[hill-tout] PHYLOGENY OF MAN 61 



European peoples. But while we have gathered but little directly 

 of these other groups certain facts have come to light in the course 

 of our investigations which have important bearings upon the 

 history of all of them. 



Thus, one fact in particular, has become increasingly clear and 

 more firmly established as our researches have proceeded; and 

 that is the remarkable persistence of human types and their slow 

 modification over long periods of time. Tens of thousands of years 

 are seen to elapse and still the same type persists, transmitting age 

 by age the same physical characters through thousands of generations. 

 We had caught a glimpse of this great truth from the monuments of 

 ancient Egypt, whereon the artists of the early dynasties had de- 

 picted the features of men representative of the African, Asiatic and 

 European peoples of their day, whose resemblance to individuals of 

 the same races today, is so clear and unmistakeable that they might 

 have been painted but yesterday. We learn from these pictures, 

 for example, that the African of today differs in no respect perceiv- 

 able to us from the African of those days, though there is an interval 

 of from five to seven thousand years between our time and theirs. 



But this important truth is far more strikingly brought out by 

 our discover es of Pleistocene man, for these have revealed to us 

 instances of this conservancy of type extending over vastly greater 

 periods of time than the Egyptian examples. 



A consideration of these facts, and the implications they carry, 

 lead us irresistably to the conclusion that if the relatively slighter 

 differences existing between the races we find in Europe to-day are 

 the slow product or result of tens of thousands of years of differ- 

 entiation, then the deeper and more fundamental differences which 

 divide the four great groups of humanity one from the other must be 

 the result, not merely of tens of thousands of years of variation, 

 but of hundreds of thousands. This being so it is not surprising that 

 when we endeavour to trace back the first three of these four groups 

 to their original source we find ourselves lost in the mists of antiquity 

 and can learn little concerning it or them. 



It is altogether different when we come to deal with the European 

 group. Here we are on surer ground and start from known facts. 



Europe today is occupied by three great races now generally 

 known to us as the Mediterranean, the Teutonic or Baltic and the 

 Alpine or Celtic races; and of the relation of these to the races of 

 the earliest historic period there is no question. Nor is there any 

 doubt as to the connection between the early historic peoples and 



