THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



DECEMBEE, 1879. 



EECENT ANTHEOPOLOGY.* 



By EDWAED B. TYLOR, D. C. L., F. E. S. 



IN surveying modern scientific opinion, the student is often remind- 

 ed of a doctrine proclaimed in the ancient hymns of the Zend- 

 Avesta, that of Zrvdna akarana, or "endless time." Our modern 

 schemes of astronomy, geology, biology, are all framed on the assump- 

 tion of past time immense in length. In fact, one reason why the lat- 

 ter sciences grew so slowly till almost our own day, was their being 

 shackled by the bonds of a short chronology, allowing no room for the 

 long successive periods through which it is now clear that the earth 

 with its plants and animals passed into their present state. Even the 

 science of man, though concerned with the later forms of being, be- 

 longing to times which geologists treat as almost modern, has never- 

 theless to deal with periods of time extending far back beyond the 

 range of history and chronology. 



Looking back four thousand to five thousand years, what is the 

 appearance of mankind as disclosed to us by the Egyptian monuments 

 and inscriptions ? Several of the best-mjtrked races of man were al- 

 ready in existence, including the brown Egyptian himself, the dark- 

 white Semitic man of Assyria or Palestine, the Central African of two 

 varieties, which travelers still find as distinct as ever, namely, the 

 black or negro proper, and the copper-colored negroid, like the Bongo 

 or Nyam-nyam of our own time. Indeed, the evidence accessible as 

 to ancient races of man goes to prove that the causes which brought 

 about their differences in types of skull, hair, skin, and constitution, 

 did their chief work in times before history began. Since then the 

 races which had become adapted to their geographical regions may 



* Address before the Anthropological Section of the British Association, at Sheffield. 

 VOL. XVI. — 10 



