Page:Evolution of Life (Henry Cadwalader Chapman, 1873).djvu/243

Rh skull; the Gorilla, in the hand and foot. Further, these apes have a rudimentary tail, like that of man. (Figs. 206 to 210.) By comparing the skeletons of man and the apes, the differences will be found to be also very striking. (See Figs. 206, etc.) The more probable theory of the relationship of man to the Anthropoid Apes is that they are very distant cousins, the posterity of a common ancestor of some extinct form whose remains have not as yet been discovered.

The birthplace and antiquity of man, like his genealogy, are still involved in obscurity. Many geologists and naturalists, however, suppose that there once existed a continent where the Indian Ocean now rolls, which stretched from the Sunda Islands to Madagascar. This sunken land is called by Sclater, Lemuria, from the half monkeys, the Lemurs and their allies, being so characteristic of Madagascar and the Indian Archipelago. This view of a land of Lemuria having once existed harmonizes very well with the evidences of Ethnology, Philology, etc., which point to some intermediate spot between Southern Asia and Eastern Africa, like Lemuria, as the birthplace of the human .species. As regards the antiquity of man, the data are so imperfect that it is impossible to give an estimate. Some authors think man appeared in the latter period of the Tertiary Age; according to others, still earlier. However this may be, it is certain that immense periods of time must have elapsed since the appearance of man.

Those who are impressed with the poetical idea of a Golden Age, from which man has fallen, no doubt find it difficult to admit that he has descended from an ape. The explorations of the last forty years, however, have proved that so far from there having been a Golden Age, the first age was that of Stone (the implements being made out of stone, hence the name of the age), followed by one