himself in the compilation of this 

 most readable book is one which few anthropologists would undertake, and 

 which still fewer are competent to execute. He gathers his materials, apparently 

 with great linguistic facilities, from far and wide — not always, however, from 

 the original investigators, who are too often allowed to disappear, Avhile the 

 second-hand compilers are brought to the front. But, in extenuation, this much 

 must be acknowledged, that his authorities are most faithfully given — and this 

 is one of the most valuable features of the book. Scarcely a subject in the 

 whole range of Anthropology and pre-historic Archaeology is omitted by this 

 versatile author. Archaeologists, geologists, philologists, folklorists, and even 

 modern globe-trotters come on and go off the stage with startling suddenness. 



