AuGDST 27, 1886] 



SCIElsrCE. 



195 



of Dr. Broca, they were ' on the threshold of 

 civilization.' They seem to have been contem- 

 poraries and perhaps offshoots of the highly en- 

 dowed populations of early Egypt and Assyria. 

 These singularly gifted populations of north- 

 eastern Africa, south-western Asia, and western 

 Europe were, so far as can be judged from the 

 existing evidence, the earliest representatives of 

 speaking man on the globe. Yet there can be no 

 doubt that they were descended from the river- 

 drift race. We have not here to deal with the 

 origin of a new species, but simply with that of a 

 variety. That in some family of the primitive 

 speechless race two or more children should have 

 been born with the faculty and organs of speech 

 is in itseK a fact not specially remarkable. Much 

 greater differences between parents and offspring 

 frequently appear. Among these, for example, is 

 one so comraon as to have received in physiology 

 the scientific name of polydactylism, — a term 

 applied to the case of children born with more 

 than the normal number of fingers. M. de 

 Quatrefages mentions that in the family of Zerah 

 Colburn, the celebrated calculator, four genera- 

 tions possessed this peculiarity, which commenced 

 with Zerah's grandfather. In the fourth genera- 

 tion four children out of eight still had the super- 

 numerary fingers, although in each generation 

 the many-fingered parent had mai'ried a person 

 having normal hands. Plainly, he adds, if this 

 Colburn family had been dealt with like the 

 Ancon breed of sheep, a six-fingered variety of 

 the human race would have been formed ; and 

 this, it may be added, would have been a far 

 greater variation than was the production of a 

 speaking race descending from a speechless pair. 

 The appearance of a sixth finger requires new 

 bones, muscles, and tendons, wit^i additional 

 nerves leading ultimately to the brain. There is 

 good reason to believe that the first endowment 

 of speech demanded far less change than this. 



Many skilled observers have sought to dis- 

 cover by various indications, such as the accumu- 

 lation of debris in caves, the layers of earth 

 formed by streams, the growth of bogs, and other 

 evidences, the time which has elapsed from the 

 era of the cave-men and the neolithic race to our 

 own time. All their conclusions are in sub- 

 stantial accord. While the existence of the earlier 

 race, the river-drift race, goes back to an indefi- 

 nite period, which, according to some opinions, 

 may exceed two hundred thousand years, nearly 

 all the estimates place the appearance of the 

 neolithic race, or men of the polished-stone epoch, 

 within seven thousand years, and that of their 

 predecessors, the cave-men, within eight thou- 

 sand years, from our own time. 



The question of the region in which speaking 

 man first appeared is one on which there is room 

 for a wide difference of opinion. It is a question 

 about which no one will venture to dogmatize. 

 The natural supposition, of course, would be that 

 this first appearance took place somewhere near 

 the centres of the earliest civilization. These 

 centres were in Egypt and Assyria. Between 

 those coimtries lies Arabia, in which, amidst the 

 sandy desert that protects the land from invasion, 

 there are many oases, large and small, blessed 

 with a most genial climate and a fruitful soil. 

 From that primitive centre, if such it was, the 

 increasing population Avould speedily overflow 

 into the plains of Mesopotamia and the fertile 

 valley of the Nile ; and there, or in their near 

 vicinity, nearly all the animals which were first 

 tamed, and nearly all the plants which were first 

 cultivated, would be found. We need not be sur- 

 prised, therefore, to find that the great majority 

 of investigators have looked to south-western 

 Asia for the primitive seat of the human race. 

 The most distinct tradition that has come down 

 to us of the earliest belief respecting the creation 

 of man — the tradition which is preserved in the 

 Hebrew narrative — places it in an oasis on the 

 Arabian border, and dates it "apparently at about 

 the time when, as all the evidence seems to show, 

 man endowed with speech first appeared. 



The conclusions to which this inquiry, guided 

 by the most recent discoveries of science, has 

 directed us, may be briefly summed up. We find 

 that the ideas of the antiquity of man which have 

 prevailed of late years, and more especially since 

 Lyell published his notable work on the subject, 

 must be considerably modified. No doubt, if we 

 are willing to give the name of man to a half- 

 brutish being, incapable of speech, whose only 

 human accomplishments were those of using fire 

 and of making a single clumsy stone implement, 

 we must allow to this being an existence of vast 

 and as yet undefined duration, shared with the 

 mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and other ex- 

 tinct animals. But if, with many writers, we 

 term the beings of this race the precursors of 

 man, and restrict the name of men to the mem- 

 bers of the speaking race that followed them, 

 then the first appearance of man, properly so 

 styled, must be dated at about the time to which 

 it was ascribed before the discoveries of Boucher 

 de Perthes had startled the civilized world, — that 

 is, somewhere between six thousand and ten 

 thousand years ago. And this man who thus ap- 

 peared was not a being of feeble powers, a dull- 

 witted savage, on the mental level of the degen- 

 erate Australian or Hottentot of our day. He 

 possessed and manifested, from the first, intel- 



