HRDLICKA— THE PEOPLING OF ASIA. 541 



southern shores of the ^Mediterranean ; and from causes unknown 

 he appears never to have acquired a lasting foothold or any nu- 

 merical importance in the regions from which he came or which 

 he traversed. The last proposition, if correct, would be nothing 

 to wonder at, for we have good evidence of the fact that until 

 towards the end of the glacial times man had not been able to reach 

 any numerical importance even in Europe. 



The second hypothesis would be that the successful line of man's 

 ancestry originated not in Asia but in Africa, where we also know 

 of fossil anthropoids and where there live to this day the two 

 anthropoid apes nearest to man, namely the chimpanzee and the 

 gorilla. Unless man's origin should be regarded as a pure accident, 

 which seems unjustifiable, it may well be assumed that conditions 

 such as favored the differentiation from anthropoids towards man 

 in one locality existed also in other regions. The assumption of 

 man's origin in Africa would imply the conclusion that the progeny 

 of the Pithecanthropus had not reached the stage of man and has 

 become extinct near to where it developed ; while the man originat- 

 ing in Africa could, over the land connections at Gibraltar and 

 elsewhere, much more readily have reached southwestern Europe, 

 which is the site and cradle of the main stages of his further 

 development. 



Some difficulty in these connections seems to be presented by 

 the Australians, and the " australoid " type wherever met with in the 

 seas off southeastern Asia. Due to the occasional presence in this 

 type of certain primitive physical features such as the protruding 

 brows and jaws, the type as a whole has come to be looked upon as 

 something very primitive and very ancient. Some of the earlier 

 anthropologists would doubtless have found little difficulty in ac- 

 cepting the notion that the "australoid " man may be a local de- 

 scendant of the early man of southeastern Asia. But to this there 

 are valid objections. The " australoid " man is not a uniform type ; 

 he is admixed more or less according to localities with the Negrito, 

 and possibly even with some of the Indo-Europeans. When we 

 discount these admixtures, there is left what in no wise could be 

 regarded as a separate species or even a distinct variety of man, but 

 a man in all essentials like the western man of say ten to twenty 



