HOLMES — DISTRIBUTION OF THE HUMAN RACE. 5 



periods, though they still survive in some species in the forest- 

 covered regions of the South African province and in the Orien- 

 tal area, of which Sumatra and Borneo may be taken as a centre, 

 in which now separated provinces they have had a distinct evo- 

 lution into the differences of genera and species that still remain ; 

 that the same appears to be true of the larger Carnivora and the 

 Elephants, which once extended farther north in the PalEearctic 

 province, but became extinct, in later periods, within that area, 

 though they still survive in the species of Africa and India ; and, 

 finally, that in the Upper Miocene, the anthropoid Apes {Dryo- 

 pithecus and Pliopithecus) lived as far north in the Palaearctic 

 province as Greece and France, in which province they have long 

 since become extinct, though they still survive in the Orang of 

 the Oriental area and in the Chimpanzee and Gorilla of South 

 Africa, in zones of tropical forest. 



Now, in regard to Man, it is manifest that his distribution over 

 the earth must have pursued an analogous course, under the three- 

 fold operation of evolution, migration over continuous land areas, 

 and extinction in some areas ; and that all existing races are like 

 survivals in branching lines of descent, reaching back to the ear- 

 liest progenitors that might be called human, within the Tertiary 

 period, and that those earliest progenitors may have dwelt as far 

 north as the Palaearctic province. 



It may now be considered as scientifically demonstrated that 

 Man existed in Europe in the Miocene period. It was long since 

 satisfactorily proved that he existed there during the interglacial 

 warm epochs, if not in preglacial times ; and it was a rational 

 inference that he must have lived there in the Pliocene. While 

 discoveries of human remains were as yet limited to the Qiiater- 

 nary jjeriod, this whole time was considered under two divisions : 

 one called the Paleolithic epoch, from which stone or flint 

 implements were the only remains, and the other called the Neo- 

 lithic, from which human skulls and bones have been preserved, 

 together with implements of horn, bone, and ivory, as well as 

 stone or flint. The antiquity of these remains can be expressed 

 only in terms of geological time ; but the facts show that the whole 

 of historical time would be as nothing to the length of the Neo- 

 lithic epoch, and that this Palaeolithic epoch must have been im- 

 measurably longer still. These Neolithic skulls differ much in 



