% THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 145 



general, are utterly dependent upon such an environment for their 

 sustenance. 



Geologic record. — Primates are found in the North American 

 sediments from Lower to Upper Eocene time, when they became 

 extinct. Thus, while their remains constitute a relatively large per- 

 centage of the total fauna of the Eocene, primates are utterly unknown 

 on this continent from that time until the coming of man. In Europe 

 the record is similar except that the extinction occurred at a somewhat 

 later date, the Oligocene. Furthermore, they reappear in Europe in 

 the Lower Miocene, at the time of the proboscidean migration out of 

 Africa, whence these primates may also have come. Their second 

 European extinction was in the Upper Pliocene shortly before the first 

 appearance of mankind. 



But in southern Asia, Africa, and South America the evolution of 

 primates seems to have been continuous since the first great southward 

 migration. The evidence, however, is not so much the historical 

 documents as the presence of primates in those places at the present 

 time, the fossil record is not entirely lacking although highly incom- 

 plete. The South American monkeys may have had their origin in 

 the ancient North American primates, or more doubtfully, the stock 

 may have come by way of Africa. Scott inclines toward the latter 

 view although he says the evidence is by no means conclusive. 



ORIGIN OF MAN 



Stock. — According to W. K. Gregory, the stock from which man 

 arose was some big-brained anthropoid related most nearly to the 

 chimpanzee-gorilla group, an assumption based upon anatomical 

 evidences, in spite of wide differences in habitus and consequent 

 adaptation. 



Place. — Evidences point to central Asia as the place of descent 

 from the trees of the human precursor, the reasons for this belief being 

 several. First, it was central for migrations elsewhere; Europe, on 

 the other hand, where the most conclusive, in fact almost the exclusive 

 evidence for fossil man is found, is too small an area for the divergent 

 evolution of the several human species. Second, Asia is contiguous 

 to the oldest known human remains, which, as we shall see, were found 

 in Java. Third, it was the seat of the oldest civilizations, not only of 

 the existing nations which, like the Chinese, trace their recorded 

 history back to a hoary antiquity, but of nations which preceded them 

 by thousands of years, and whose records have not yet come to light. 



