December 15, 1923] 



NATURE 



855 



Lord Monboddo, that apes were degenerate men — or, to 

 use Klaatsch's own expression, they represent " abortive 

 attempts at human evolution." On the other hand, the 

 races of Europe, Asia, and Australia, although they, too, 

 had arisen from the same ancestral stock of ape-men, 

 had taken a totally different route to reach their 

 humanity, having been accompanied in part of their 

 evolutionary journey by the ancestry of the orang — 

 another abortive attempt at man-production. Klaatsch 

 himself was uncertain as to which human race had its 

 past twined with the ancestry of the chimpanzee, but 

 some of his followers have provided its human counter- 

 part and also one for the gibbon. Once one enters the 

 topsy-turvy evolutionary mill of the polygenist, there 

 is no calling a halt : the extinct forms of anthropoid 

 apes will also require human counterparts if Klaatsch's 

 views are sound ; and as geologists will provide scores 

 of them in the course of time, the fertile imagination of 

 the polygenist must look forward to a busy and per- 

 plexing future. 



What should we say if any one were solemnly to 

 assure us that Spanish and Italian were speeches of 

 diverse origin, but that as they evolved they had come 

 to resemble each other ? Those who maintain that 

 the close structural resemblances between the Negro 

 and the European are due to convergence, as Klaatsch 

 did, take up an equally untenable position.^ 



It must not be thought that the whole of Prof. 

 Klaatsch's book is given over to a discussion of the 

 evolution of man's body and brain. Far from it : a 

 chapter is devoted to the evolution of weapons and to 

 the discovery of fire and the results which followed 

 from that discovery. One result was that primitive 

 and hairy man, sleeping by the fires he succeeded in 

 kindling and feeding, became nude. In another chapter 

 is given an account of the origin of clothes ; Prof. 

 Klaatsch stoutly maintained that clothes were worn at 

 first purely as ornaments ; he cites ladies' underwear 

 as proof of his contention, but appears to have forgotten 

 that the orang and chimpanzee find out for themselves 

 that an old blanket or a newspaper can serve more 

 than an ornamental purpose. Chapters are devoted to 

 the evolution of speech, of society, of religion, of the 

 ho ne, and of motherhood. 



All departments of anthropology are dealt with ; in 

 every section the author sets down in clear, unmistak- 

 able terms the conclusions he has reached regarding 

 the matters dealt with in his pages. It is the author's 

 courage rather than his judgment which is to be com- 

 mended. In brief, this book of Prof. Klaatsch's is of 

 •• ihie, not because it represents a weighty contribution 



inthropology, but because it gives in a readable form 



Klaatsch's tbenry was discussed at some length in the pages o( Nature 

 Nov. 34, 1910 (Vol. 8j, p. 119). 



NO. 2824, VOL. 112] 



the opinions held by an outstanding personality con- 

 cerning the manner in which man has come by his 

 present place in the world. 



(2) Prof. Klaatsch was a polygenist; Prof. Roland 

 B. Dixon is also a polygenist, but of a new kind. The 

 title which he has given his book, " The Racial History 

 of Man," seems to convey the impression that we 

 are to be told how the Negro, the Chinaman, the 

 European, and other well-differentiated races of man- 

 kind came into existence. His publishers have given 

 his book all the appearance in paper, type, and binding 

 which marks a standard work. Prof. Dixon's book is 

 in reality a treatise on polygeny ; of that he is in no 

 doubt, for he writes : 



" The acceptance of such an hypothesis, of the theory 

 that the existing varieties of man are to be explained, 

 not as derived by differentiation from a single ancestral 

 form, but as developed by amalgamation of the 

 descendants of several quite discrete types, places us 

 squarely in the ranks of the long discredited poly- 

 genists " (p. 503). 



There is no doubt that Prof. Dixon has put himself 

 in his proper category, and we want to know how he 

 came to fall into this position. He, like Prof. Klaatsch, 

 is a thorough-going evolutionist : he is convinced that, 

 in its early evolutionary history, man's ancestral stock 

 progressed in quite an orthodox manner ; it diverged, 

 forming many branches, representatives of some of 

 which have been found in a fossilised form in Java and 

 Piltdown, etc. But there came a time — the date is not 

 explicitly stated — when only eight branches — or human 

 types — were left. We are told the names of these. 

 There was (i) the proto-Australoid, cradled somewhere 

 round the Indian Ocean ; (2) the proto-Negroid, whose 

 home was in Africa ; (3) the Mediterranean, living in 

 Asia to the east of the Mediterranean ; (4) the Caspian 

 — a new name for our old friend the Caucasian — living in 

 Asia, north and east of the Caspian ; (5) the Mongoloid, 

 and (6) the Palm-Alpine, neighbours on the central 

 plateau of Asia ; (7) the Ural, of uncertain nativity, 

 but placed in the meantime in Eastern Russia ; (8) the 

 Alpine, also a native of Asia. For some reason, which 

 the author does not mention, these eight primitive 

 types of man, living in and native to diverse regions 

 of Africa and Asia, began a great game, which can only 

 be described as that of " anthropological chairs." 

 They all started moving round the world, into each 

 other's countries, and mixing in the most promiscuous 

 way. Out of this old-world game came our modem 

 races — Negro, Negrito, Australian aborigine, Europeans 

 of all sorts, Egyptians, Chinamen, Red Indians, and 

 Lapps. The difference between one modem race and 

 another wholly depends, according to Prof. Dixon, on 

 the proportion in which the eJLrht original races were 



