242 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



races were all, according to Schaaffhausen," "lower in the' 

 scale than the rudest living savages"; they must therefore 

 have differed, to a certain extent, from any existing race. 

 The remains described by Prof. Broca from Les Eyzies, 

 though they unfortunately appear to have belonged to a 

 single family, indicate a race with a most singular com- 

 bination of low or simious, and of high characteristics. 

 This race is "entirely different from any other, ancient or 

 modern, that we have ever heard of." '" It differed, there- 

 fore, from the quaternary race of the caverns of Belgium. 



Man can long resist conditions which appear extremely 

 unfavorable for his existence." He has long lived in the 

 extreme regions of the North, with no wood for his canoes 

 or implements, and with only blubber as fuel and melted 

 snow as drink. In the southern extremity of America the 

 Fuegians survive without the protection of clothes, or of 

 any building worthy to be called a hovel. In South Africa 

 the aborigines wander over arid plains, where dangerous 

 beasts abound. Man can withstand the deadly influence of 

 the Terai at the foot of the Himalaya, and the pestilential 

 shores of tropical Africa. 



Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe 

 with tribe, and race with race. Various checks are always 

 in action, serving to keep down the numbers of each sav- 

 age tribe — such as periodical famines, nomadic habits, and 

 the consequent deaths of infants, prolonged suckling, wars, 

 accidents, sickness, licentiousness, the stealing of women, 

 infanticide, and especially lessened fertility. If any one of 

 these checks increases in power, even slightly, the tribe 

 thus affected tends to decrease; and when of two adjoining 

 tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than 

 the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter,^ 

 cannibalism, slavery, and absorption. Even when a weaker 

 tribe is not thus abruptly swept away, if it once begins to 



^' Translation in "Anthropological Review," October, 1868, p. 431. 

 '" "Transact. Intemat. Congress of Prehistoric Arch.," 1868, pp. 1'72-1'J5. 

 See also Broca (translation) in "Anthropological Review," October, 1868, p. 410. 

 *' Dr. Gerland "Ueber daa Aussterben der Naturvolker," 1868, s. 82. 



