Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/603

Rh and later the camels and horses, found conditions uncongenial and migrated to Asia, a more favored region.

It has often been assumed that man must have originated in a warm or tropical climate, to account for the loss of his hairy covering. But I quite agree with Dr. Matthew, that the loss of hair is almost conclusive evidence of his origin in a temperate or cold climate where he found clothing necessary to protect himself from the inclemencies of the weather. We know of no mammals or birds losing their pelage or plumage because of tropical conditions, though some may have lost their hair because of vermin.

Taking all these facts and conclusions into consideration it seems to me that such evidence as paleontology can at the present time offer points toward central Asia as the birthplace of Homo, and that the time of his origin, as a family, was late Miocene or early Pliocene. If Pithecanthropus be really a true hominid, then we already have evidence of his origin in the Asiatic region. Be it as it may, I confidently believe that within a very few years the discovery of indubitable links in man's ancestry will be made in central Asia, in China or northern India. Perhaps to no region of the world does the paleontologist look with more eager expectation for the solution of many profound problems in the phylogenies and migrations of the mammals than to central and eastern Asia. That there are remains of many extinct vertebrates awaiting discovery there in the late Tertiary and Pleistocene deposits has been made evident by the many fragments brought to light by explorers and travelers.

A field second to none other in the importance and richness of the results to be expected awaits the paleontologist in Asia.

 

ONSIDERED in its broadest aspect, the most important relation of paleontology to the study of man concerns the support which it gives to the general theory of evolution of the organic world. If it be held that we have reason to believe man, with all his highest qualities, a product of evolution out of so-called lower animal types, then it becomes necessary to have a full knowledge of the history of man and of the forms preceding him, in order to understand the origin and the true nature of man's fundamental characteristics as they exist to-day. On the other hand, if there is reason to believe that man as