422 
TROPICAL NATURE 
vn 
together, indicate a state of civilisation much higher than 
that of the lowest of our modern savages, while they are 
quite compatible with a considerable degree of mental ad- 
vancement, and lead us to believe 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 comparison 
between the contemporaries of the mammoth and later 
prehistoric races of Europe or savage nations of modern 
times. 1 
3. Yet another important line of evidence as to the 
extreme antiquity of the human type has been brought 
prominently forward by Professor Mivart. 2 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 evolution, 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 having to develop by natural selection into so specialised 
and altogether distinct a creature as man, must have risen at 
a very early period into the position of a dominant race, and 
spread in dense waves of population over all suitable portions 
of the great continent — for this, on Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis, 
is essential to developmental progress through the agency of 
natural selection. 
Under these circumstances we might certainly expect to 
1 Prehistoric Man , 3d ed,, vol. i. p. 117. 
2 Man and Apes, pp. 171-193. 
