94 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [April, 



.aspects in which this subject might be studied, the physical relations 

 of the various races, and their language and customs. Every one 

 might not be competent to deal with the subject in both branches, 

 but there were few of the Society's members, who could but take an 

 interest in one or the other of them. 



Mr. Blanford could not accept the suggestion of Mr. Beverley, that 

 the centre from which man had radiated, was probably identical with 

 the traditional centre of the Arian race. It is indeed unknown at 

 what geological period the human race commenced, but the known facts 

 of primitive ethnology* indicate that man's development in his earlier 

 stages was very slow, and he could not have made, and indeed so far 

 as we know, did not make his appearance in Western Europe, at the 

 close of the glacial period, until he had made very great advances, and 

 had discovered the arts of producing lire, and of providing himself 

 with clothing ; the former especially a discovery of great difficulty 

 and of the highest importance. But the climate of Iran was not at 

 the present day one suited to an utterly savage race, and there is good 

 reason to believe, judging from the observations of Dr. Hooker in the 

 Lebanon, and of Indian Geologists on the former extension of the 

 Himalayan glaciers, that in the later Tertiary period, it had been still 

 less adapted to the wants of savage man. Moreover during a great 

 part of the later Tertiary period, a sea of considerable extent had 

 occupied much of the region of Central Asia, east of the Caspian and 

 north of the Hindoo Kush, and had, for a long period, acted as a 

 barrier between the faunas of S. E. Asia on the one hand, and that 

 of Siberia and Europe on the other. Even at the present day, there 

 is a marked distinction betwecn'these faunas. He thought that the' 

 region of the anthropoid apes, which in habits and Avants most nearly 

 resembled the undeveloped animal man, was a far more probable 

 centre, of the hitter's origin, and it was noteworthy that in this and 

 the neighbouring region of Australia, are to be found at the present 

 day some of the lowest human types, the Negritoes and Australians. 

 We could do little more than Speculate at present, but such facts as 

 we have, appeared rather to point to an equatorial region as the 

 place of man's origin, than to that in which man had developed into a 

 higher form of animal, and from which he had issued at a later 

 period to dispossess and drive backwards the less advanced forms of his 



