1893-94,] Dr Munro on Rise and Progress of Anthropology. 215 
The Rise and Progress of Anthropology. By Robert 
Munro, M.A., M.D. (With a Plate.) 
(An Address delivered at the request of the Council, May 7, 1894.) 
However far back written records conduct us in an investigation 
of the early history of mankind, it can no longer be maintained that 
they cover hut a small portion of man’s existence on the globe. 
That human racial characters were broadly marked, some 6000 years 
ago, has been surmised from an analysis of the ancient wall paintings 
of Egypt. Thus, in the tombs of the kings at Thebes are to be 
seen, to this day, coloured and highly expressive portraits of the four 
principal races who then frequented the Nile valley ; and it is a 
remarkable fact that their distinguishing peculiarities, as depicted 
in the conventional eye and reddish-brown colour of the Egyptian, 
the fair-skinned and blue-eyed Lybian, the aquiline profde of the 
Semite, and the thick lip and curly hair of the Negro, are equally 
descriptive of their modern representatives. But if, during this 
long period, physical changes in these races have been so slight as 
to be almost inappreciable at the present time, what, it may be 
asked, must have been the duration of mankind in prehistoric times, 
whilst these persistent distinctions were being worked out under 
the influence of natural laws ? Erom this point of view commem- 
orative inscriptions, pictorial paintings, hieroglyphs, traditions, &c., 
lead us scarcely beyond the threshold of the dim vista which is 
made to converge in the remote past at a time when the ancestors 
of the white-, black-, and red-skinned people were one undivided 
stock. Similar deductions have been drawn from a stud}’" of the 
elements of speech, growth of culture, religious customs, and other 
deep-seated phenomena of human civilisation. Hence it has been 
argued that these general considerations alone furnish prima facie 
grounds for believing that, long before the rise of the earliest 
empires of antiquity, human characteristics had already been 
differentiated. 
