Egyptian ape is considered to stand in an ancestral relation to another form called 

 Pliopithecus, found in Germany and assigned to the Miocene epoch. And conse- 

 quently each stage of the Tertiary period, from the Oligocene division onward, is now 

 seen to possess one or more representatives of these animals. Moreover the oldest 

 fossil form has at least a claim to represent an ancestor of some of the later types. 



The precise bearing of these palaeontological discoveries upon the question of 

 man's antiquity is by no means slight, yet it may be overlooked. The observations 

 suggest that the various types of anthropoid ape were already and definitely divergent 

 from each other even in late Miocene times. Such early divergence among the apes 

 lends colour to the view that by that time the human line of evolution had become 

 detached from the earlier common ancestral path. The most recent investigations 

 into the characters of the brain in man and the higher mammals (including the apes) 

 bring in confirmatory evidence from the side of comparative anatomy. Yet however 

 clear the inference may seem to be, it is still a matter of presumption so long as we lack 

 fossils which can be regarded confidently as having figured in the direct line of human 

 descent. It may be too much to expect that the actual remains should be found; but 

 in the absence of such fossils from Miocene strata, it is impossible on palaeontological 

 grounds to say how far man had advanced in evolution by the commencement of the 

 Pliocene epoch. Nothing is known of the speed with which the various possible phases 

 were traversed, and yet the question t>f the rate of progress is all-important. 



Where so much room exists for speculation, it is not surprising to find "quite an 

 extensive range of variety in the genealogical trees which have been advanced in 

 explanation of the descent of man; and we may well pardon the indefiniteness of one 

 of the most recent of those schemes, 1 even though it be the outcome of patient research 

 and well-balanced judgment. 



But so far as it goes, the evidence of Pithecanthropus, having regard to its position 

 near the end of the Pliocene epoch, suggests the earlier stages of this, rather than the 

 Miocene division, as those which witnessed the final emergence of a distinctively human 

 form. Thus the direct evidence of palaeontology, though it does not contradict, 

 does not at present confirm the view which assigns the time of that event to the Miocene 

 or even an earlier epoch. 



4. Existing Types of Mankind. The flood of anthropological researches into the 

 physical characters of the various human types continues to increase in volume. The 

 augmentation of the number of investigations undertaken by members of the various 

 Slavonic nationalities and again by the Japanese forms a marked feature of recent 

 literature. The Russian publications alone attain the most formidable proportions 

 annually. 2 It is a matter for regret that on account of linguistic difficulties, these 

 memoirs are liable to be passed over by workers in Western Europe. Indeed it seems 

 as though the necessity for some universal script, a written lingua franca, will become 

 as urgent as in the Middle Ages. 



Pygmies. Some noteworthy researches bear on the distribution and affinities of 

 the pygmy types of mankind. 3 The discovery of pygmy tribes in New Guinea has 

 given a fresh stimulus to speculation on the subject of the original unity or the inde- 

 pendence of these diminutive Hominidae. Those who have studied the question may 

 be divided conveniently into three groups. Of these one holds that the pygmy type 

 represents an early stage in the evolution of the larger varieties of mankind. The 

 latter are regarded in fact as modified descendants of pygmy ancestors, distributed, it 

 is supposed, over the surface of the globe and now persisting only as widely-separated 

 groups. An elaborate theory of the cultural relations of the pygmy types with their 

 larger neighbours has been based on such considerations. On strictly anthropological 

 grounds, however, this view, by which the pygmies are regarded as ancestral forms, 



1 Vialleton, Morphologic des Vertebras, 1911. 



2 Stieda, Aus der Russischen Lfteratur; Archiv fur Anthropologie, 1906, and earlier 

 volumes. 



3 Schmidt, Die Stellung der Pygmaen-Vplker, etc., 1910. 



Poutrin, Les Negrillos du Centre Africain; L' Anthropologie, 1911-12. 



