20 



The Probable Region 



anthropoid apes, has, like the former, been dispersed from 

 Central and Western Europe to Southern Europe and South- 

 Eastern Asia, and thence down as far as about the Ethiopian 

 and Oriental tropics. 



As yet no evidence exists that the highest family of the Simii, 

 namely, the anthropoid apes, ever had a range so far north as 

 that of the Semnopithecidae or the Cynopithecidoe. Of the man- 

 shaped apes the lowest genus, Siamanga, has not as yet been 

 found fossil : at present it ranges through Malacca and Sumatra. 

 Remains of the genus next in order, namely, Hylobates (or of 

 forms closely allied to this genus), have been found in the south 

 of France (I allude to Dryopithecus and Pliopithccus), but the 

 living representatives are now confined to Java, Assam, and 

 Southern China. 



Though the genera next in order, namely, those to which the 

 Orang, the Gorilla, and the Chimpanzee belong, have not yet 

 been discovered in fossil, a genus, different from all but more 

 nearly allied to that of the chimpanzee, has recently yielded 

 remains in the Siwalik hills of India. I refer to Palceopithecus, 

 as described by Lydekker in Part XII of the " Records of the 

 Geological Survey of India." 



But though our palceontological evidence is meagre as to the 

 place of origin and past distribution of the anthropoid apes, yet 

 the fact that one genus, allied to Hylobates, has been proved 

 to have existed in the south of Europe in Miocene times, and is 

 now represented by the Gibbons in South-Eastern Asia and 

 Java, while another genus more nearly allied to the chimpanzee 

 of Western tropical Africa is proved to have lived in Northern 

 India in Pliocene times, — these facts, I say, prove that a wave of 

 anthropomorphic life existed from later Miocene to Pliocene 

 times in the south of Europe and sub-tropical Asia. 



The question next arises whether the genera of apes now 

 existing have not been all derived from the south of Europe and 

 sub-tropical Asia, as is proved to be the case with Hylobates. It 

 is a most noteworthy fact that the whole of the existing genera 

 of apes are equally divided between two regions so remote as 

 Central Africa and Malaysia. It is a fact that indeed cannot be 

 accounted for by supposing either of these regions to be a centre 

 of ape-origin. Apes are too fond of the comforts of warmth and 

 abundance of fruit to exchange without compulsion a tropical 

 for a sub-tropical region. And this they Would require to do if 

 it were supposed that the apes of one of these regions were 

 derived from the other region. 1 Again, the difference between 



1 The supposed lost continent, underlying the Indian Ocean — Lemuria — is, for 

 reasons given by Mr. A. R. Wallace, assumed to have had no existence. 



