XV 
DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 
459 
we consider that, even in our own day, men are not unfre- 
quently overwhelmed by volcanic eruptions, as in Java and 
Japan, or carried away in vast numbers by floods, as in Bengal 
and China, it seems impossible but that ample remains of 
Miocene and Pliocene man do exist buried in the most recent 
layers of the earth’s crust, and that more extended research 
or some fortunate discovery will some day bring them to 
light. 
The Probable Birthplace of Man. 
It has usually been considered that the ancestral form of 
man originated in the tropics, where vegetation is most 
abundant and the climate most equable. But there are some 
important objections to this view. The anthropoid apes, as 
Avell as most of the monkey tribe, are essentially arboreal in 
their structure, Avhereas the great distinctive character of man 
is his special adaptation to terrestrial locomotion. We can 
hardly suppose, therefore, that he originated in a forest region, 
Avhere fruits to be obtained by climbing are the chief vegetable 
food. It is more probable that he began his existence on the 
open plains or high plateaux of the temperate or sub-tropical 
zone, Avhere the seeds of indigenous cereals and numerous 
herbivora, rodents, and game-birds, Avith fishes and molluscs in 
the lakes, rivers, and seas supplied him Avith an abundance of 
varied food. In such a region he Avould develop skill as a 
hunter, trapper, or fisherman, and later as a herdsman and 
cultivator,—a succession of Avhich Ave find indications in the 
palaeolithic and neolithic races of Europe. 
In seeking to determine the particular areas in which his 
earliest traces are likely to be found, Ave are restricted to 
some portion of the Eastern hemisphere, Avhere alone the 
anthropoid apes exist, or have apparently eA r er existed. 
There is good reason to believe, also, that Africa must be 
excluded, because it is known to have been separated from 
the northern continent in early tertiary times, and to haA'e 
acquired its existing fauna of the higher mammalia by a 
later union Avith that continent after the separation from it of 
Madagascar, an island which has preseiwed for us a sample, as 
it Avere, of the early African mammalian fauna, from which 
not only the anthropoid apes, but all the higher quadrumana 
