HRDLICKA— THE PEOPLING OF ASIA. 539 



to Africa we may decide on one hand from his parentage to the 

 Negro and on the other from the improbabiUty of his succeeding 

 in penetrating, weak as he was, from elsewhere into the heart of 

 the African continent. 



In his extension eastward and southward the Negrito may or 

 may not have met with other human beings. He may possibly have 

 met with some representatives of what is now commonly referred 

 to as the " Australoid " type of man. Certain it is that he met with 

 no large numbers, for these would have effectually checked his 

 extension. Also, wherever better preserved, the Negrito shows 

 still a pure type, without any signs of ancient admixture with such 

 heterogeneous population. It seems most Ukely therefore that the 

 territories over which the Negrito succeeded in extending were 

 devoid at that time of other population. This enabled the small, 

 poorly equipped black man, advancing always in the direction of 

 better prospects and least resistance, to cover in time the enormous 

 area over which we find his remnants to this day. Just when this 

 happened and how long it took, can scarcely be conjectured; but it 

 was not very long, speaking in the geological or evolutionary sense, 

 for the Negrito is not a geologically ancient type, besides which he 

 has modified but little in his own way since his separation from 

 the mother stock of blacks. 



These deductions concerning the Negrito incidentally raise one 

 great question, which is that about the place of man's origin. It 

 has so far generally been believed that the cradle of mankind lay 

 somewhere in southeastern Asia or what are now the adjoining 

 archipelagos, for it is these regions in which live to this day two 

 of the anthropoid apes, in which existed once, as shown by the 

 Sivalik finds, still other anthropoid forms, and which gave us the 

 remains of the Pithecanthropus, a being that so closely approaches 

 to the ideal " missing link," half-ape, or half-man. These facts, 

 together with the existence of apparently favorable environment for 

 further evolution in the direction of man in the regions under con- 

 sideration, have produced a powerful predilection in scientific minds 

 in favor of these regions as the site of man's evolution. Nor is 

 anyone in a position to-day to gainsay the possibility that the early 

 phases of human evolution have taken place in what is now ^Malaysia 



