Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/313

Rh Now, man is everywhere, and still he is incontestably, even from the point of view of his body, very superior to the monkeys. He alone has true hands, those marvellous instruments which you know so well how to use; he alone possesses a brain of which the size of the skull attests the development. Without speaking of other characters, man is evidently superior to all species of monkeys by his hand and his brain.

Well, then, the monkey, which, although so distant from man, still comes nearest to him, occupies but a restricted habitat; while man, the superior being par excellence, has originated, you say, simultaneously everywhere! Evidently, gentlemen, to accept this interpretation of facts, will be to make him a single exception among all organized beings; and so, I repeat, we can never accept this conclusion.

So you see, we are led to admit, not only that man originated in one single place upon the globe, but farther, that this was a limited region—of very small extent. It was probably not greater than the habitat now allowed either to the gorillas or the orangs.

Can we go still further? Can we determine the particular spot of the globe where arose this privileged species which was to go forth and conquer the whole earth? We cannot answer this question with the same confidence as the others. But we may answer it with great probability. According to all appearances, the point where man originated, and whence he emigrated to all parts of the globe, was situated somewhere in the centre of Asia.

The reasons which lead us to this conclusion are of many kinds. I can only indicate the two following:

Around the elevated central region that you see pictured upon the chart in the heart of Asia, we find the three fundamental types of humanity: the black man, the yellow man, and the white man. Black men are at the present time widely enough dispersed. We see them still, however, in the peninsula of Malacca and in the isles of Andaman. Again, we find traces of these blacks in the east of Asia, at the isle of Formosa, at the south of Japan, and in the Philippines: the Melanesia belong to them. The yellow race occupies almost all the southeast part and even the centre of Asia; and finally we know that from this elevated central region came the great white race which to-day rules everywhere—the Aryan race, that to which we belong. The groups, more or less pure, are besides related to each other by a multitude of intermediates which may be regarded as transitional.

It is not only by the features, by fundamental physical traits, that the men found around this immense table-land are interrelated, and seem to blend into one another. We see, furthermore, on the sides of this vast table-land, the three essential types of language—of the most striking intellectual manifestation of man.

We shall come to this question by-and-by, but to-day I may say to you that we distinguish three fundamental forms of human language: