The Story of the Earth and ManDawson, John William, Sir
Science
The Story of the Earth and Man
Dawson, John William, Sir
Human beings -- Origin; Paleontology
The last point that I think necessary to bring forward here, is the
information which geology gives as to the locality of the introduction
of man. There can be no hesitation in affirming that to the temperate
regions of the old continent belongs the honour of being the cradle of
humanity. In these regions are the oldest historical monuments of our
race; here geology finds the most ancient remains of human beings;
here also seems to be the birthplace of the fauna and flora most
useful and congenial to man; and here he attains to his highest pitch
of mental and physical development. This, it is true, by no means
accords with the methods of the derivationists. On their theory we
should search for the origin of man rather in those regions where he
is most depauperated and degraded, and where his struggles for
existence are most severe. But it is surely absurd to affirm of any
species of animal or plant that it must have originated at the limits
of its range, where it can scarcely exist at all. On the contrary,
common sense as well as science requires us to believe that species
must have originated in those central parts of their distribution
where they enjoy the most favourable circumstances, and must have
extended themselves thence as far as external conditions would permit.
One of the most wretched varieties of the human race, and as near as
any to the brutes, is that which inhabits Tierra del Fuego, a country
which scarcely affords any of the means for the comfortable sustenance
of man. Would it not be absolutely impossible that man should have
originated in such a country? Is it not certain, en the contrary, that
the Fuegian is merely a degraded variety of the aboriginal American
race? Precisely the same argument applies to the Austral negro and the
Hottentot. They are all naturally the most aberrant varieties of man,
as being at the extreme range of his possible extension, and placed in
conditions unfavourable, either because of unsuitable climatal or
organic associations. It is true that the regions most favourable to
the anthropoid apes, and in which they may be presumed to have
originated, are by no means the most favourable to man; but this only
makes it the less likely that man could have been derived from such a
parentage.
While, therefore, the geological date of the appearance of man, the
want of any link of connection between him and any preceding animal,
and his dissimilar bodily and mental constitution from any creatures
contemporary with him, render his derivation from apes or other
inferior animals in the highest degree improbable, the locality of his
probable origin confirms this conclusion in the strongest manner. It
also shows that man and the higher apes are not likely to have
originated in the same regions, or under the same conditions, and that
the conditions of human origin are rather the coincidence of suitable
climatal and organic surroundings then the occurrence of animals
closely related in structure to man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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