Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/189

Rh in the Chinese language. Now, however, it appears that the Chinese ambassador at Berlin, Li Fangpau, who in his own country is a distinguished scholar, has read and translated the inscription, which, he says, states that three pieces of linen gauze are packed in the vase for inspection, being what we, in our day, would call sending a sample of merchandise into a foreign country to create a demand for it. E. Burnouf previously declared that the inscription was to the effect that the vase contained pieces of goods (pièces d'étoffe). The Chinese ambassador fixes the date of the inscription as about 1,200 and further states that the unknown characters so frequently occurring on the terra-cotta are also in the Chinese language, which would show that, at this remote period, commercial intercourse existed between China and the eastern shores of Asia Minor and Greece.

There have been a number of discoveries throwing light upon the question of the antiquity of man. The latest conclusions upon this subject have been given by Dr. E. B. Tylor, President of the Anthropological Institute of England, one of the most eminent men in this field of inquiry. He states, as the result of the evidence so far obtained, that the causes which brought about the differences in the form of the skull, the color of the hair and skin, and the physical constitution of men, had chiefly accomplished their work long anterior to the dawn of history; since when, he says, some changes may be traced, brought about by migrations or the effects of climate. He declares that the ground taken by Principal Dawson, of Montreal, the eminent geologist, fixing the period of development at about 2,200 years is bringing it within the historic period, and that it has nothing, as shown by the Egyptian and Assyrian researches, to support it. Mr. Tylor states that the evidence now accumulated strengthens the probability that all men are descended from one original stock, which, he thinks, is inferable from the close resemblance of all human beings in body and mind, and from the freedom with which races intercross and produce mixed races. He thinks that the period anterior to history was one of vast length. He states that anthropologists now consider the Egyptians as belonging to an African rather than to an Asiatic race, as has been previously supposed. The reasonable conclusion, he thinks, is that they were a mixed race, but mainly of African origin, and that they came originally from the southern Somauli-Land, which, according to Egyptian tradition, was the place whence their gods were derived. His further conclusion is that the Chaldeans and Babylonians, as indicated by their early languages, the Accadian and Medic, were of a Tartar or Turanian family, and may possibly have belonged to the yellow races of China, while the Assyrians were of the white race; and he thinks that the conclusion of many naturalists is correct that the geographical center from which man emanated and spread over the globe was in the tropical regions of the Old World.

Dr. R. Fahn, on the contrary, who has been making extensive