422 TROPICAL NATURE 



together, indicate a state of civilisation much higher than 

 that of the lowest of our modern savages, while they are 

 quite compatible with a considerable degree of mental ad- 

 vancement, and lead us to believe that the crania of Engis 

 and Cro-Magnon are not exceptional, but fairly represent the 

 characters of the race. If we further remember that these 

 people lived in Europe under the unfavourable conditions of 

 a sub-arctic climate, we shall be inclined to agree with Dr. 

 Daniel Wilson that it is far easier to produce evidences of 

 deterioration than of progress, in instituting a comparison 

 between the contemporaries of the mammoth and later 

 prehistoric races of Europe or savage nations of modern 

 times. 1 



3. Yet another important line of evidence as to the 

 extreme antiquity of the human type has been brought 

 prominently forward by Professor Mivart. 2 He shows, by a 

 careful comparison of all parts of the structure of the body, 

 that man is related not to any one', but almost equally to 

 many of the existing apes to the orang, the chimpanzee, 

 the gorilla, and even to the gibbons, in a variety of ways ; 

 and these relations and differences are so numerous and so 

 diverse that, on the theory of evolution, the ancestral form 

 which ultimately developed into man must have diverged 

 from the common stock whence all these various forms and 

 their extinct allies originated. But so far back as the 

 Miocene deposits of Europe we find the remains of apes 

 allied to these various forms, and especially to the gibbons ; 

 so that in all probability the special line of variation which 

 led up to man branched off at a still earlier period. And 

 these early forms, being the initiation of a far higher type, 

 and having to develop by natural selection into so specialised 

 and altogether distinct a creature as man, must have risen at 

 a very early period into the position of a dominant race, and 

 spread in dense waves of population over all suitable portions 

 of the great continent for this, on Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, 

 is essential to developmental progress through the agency of 

 natural selection. 



Under these circumstances we might certainly expect to 



1 Prehistoric Man, 3d ed., vol. i. p. 117. 

 ? Man and Apes, pp. 171-193. 



