The Human Race. Figuier Louis

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СКАЧАТЬ the period of his first appearance on the globe, the unity or division of our species, the classification of the human race, &c. If to many of these questions we reply with doubt and uncertainty, the reader must not lay the blame at the feet of science, but must search for the cause in the impenetrable laws of nature.

      

      And first, whence comes man? Wherefore does he exist? To this we can make no reply, the problem is beyond the reach of human thought. But we may at least enquire, since this question has been largely debated by the learned, whether man was at once constituted such as he is, or whether he originally existed in some other animal form, which has been modified in its anatomical structure by time and circumstances. In other words, is it true, as has been pretended by various of our contemporaries, that man is the result of the organic improvement of a particular race of apes, which race forms a link between the apes with which we are familiar and the first man?

      We have already treated and discussed this question more fully in the volume which preceded this. We have shown, in “Primitive Man,” that man is not derived, by a process of organic transformation, from any animal, and that he includes the ape not more than the whale among his ancestry; but that he is the product of a special creation.

      Nevertheless, whether its creation be special or the result of modification, the human species has not always existed. There is, then, a first cause for its production. What is this? Here is again a problem which surpasses our understanding. Let us say, my readers, that the creation of the human species was an act of God, that man is one of the children of the great arbiter of the universe, and we shall have given to this question the only response which can content at once our feelings and our reason.

      But let us summon questions more accessible to our comprehension, with which the mind is more at ease, and upon which science can exercise its functions. To what period should we refer the first appearance of man upon the globe? In “Primitive Man” we have answered this question as far as it can be. We have considered the opinion of some writers who carry the first appearance of man as far back as the tertiary period. Rejecting this date on account of the insufficiency of the evidence produced, we, in common with most naturalists, have admitted, that man appeared for the first time upon our globe at the commencement of the quaternary period, that is to say, before the geological phenomenon of the deluge and previous to the glacial period which preceded this great terrestrial cataclysm. To fix the birth of man in the tertiary period would be to travel out of facts now within the ken of science, and to substitute for observation, conjecture and hypothesis.

      By saying that man appeared for the first time upon the globe at the commencement of the quaternary period, we establish the fact, which is agreeable to the cosmogony of Moses, that man was formed after the other animals, and that by his advent he crowned the edifice of animal creation.

      At the quaternary period almost all the animals of our time had already seen the light, and a certain number of animal species existed, which were shortly to disappear. When man was created, the mammoth, the great bear, the cave tiger, and the cervus megaceros, animals more bulky, more robust and more agile than the corresponding species of our time, filled the forests and peopled the plains. The first men were therefore contemporary with the woolly elephant, the cave bear and tiger; they had to contend with these savage phalanxes, as formidable in their number as their strength. Nevertheless, in obedience to the laws of nature, these animals were to disappear from the globe and give place to smaller or different species, whilst man, persisting in the opposite direction, increased and multiplied, as the Scripture has said, and gradually spread into all inhabitable countries, taking possession of his empire which daily increased with the progress of his intelligence.

      In “Primitive Man” we have given the history of the first steps of humanity.

      We have traced the origin and progress of civilization, from the moment when man was cast, feeble, wretched and naked, in the midst of a hostile and savage brute population, to the day when his power, resting upon a firm basis, changed little by little the face of the inhabited earth.

      We shall not refer to this at greater length, since in “Primitive Man” we have treated it fully, and in unison with the actual discoveries of science. But there is a very different problem to the solution of which we shall apply ourselves in the following pages. Did man see the light at any one spot of the earth, and at that alone, and is it possible to indicate the region which was, so to say, the cradle of humanity? Or, are we to believe that, in the first instance, man appeared in several places at the same time? That he was created and has always remained in the very localities he now inhabits? That the Negro was born in the burning regions of Central Africa, the Laplander or the Mongolian in the cold regions to which he is now confined?

      1.—MEN AND WOMEN OF ANATOLIA.

      To this question a satisfactory reply can be given by reference to facts furnished by natural history. But in seeking a triumph for our opinion we shall have to combat the arguments of a hostile doctrine. As we said in the early part of this Introduction, we must ever be prepared to encounter difficulties, to dissipate uncertainties, and to vie with other theories in each point of the history of humanity which we may seek to fathom.

      There is a school of philosophers who assert that man was manifold in his creation, that each type of humanity originated in the region to which it is now attached, and that it was not emigration followed by the action of climate, circumstances, and customs which gave birth to the different races of man.

      This opinion has been upheld in a work by M. Georges Pouchet, son of the well-known naturalist of Rouen. But, one has only to read his essay upon la pluralité des races humaines, to be convinced that the author, like others of his school, as ardent in demolition as powerless in construction, having chosen to act the easy part of a critic, exhibits unprecedented weakness when called upon to supply a system in the place of that he contradicts.

      If there existed several centres of human creation, they should be indicated, and it should be shown that the men who dwell there now-a-days have never been connected with other populations. M. Georges Pouchet preserves prudent silence upon this question; he avoids defining the locus of any one of these supposed multiple creations. Such a faulty argument speaks volumes for the doctrine.

      We, on our part, think that man had on the globe one centre of creation, that, fixed in the first instance in a particular region, he has radiated in every direction from that point, and by his wanderings coupled with the rapid multiplication of his descendants, he has ultimately peopled all the inhabitable regions of the earth.

      In order to demonstrate the truth of this proposition, we will examine what takes place in connection with other organized beings, that is to say, with animals and plants, and then apply this class of facts to man: this is observation and induction, the only logical process to which we can here resort.

      2.—SAMOIEDES OF THE NORTH CAPE.

      

      And what do botanical and zoological geography teach? They show us that plants and animals have each their native locality, from which they but seldom depart, and that it would be impossible to cite any plant or animal which lives indifferently in all countries of the globe, without having been transported thither by human industry. The earth is, so to speak, divided into a certain number of zones, which have their particular vegetable and animal life. These are so many natural provinces, all of small extent, which represent veritable centres of creation. The cedar, peculiar to the mountains of Lebanon, existed in this region alone before it was transported to other climates; and the coffee-plant СКАЧАТЬ