Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univers).pdf/429

The December Forum contains an interesting article by Dr. D. G. Brinton on "The Beginning of Man and the Age of the Race." It affords, incidentally, several suggestions of value to geologists who are concerned in working out the problems which relate to the fossil relics of man on this continent. Dr. Brinton reasons that we have good grounds for locating man's birthplace only where mammals that are very near to him in physical prowess and mental aptitude are known to have existed some fifty or one hundred thousand years ago. This, he thinks, "at once excludes a large portion of the earth's surface, as the Arctic, Antarctica, and colder temperate zones, the lofty plateaus of the world and its inclement shores." "The whole of America must be excluded, for it shows no signs of having been the home of the higher mammals, that is, apes or monkeys without tails and with thiry-two teeth." By similar exclusions, the area of probable origin of man is limited to Southern Asia, Southern Europe, and Northern Africa. A fuller exposition of Dr. Brinton's views was given in his address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Madison last August.

Without giving unqualified assent to all the limitations urged by Dr. Brinton, it would appear from the distribution of types kindred to man in the Pliocene and Pleistocene periods, and from the fact that the evolution of a naked animal from the hairy one can reasonably be supposed to have taken place only in a very warm climate, that primitive man, in the strict and proper sense of the term, can scarcely be supposed to have been an inhabitant of America. It is difficult to see how he could have reached this continent while in his strictly primitive state by land migration (even if there were land connection in the Behring region)