The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from Natural Selection

views can be combined so as to eliminate the error and retain the truth in each, and it is by means of Mr. Darwin’s famous theory of “Natural Selection” Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had been published only five years earlier, in 1859. that I hope to do this, and thus to harmonize the conflicting theories of modern anthropologists.

Let us first see what each party has to say for itself. In favor of the unity of mankind, it is argued that there are no races without transitions to others; that every race exhibits within itself variations of color, hair, features, and form to such a degree as to bridge over, to a large extent, the gap that separates it from other races. It is asserted that no race is homogeneous; that there is a tendency to vary; and that climate, food, and habits produce and make permanent physical peculiarities. Although these changes are slight in the limited periods we are able to observe, they would have been sufficient to produce all the differences that now appear during the long ages in which the human race has existed. It is further asserted that the advocates of the opposite theory do not agree among themselves; some would categorize three, some five, and some fifty or a hundred and fifty species of man. Some believe each species was created in pairs, while others require whole nations to have sprung into existence at once. There is no stability or consistency in any doctrine except that of one primitive stock.

The advocates of the original diversity of man, on the other hand, have much to say for themselves. They argue that proofs of change in man have never been brought forward except in the most trifling amounts, while evidence of his permanence meets us everywhere. The Portuguese and Spaniards, settled for two or three centuries in South America, retain their chief physical, mental, and moral characteristics. The Dutch farmers original: "boers" at the Cape, and the descendants of the early Dutch settlers in the Moluccas The Maluku Islands in modern-day Indonesia., have not lost the features or the color of the Germanic races. The Jews, scattered over the world in the most diverse climates, retain the same characteristic facial features everywhere. Egyptian sculptures and paintings show us that, for at least 4,000 or 5,000 years, the strongly contrasted features of the Negro and the Semitic races have remained altogether unchanged. Furthermore, more recent discoveries prove that, in the case of the American indigenous peoples, the mound-builders of the Mississippi Valley and the dwellers on Brazilian mountains had the same characteristic type of skull formation original: "cranial formation" that now distinguishes them, even in the very infancy of the human race.

If we endeavor to decide impartially on the merits of this difficult controversy, judging solely by the evidence that each party has brought forward, it certainly seems that the best of the argument is on the side of those who maintain the primitive diversity of man. Their opponents have not been able to refute the permanence of existing races as far back as we can trace them, and have failed to show, in a single case, that at any former era the well-marked varieties of mankind were more similar than they are today. At the same time, this is but negative evidence. A condition of stability for four or five thousand years does not preclude an advance at an earlier era—and if we can show that there