No one, I think, will dispute the truth of these propositions, which
compel the conclusion that anthropology is an entirely different
science to the monogenist and the polygenist.
Polygenism seems to simplify the science in a singular manner; it
will be said that it suppresses its most apparent difficulties.
In reality it only does so by veiling or denying them, and thus
conduces to inaccuracy. At the same time it gives rise to others,
which, although less easily perceived, are nevertheless more
important, for they are essentially of a physiological nature, and
cannot be solved by the general laws of physiology.
Monogenism seems at first to complicate and multiply the problems. In
reality it only states them clearly. By that very means, it causes
the necessity of long and persevering studies to be felt, which it
rewards from time to time with great discoveries. It has required
almost a century and the combined efforts of travellers, geographers,
physicians, linguists, and anthropologists to establish the origin
of the Polynesians, to follow their migrations, and to determine the
date of them. But when this work is once set on the right track,
human history is found to be enriched by a magnificent page, which
gives another testimony to the intelligent activity of the human race
and its conquests over nature.
BOOK VIII.
FOSSIL HUMAN RACES.
CHAPTER XXV.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
I. Tertiary man is only known to us from a few faint traces of his
industry. Of tertiary man himself we know nothing. Portions of his
skeleton have been discovered from time to time, it has been thought,
in France, Switzerland, and especially in Italy. Closer study has,
however, always forced us to refer to a comparatively much later
period these human remains, which, at first sight, were regarded as
tertiary.
It is different with quaternary man. We have much better and more
precise information about him than about many existing races. The
caves which he inhabited, those in which he buried his dead, and
the alluvial deposits formed by rivers, which have borne away his
corpses, have preserved numerous bones for our study. As many as
forty different places in all, especially in the western portion of
Europe, have supplied our museums with as many as forty skulls, more
or less intact, and numerous fragments of the cranium and face, which
science has been able to utilize, as well as a great number of the
bones of the trunk and limbs, and even some entire skeletons. The
most remarkable specimen, freed from the earth which covered it, but
still left in its place, was brought from Mentone by M. Rivière and
is now to be seen in the Anthropological Gallery of the Paris Museum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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