Man, Past and PresentKeane, A. H. (Augustus Henry)
History
Man, Past and Present
Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry)
Anthropology; Ethnology
The World peopled by Migration from one Centre by Pleistocene
Man--The Primary Groups evolved each in its special Habitat--
Pleistocene Man: _Pithecanthropus erectus_; The Mauer jaw, _Homo
Heidelbergensis_; The Piltdown skull, _Eoanthropus Dawsoni_--General
View of Pleistocene Man--The first Migrations--Early Man and his
Works--Classification of Human Types: _H. primigenius_, Neandertal
or Mousterian Man; _H. recens_, Galley Hill or Aurignacian Man--
Physical Types--Human Culture: Reutelian, Mafflian, Mesvinian,
Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean, Mousterian, Aurignacian, Solutrian,
Magdalenian, Azilian--Chronology--The early History of Man a
Geological Problem--The Human Varieties the Outcome of their several
Environments--Correspondence of Geographical with Racial and
Cultural Zones.
In order to a clear understanding of the many difficult questions
connected with the natural history of the human family, two cardinal
points have to be steadily borne in mind--the specific unity of all
existing varieties, and the dispersal of their generalised precursors
over the whole world in pleistocene times. As both points have elsewhere
been dealt with by me somewhat fully[1], it will here suffice to show
their direct bearing on the general evolution of the human species from
that remote epoch to the present day.
It must be obvious that, if man is specifically one, though not
necessarily sprung of a single pair, he must have had, in homely
language, a single cradle-land, from which the peopling of the earth
was brought about by migration, not by independent developments from
different species in so many independent geographical areas.
It follows further, and this point is all-important, that, since the
world was peopled by pleistocene man, it was peopled by a generalised
proto-human form, prior to all later racial differences. The existing
groups, according to this hypothesis, have developed in different areas
independently and divergently by continuous adaptation to their several
environments. If they still constitute mere varieties, and not distinct
species, the reason is because all come of like pleistocene ancestry,
while the divergences have been confined to relatively narrow limits,
that is, not wide enough to be regarded zoologically as specific
differences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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