The most interesting feature of this primitive creature’s approach to man was the volume of his brain. The quantity of the brain of the highest ape measures about 600 cubic centimetre units. In some Australian “black fellows” the brain capacity runs as low as 900 units, while in others it reaches 1500. The brains of civilized men vary in bulk from 1000 to 2000 units, which gives 1500 cubic centimetres as the brain capacity of the average man. Now the skull of the Pithecanthropus Erectus shows that his brain measured nearly a 1000 cubic centimetres. In other words, the brain capacity of this primitive ape-man was about equal to that of some of the exceptionally low existing savages, and somewhat less than midway between that of the highest anthropoid ape and the average civilized man. This man lived some 500,000 years ago. Men of science believe that the first human beings arose in Southern Asia, if not, indeed, in a region still more southerly than the present Asiatic boundary—in Lemuria, the former land extension now submerged beneath the Indian Ocean. The evidence of fossils supports this view. And it is significant that the bones of the ape-man of Java were found on the very edge of the Indian Ocean. From Asia, the rude forefathers of our race migrated over the earth. Asia was then united to Africa, and joined hands with Europe at the Dardanelles and Sicily, and with North America at Behring Strait. Other land connections joined Africa to Europe at Gibraltar and flung a broad thoroughfare from the Dark Continent to Australia. Over these land routes and others some of our naked ancestors in humanity’s early dawn wandered from the cradle of the race in Asia and took up their habitations in the different continents and in the islands of the seas. [Illustration: FIG. 24.—THE BABOON. There are numerous species of the Baboon as of the other “true apes”—a name applied to them as animals that run on all fours. The Baboons are now confined to Africa and Arabia, though they formerly inhabited India. They have short tails, short, strong limbs, hands and feet remarkably like human hands and feet, and well-developed brains. They go in troops, following the lead of a patriarch and guarded by a sentinel. They attack other animals and make raids on property. “They are sometimes caught by being intoxicated with liquor purposely exposed near their haunts, fondness for stimulants being one of their often observed vices.”—“Chamber’s Encyclopaedia.” “The Anubis Baboons, as shown by the frescoes, were tamed by the ancient Egyptians and trained to pluck sycamore figs from the trees.”—“The Encyclopaedia Britannica.”]