xiv] MAN'S PRECURSORS 



latter are scattered over distant and widely separated regions, 

 their progenitors must originally have occupied the same area. 



This is the reason why both geologists and anthropologists have 

 always considered it possible that at some past epoch Borneo was 

 the habitat of an anthropomorph more nearly allied to Man than to 

 the living orang-utan. This idea was mentioned to me by Sir 

 Charles Lyell, when I was in London in 1865, preparing for my 

 expedition to Borneo. The great geologist then urged me to explore 

 the caves in that island, being of opinion that important materials 

 and remains of very great value for the past history of Man might 

 be found in them. He argued that as in Australia, where 

 marsupials predominate, all the fossil mammals yet found belong to 

 that group, so in Borneo, where the orang-utan now lives, one 

 would probably discover the remains of some extinct species 

 belonging to the same order. The exploration of the caves in 

 Borneo has, however, not as yet given the expected results. 1 



In any case, even admitting freely the possibility that anthro- 

 pomorphs distinct from the orang-utan (and I must add, also, from 

 the gibbons) once lived in Borneo, the question remains whether 

 they could have been the true precursors of Man. To this I answer 

 in the negative. While on the one hand there is nothing to dis- 

 prove the idea that man may have existed in Borneo from times 

 of the remotest antiquity, there is on the other hand nothing to 

 suggest the probability that the island has been a fons et origo of 

 species of the genus Homo, though we find there all the requisites 

 for the plasmation of the genus Simla. 



The theory of adaptability to the environment requires a cor- 

 relation between the characters acquired by organisms and the 

 stimuli or exciting causes, therefore certain given conditions of 

 existence must have produced corresponding modifications in the 

 living beings which have been under their influence. Now, the 

 more marked differential characters which exist between the mor- 

 phology of Man and that of the orang-utan are evidently due to 

 different conditions of existence ; for the first is modified for a 

 terrestrial, the second for an arboreal life. This divergence in 

 adaptation is the principal, if not the only cause of the generic 

 characters in which Homo differs from Simla. 



To explain why certain creatures have adopted an erect posture 

 and bipedal progression we must assume, a priori, that they 

 happened to live where such posture and such manner of 



1 Recently in Java the fossil remains of an anthropomorph of the highest 

 scientific interest have been discovered, and the name of Pithecanthropus 

 erectus has been given by the discoverer, Dr. Eugene Dubois, to this extinct 

 creature. But the remains as yet found are too few and imperfect to be of 

 much aid to definite conclusions on the history of the primitive evolution 

 of Man. 



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