LARGER PROBLEMS OF ANTHROPOLOGY 467 



The Problem of Human Antiquity 



So long as the assumption of monogenesis prevailed, the question 

 of the antiquity of man loomed large in the minds of students, while 

 even under the hypothesis of polygenesis the date (geological or 

 historical) of advent of the earliest man is of no small interest. So 

 the discussion of human antiquity has grown into dozens of full 

 volumes, hundreds of chapters, and thousands of special papers, 

 not to include the tens of thousands of ill-recorded scientific utter- 

 ances and literal millions of press items. This vast literature is not 

 easily summed; it must suffice to say that the evidence seems to 

 establish the existence of man in Asia and Europe and northern 

 Africa during later Tertiary times, and thus before the glacial 

 periods of the Pleistocene; but that the earliest Americans lagged 

 behind, coming in probably before all the ice-periods closed, possibly 

 nearer the earlier than the latest. Despite the wealth of literature, 

 there is a woeful dearth of definite knowledge concerning the date 

 or dates of man's appearance in different lands; and herein lies 

 another of the present problems of anthropology. 



Such are some of the larger problems of anthropology, that 

 youngest science whose field touches those of all the rest. The 

 smaller problems are legion; those of general sort are at once pro- 

 blems of science and of statecraft, of the daily life and welfare of 

 millions, of greatest good to the greatest number. Fortunately all 

 are such as to be solved by the slow but sure processes of observa- 

 tion and generalization; and it is especially pleasing to see and 

 to say that these scientific processes are more steadily and suc- 

 cessfully under way now than ever before. 



