480 



THE PYGMIES OF THE GREAT CONGO FOREST. 



Ape-like Mukonjo. Blackish skin. 



the whole of Africa south of the northern tropic mny once liave been 

 one continuous primeval forest. 



Certain regions, however, on the north and south and, above all in 

 the eastern half of the continent, proA'ed less capable, from conditions 

 of soil or moisture, to support this growth of vegetation. In these 

 regions the great mammals that invaded Africa during the Pliocene 

 epoch, through southern Asia and Arabia, found less resistance to 



their progress and conditions, such as the 

 growth of grasses, more favorable to the 

 development of herbivores; while of course 

 the great carnivorous animals could exist 

 onl}^ where the big vegetarian beasts would 

 thrive. The mighty forests still existed, 

 however — existed possibly with small inter- 

 ruptions — right across the continent from 

 west to east. They therefore received into 

 their safe recesses the anthropoid apes and 

 the more timid and defenseless mammals of 

 large size, w^hich in the more open country 

 would have been completely exterminated. The anthropoid apes had 

 no doubt been driven away from western Asia and southern Europe 

 by their successful compeer and offshoot, man, who can have been the 

 only serious enemy of these ancestors of the gorilla, chimpanzee, and 

 orangutan. 



Some long while after the scared chimpanzees and gorillas had found 

 a secure refuge in the dense woods of West C^entral Africa the earli- 

 est types of humanity who had entered the 

 Dark Continent were also pushed toward 

 this gloomy forest b}' the inroads of superior 

 tribes, and some of their descendants exist 

 there at the present day. 



THE ANCESTORS OF THE APE-IJKE MEN. 



It ma}^ be assumed as the most probal)lo 

 of all the theories on the subject that the 

 human type emerged from the ape some- 

 where in Asiii, possibly in Southern Asia, AiK-i.ke type, MumuKie. veiiow- 

 inasmuch us the real missing link, Pithe- 



canthro])us crfx-tus, has be(^ discovered fossil in flaAa. In any case 

 early man a))poars to have had an inunense de\'el()])nu'nt in and around 

 th(^ Indian Peninsula, and ])()ssihly there or thereabouts developed the 

 three main tyi)es which he exhil)it.s at the present day — the ^Vlongolian, 

 th(> Caucasian, and the negro. Tlie pressure of superior races drove 

 the negro types out of Southern Asia eastward to the Andainans, 

 Malacca, New (Tuiiuvi. the I'acilic Islands, and Tasmania, and westward 

 across Baluchistan, Mesopotamia, and Arabia to Africa. * * * 



