288 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



savages, while they are quite compatible with a consider- 

 able degree of mental advancement, and lead us to be- 

 lieve that the crania of Engis and Cro-Magnon are not 

 exceptional, but fairly represent the characters of the 

 race. If we further remember that these people lived 

 in Europe under the unfavourable conditions of a sub- 

 Arctic climate, we shall be inclined to agree with Dr. 

 Daniel Wilson, that it is far easier to produce evidences 

 of deterioration than of progress, in instituting a com- 

 parison between the contemporaries of the mammoth 

 and later prehistoric races of Europe or savage nations 

 of modern times. ^ 



3. Yet another important line of evidence as to the 

 extreme antiquity of the human type has been brought 

 prominently forward by Prof Mivart.^ He shows, by a 

 careful comparison of all parts of the structure of the 

 body, that man is related not to any one, but almost 

 equally to many of the existing apes — to the orang, the 

 chimpanzee, the gorilla, and even to the gibbons — in a 

 variety of ways ; and these relations and differences are 

 so numerous and so diverse that, on the theory of evolu- 

 tion, the ancestral form which ultimately developed into 

 man must have diverged from the common stock whence 

 all these various forms and their extinct allies originated. 

 But so far back as the Miocene deposits of Europe we 

 find the remains of apes allied to these various forms, 

 and especially to the gibbons ; so that in all probability 

 the special line of variation which led up to man 

 branched off at a still earlier period. And these early 

 forms, being the initiation of a far higher type, and 



1 Prehistoric Man, 3rd edit. vol. i. p. 117. 

 Man and Aj)es, pp. 171-193. 



