164 The Outline of Science 



3 



Man's Pedigree 



The facts of anatomy, physiology, and embryology, of which 

 we have given illustrations, all point to man's affiliation with the 

 order of monkeys and apes. To this order is given the name 

 Primates, and our first and second question must be when and 

 whence the Primates began. The rock record answers the first 

 question: the Primates emerged about the dawn of the Eocene 

 era, when grass was beginning to cover the earth with a garment. 

 Their ancestral home was in the north in both hemispheres, and 

 then they migrated to Africa, India, Malay, and South America. 

 In North America the Primates soon became extinct, and the 

 same thing happened later on in Europe. In this case, however, 

 there was a repeopling from the South (in the Lower Miocene) 

 and then a second extinction (in the Upper Pliocene) before man 

 appeared. There is considerable evidence in support of Pro- 

 fessor R. S. Lull's conclusion, that in Southern Asia, Africa, and 

 South America the evolution of Primates was continuous since 

 the first great southward migration, and there is, of course, an 

 abundant modern representation of Primates in these regions 

 to-day. 



As to the second question: Whence the Primates sprang, 

 the answer must be more conjectural. But it is a reasonable view 

 that Carnivores and Primates sprang from a common Insectivore 

 stock, the one order diverging towards flesh-eating and hunting 

 on the ground, the other order diverging towards fruit-eating and 

 arboreal habits. There is no doubt that the Insectivores (includ- 

 ing shrews, tree-shrews, hedgehog, mole, and the like) were very 

 plastic and progressive mammals. 



What followed in the course of ages was the divergence of 

 branch after branch from the main Primate stem. First there 

 diverged the South American monkeys on a line of their own, 

 and then the Old World monkeys, such as the macaques and 



