Page:Evolution of Life (Henry Cadwalader Chapman, 1873).djvu/244

178 of Bronze, a further progress being exhibited in the Age of Iron. Ethnologists consider the primitive man to have been lower than the lowest of existing savages, more ape-like even than the extinct human races, whose remains we have briefly noticed. According to philologists, the primitive man was speechless, and the earliest languages babble. All kinds of evidence negative the idea of man having fallen from a high estate, but support the view of his having developed from a lower one. The descent of man is indeed an ascent.

It does not seem out of place to briefly call attention to the probable spreading of the human species over the earth, which, according to Prof. Haeckel, was as follows. Starting in Lemuria (see plate on distribution of races), the posterity of the primitive men diverged towards Africa, Australia, the Indian Archipelago, and Asia; the Hottentots, Caffres, and Negroes being the descendants of those who came to Africa, while the Papuans, Australians, and Malays are equally the posterity of three stems. Diverging from the Malay stem appeared the Drave and Mongolian races. The Draves, peopling India, passed towards Arabia, and divided into the stems of the North African races and Europeans; while the Mongolians, passing through China and spreading over Northern and Eastern Asia, finally crossed over Behring Straits and peopled the Americas. This view of the gradual spreading of the races of men from a common point situated between Asia and Africa seems to be a fair conclusion from what is known of Ethnology and Philology.

While admitting that the different races have descended from a common stock, it does not necessarily follow that the primitive men came from a single pair. Thus, possibly, different apes may have been the ancestors of the Malay and South African races. It is interesting in this respect to observe that the Orang, who is found in the Malay