Human origins / by S. Laing.

  • Laing, S. (Samuel), 1812-1897.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Human origins / by S. Laing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HUMAN ORIGINS. from the common starting-point, under different circum- stances of environment and in different localities; so that when man, as we know him, first appeared, he was already differentiated into races distinct though not very far apart. In conclusion, I may remark that these hotly- contested questions as to monogeny or polygeny, and as to the place of man’s first appearance on earth, lose most of their importance when it is realized that human origins must be pushed back at least as far as the Miocene, and probably into the Eocene period. As long as it was held that no traces of man’s existence could be found, as Cuvier held, until the Eecent period; or even as some English geologists still contend, until the post-glacial, or at any rate the glacial or Quaternary periods, it was evident that the facts could only be explained by the theory of a series of supernatural interferences. Agassiz’s theory, or some modification of it, must be adopted, of numerous special creations of ^ life at special centres, as of the Esquimaux and polar bear in Arctic regions, the Negro and gorilla in the tropics, and so forth. This theory has been completely given up as regards animals, in favour of the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural causes, and no one now believes in a multiplicity of miracles to account for the existence of animal species. Is man alone an excep- - tion to this universal law, or is he like the rest of creation, a product of what Darwinians call Evolu- tion,” and enlightened theologians the original impress ; The existing species of anthropoid apes, the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, do not differ more