September 12, 1884. J 



SCIENCE. 



24o 



deuces of man have been the glacial floods; and these, 

 if the glacialists are right, have occurred, one during 

 the earlier pliocene and the other at the beginning 

 of the quaternary. In the gradual recedence of the 

 glaciers, no less destructive agencies were at work in 

 scooping out valleys, inundating immense areas, and 

 covering broad tracts of land by their detritus. 



It would seem from many facts, that early man 

 lived in the vicinity of water, either on the banks of 

 rivers or along the coast-line; and it is just these 

 regions which have been most profoundly modified 

 since glacial days, and, indeed, in all times. 



Saporta suggested the idea that man, originating in 

 the north, had been pushed southward by successive 

 waves of people till the primitive wave was forced 

 into the extremities of the southern continents, and 

 that the remnants of this ancient wave are seen in 

 the Tasmanians, Bushmen, and Fuegians. If so, the 

 remains of primitive man are buried under paleo- 

 chrystic ice. Far more probable would it be to as- 

 sume an antarctic continent under genial conditions 

 in which these primitive races lived, and whence suc- 

 cessive waves emanated, becoming modified by their 

 new surroundings as they receded from their point 

 of origin. "We should then assume the submergence 

 of this region; leaving remnants of these low types in 

 the Patagonians, Tasmanians, Bushmen, and others, 

 and precisely where we might expect to find them. 

 If either supposition is true, the earlier traces of these 

 people are buried beyond recovery. The prejudices 

 of man himself have also caused the loss of much 

 precious material, or of opportunities which can 

 never be regained, — ancient skeletons exhumed only 

 to be promptly buried again; others encountered in 

 excavation, and left undisturbed through super- 

 stitious fear. Even at the present time, while the 

 collection and study of the remains of other fossil 

 mammals go on unchallenged, the archeologist is 

 beset by a class who repudiate his facts, look upon 

 his evidences as deceptive or fraudulent, and mis- 

 understand his aims. 



From what has been said, it is evident that the 

 discovery of the remains of primitive man is highly 

 improbable. Until this good fortune comes to us, as 

 come it may, we must be content to reason from the 

 known to the unknown. In regard to the physical 

 characteristics of man, there is a manifest dispropor- 

 tion between the changes he may have undergone, 

 and the known change of other mammals since mio- 

 cene days. For, while slight changes in man's oste- 

 ological structure have undoubtedly taken place, 

 many mammals of huge form and great variety have 

 become extinct, and others have been profoundly 

 modified. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to 

 believe, that, the moment the ancestors of man pos- 

 sessed the power of banding together in communities, 

 and of using weapons, they became capable of render- 

 ing inoperative the very influences which were so 

 active in modifying or exterminating their mammalian 

 associates. How far these conditions were settled in 

 the quaternary, maybe seen from the fact, that while 

 man could endure an arctic climate, and survived the 

 glacial period, his anthropoid and more distant pithi- 



coid relations disappeared from Europe forever on its 

 approach. 



The fact that man, and his near associates, have 

 been regarded as structurally the highest forms of 

 mammals, has led to the natural belief that they must 

 have been last evolved. That man is pre-eminently 

 the highest form intellectually, goes without the say- 

 ing; but in regard to his physical characteristics it 

 seems that sufficient importance has never been given 

 to the generalizations of Cope, who shows that "the 

 mammals of the lower eocene exhibit a greater per- 

 centage of types that walk on the soles of their feet, 

 while the successive periods exhibit an increasing 

 number of those that walk on the toes, while the 

 hoofed animals and carnivora of recent times nearly 

 all have the heel high in the air. . . . Thus, in all 

 generalized points, the limbs of man are those of a 

 primitive type so common in the eocene. His struc- 

 tural superiority consists solely in the complexity and 

 size of the brain. A very important lesson is derived 

 from these and kindred facts. The monkeys were 

 anticipated in the greater fields of the world's activity 

 by more powerful rivals. The ancestors of the un- 

 gulates held the fields and the swamps, and the car- 

 nivora driven by hunger learned the arts and cruelties 

 of the chase. The weaker ancestors of the quadru- 

 mana possessed neither speed, nor weapons of offence 

 or defence; and nothing but an arboreal life was left 

 them when they developed the prehensile powers of 

 the feet. Their digestive system unspecialized, their 

 food various, their life the price of ceaseless vigilance, 

 no wonder that their inquisitiveness and wakefulness 

 were stimulated and developed, which is the condition 

 of progressive intelligence." This explains on rational 

 grounds why man has continued to persist for so long 

 a time with physical characteristics so slightly modi- 

 fied, while other forms were changing or becoming 

 extinct. 



It has been shown that structurally he is related 

 not only to the higher apes, but with numerous lower 

 forms, and even with the lemuroids, remains of which 

 have been found in the lower eocene of both con- 

 tinents. If these structural affinities are valid, then 

 we must look far beyond and below the present higher 

 apes for the diverging branches of man's ancestry. 



Another evidence of his antiquity is the early estab- 

 lishment of well-marked types, which must have re- 

 quired an enormous lapse of time to have become 

 established. The various types of skulls are met 

 with among the earliest traces of man. In the lake 

 dwellings of Switzerland, Dr. His has discovered 

 four different types of skulls. 



Professor Kollman, who has made an extensive 

 study of the crania of both hemispheres, concludes 

 that the sub-species of man became fixed in the 

 pre-glacial period. Furthermore, the evidences go to 

 show that early man had become sufficiently differen- 

 tiated to acclimate himself to widely different regions 

 of the earth's surface, while the apes are still confined 

 to the torrid zone. The remains of his feasts show 

 that he had early become omnivorous. The most 

 powerful argument in favor of tertiary man lies in 

 the fact that his earliest remains are not confined to 



