TBANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. DEPT. ANTHROPOLOGY. 605 



and rivers. Thus the names of ' Britannia ' and ' Hibernia,' and other allied names, 

 were found to signify ' mountain-land = island.' Taking Britannia and Hibernia 

 together, the)-^ were found to be names of pairs of islands. Examplt^s were Britannia 

 and Hibernia ; Brattia and Pharus ; Ilydrsea and Tiparenus ; Kreta and Kuprus ; 

 Thera and Hippm-is. Of other sets of pairs are Sardo, or Sardinia, and Corsika ; 

 Andros and Keos ; Rhodus and Kos ; Melita and Aaulos, &c. A similar practice 

 prevails in Japan, where in a pair the larger island is marked by the male prefix 

 and the smaller by the female prefix. Mr. Clarke concluded that our islands were 

 named by the Iberians on a common system of geographical nomenclature, and that 

 Thule must have been an island known to the earliest Iberian navigators, and was 

 most likely Iceland. Our islands must have been named iu tlie early epoch of the 

 foundations of the first empires. This was confirmed by the Celtic names for Hibernia 

 and Caledonia, which transmitted the earlier traditions. He considered it was 

 possible that Albion was another name for Britannia belonging to ihe same class. 



5. Evidence as to ihe Scene of Mans Evolution and the Prospects of 

 proving the same hy Faloeontological Discovery. Bi; W. Stewart 

 Duncan, M.A.I. 



The object of this paper was to recall attention to a lately neglected department 

 of anthropology, namely that which concerns itself with the discovery of forms in 

 fossil proving the evolution of man. It was urged that a committee should be 

 appointed to investigate this subject specialh', and to report to the Association. In 

 support of his proposition the author advanced a series of arguments in favour of 

 the region of the South of Europe and Asia as the probable scene of man's evo- 

 lution, and as a likely field of successful exploration. This conclusion was reached 

 as follows :— On the assumption that man was evolved he must have sprung from 

 a small-brained qnadrumanous semi-erect creature ; in that case he was evolved 

 in common with ape allies in the Old World, In what part then of the Old "World P 

 The equal division of the genera of living anthropoid apes between Western 

 tropical Africa and Indo-Malaya, as also the discovery of fossil anthropoid apes in 

 the extreme South of France, indicated that living Simiadae were derived from 

 Southern Asia and Europe. The fairly equal division between tropical Africa and 

 Malaysia of the lowest types of mankind indicated that they also were derived 

 from the South of Europe and Asia. But palseontological" evidence existed to 

 prove that the monkeys and apes of the Old World became dispersed to this very 

 same I'egion in middle and early tertiary times. Driven thither by increasing cold 

 from the north- — the premonition of a coming ice age — they would, if not arrested 

 have steadily gone on to the equator. But geographical' barriers arrested their 

 progress for a long period, for the enormous extent of sea-barrier on the northern 

 Mediterranean shore and on the shore of the Arabian sea and its diverging branches 

 prevented all but those in South-eastern Asia from finding their way to the tropics. 

 Those that found their way thither are comparatively unimproved; those that 

 found their way to Northern Africa by happening to lie near the then probable land 

 connections (by Italy and Tunis, and by Gibraltar and Tangier) between Europe and 

 Africa were again arrested by a Sahara sea or desert, and so attained a liigher de- 

 velopment in the mountainous region of Morocco and Algeria. But those who never 

 knew of sucli routes, and they must have been the majority, had to remain and contend 

 with cold, and with their natural enemies among the lower animals. The survivors 

 of these apes would become adapted to withstand a colder climate, and so would 

 become fitted to become universally distributed ; increased cold would lessen the 

 abundance of fruit-trees, woidd necessitate the selection of new kinds of food, would 

 abolish the habit of living in trees ; the arms would become shorter with less use, 

 the legs would become more fitted by use to support the body, the foot would 

 become more adapted for support and less for prehension ; the pelvis and the spine 

 would assume more of the human characters by the muscular exercise necessitated 

 by living in a mountainous region, such as this was and still is. The brain would 



