THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 5 



lithic in that they show the mark of fabrication; and to the 

 Cromer beds is assigned a conservative age estimate of more 

 than half a million years. 



But Europe is not supposed to have been the original evolu- 

 tionary center of mankind; its small size seems to preclude 

 that. Rather is it a place to which, as in historic times, mi- 

 grating hordes came from time to time when force of circum- 

 stances drove them out of Asia and perhaps more rarely from 

 Africa. That Asia is the birthplace of mankind is seemingly 

 established, the following being some of the evidences for this 

 belief. 



Asia possesses great size, and hence varying life conditions, 

 together with a central location contiguous to all other land 

 masses, even, as the north polar projection shows (Fig. 2), 

 to North America. From Asia, as from no other of the 

 continents of the world, is communication so easy and the 

 migratory routes so clearly discernible. Asia is the home of the 

 highest and best of the higher organic life and is with few 

 exceptions the place whence man has derived his dependents 

 and allies, the domestic animals and plants. Asia is the seat 

 of the oldest civilizations, many indications of which, though 

 visible as sand-drifted ruins, have outlived the vaguest tradi- 

 tions concerning their origins. Finally, the physical and cli- 

 matic conditions of Asia in the Tertiary era were such as the 

 scientist must postulate in his imaginings of the modus operandi 

 of human origin from his prehuman forebears, i.e., such as 

 would enforce descent from the trees and terrestrial adapta- 

 tion. 1 The fact that the most primitive peoples to-day 

 African pygmies and Australian blackfellows are not Asiatic 

 does not tend to controvert but rather to strengthen this belief, 



1 See Lull, in "Evolution of the earth and its inhabitants," Yale University 

 Press, 1918, pp. 142-143; and Joseph Barrell "Probable relations of climatic 

 change to the origin of the Tertiary ape-man," Scientific Monthly, January, 

 1917, pp. 16-26. 



