Chapter VII. The Testimony of Paleontological Anthropology and Ethnology

Paradise Found, by William F. Warren, [1885], at sacred-texts.com

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CHAPTER VII.

THE TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY.

Quittons donc pour un instant les jardins d’Armide, et, nouveaux Argonautes, parcourons les régions hyperborées; cherchons-y, armés de patience et surtout de scepticism, l’origine de la plupart des nations et des langues modernes, celle même des habitans de l’Attique, et des autres peuples de la Grèce, objets de notre savante idolatrie.—Charles Pougens (A.D. 1799).

Telle est la théorie qui l’accord le mieux avec la marche présumée des races humaines.—Count Saporta (A.D. 1883).

Man is the one traveler who has certainly been in the cradle of the human race. He has come from the land we are seeking. Could we but follow back the trail of his journeyings it would assuredly take us to the garden of pleasantness from which we are exiled. Unfortunately the traveler has lost whole volumes of his itinerary, and what remains is in many of its passages not easy of decipherment.

What says anthropologic and ethnic Paleontology—or what some French writers are beginning to call Paléoethnique Science—respecting the hypothesis of a Polar Eden?

At the time when the present writer began his university lectures on this subject the teachings of professed anthropologists were in the chaotic and contradictory condition indicated in Part First. One of the strongest proofs he could then find that a new light was about to dawn on this field was in the there cited work of Quatrefages, entitled "The

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[paragraph continues] Human Species." ¹ Accordingly, in discussing the probable verdict of this science upon the admissibility of the new theory of human distribution, the lecturer presented the following paragraph, and there rested the case:—

"Anthropology as represented by Quatrefages seems to be actually feeling its way to the same hypothesis. This writer first argues that in the present state of knowledge we should be led to place the cradle of the race in the great region 'bounded on the south and southwest by the Himalayas, on the west by the Bolor mountains, on the northwest by the Ala-Tau, on the north by the Altai range and its offshoots, and on the east by the Kingkhan, on the south and southeast by the Felina and Kwen-lun.' Later on, however, he says that paleontological studies have very recently led to results which are 'capable of modifying these primary conclusions.' And after briefly stating these results, he starts the question whether or no the first centre of human appearance may not have been 'considerably to the north of the region' just mentioned, even 'in polar Asia.' Without deciding, he adds, 'Perhaps prehistoric archeology or paleontology will some day confirm or confute this conjecture.'"

The cautious anticipation here expressed was quickly fulfilled. At the concluding lecture of the same first course it was possible to present the following as the ripe conclusion of a fellow countryman of Quatrefages, one of the foremost savants of

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[paragraph continues] Europe, Count Saporta: ¹ "We are inclined to remove to the circumpolar regions of the North the probable cradle of primitive humanity. From there only could it have radiated as from a centre to spread into the several continents at once, and to give rise to successive emigrations toward the South. This theory best agrees with the presumed march of the human races." ²

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In the foregoing we have more than a demonstration of the bare admissibility of our hypothesis. We have in it the latest word of anthropological science respecting the birth-place of the human race. To make it a complete confirmation of our theory, so far as this field of knowledge is concerned, but one thing is lacking, and that is a clearer recognition of the great natural revolution or catastrophe which destroyed man's primitive home and occasioned the world-wide post-diluvian dispersion. This lack, however, is abundantly supplied by the foremost German ethnographers, and even by such as represent the most radical Darwinian views. Thus Professor Friedrich Müller, of Vienna, and Dr. Moritz Wagner, both of whom place the probable cradle of the race in some high latitude in Europe or Asia, lay the utmost stress upon the mighty climatic revolution which came in with the glacial age, ascribing to it the most stupendous and transforming influences that have ever affected mankind. ¹ In our view the deterioration of natural environment reduced the

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vigor and longevity of the race; in theirs it changed one of the tribes of the animal world into men! Which of these views is the more rational may safely be left to the reader's judgment. Few will be disposed to accept the doctrine that man is simply a judiciously-iced pithecoid.

Footnotes

98:1 New York edition, pp. 175, 177, 178. See M. Zaborowski's support of Quatrefages’ conjecture in the Revue Scientifique, Paris, 1883, p. 496.

99:1 The following note appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser of May 25, 1883:

THE CRADLE OF THE RACE.

A few years ago, about the time of the appearance of the first edition of Dr. Winchell's Preadamites, in a letter addressed to its learned author, I expressed my belief that the Garden of Eden, the first abode of man, was to be sought in a now submerged country, situate at the North Pole. More than a year ago, in a printed essay on Ancient Cosmology, I made the statement that "all ethnic traditions point us thither for the cradle of the race." Early last January I began a course of lectures in the post-graduate department of the university, setting forth my view and the astonishing mass of cosmological, historic, mythologic, paleontologic, paleoethnic, and other evidences which conspire to its support. Last Monday afternoon, about twenty minutes before I was to give the concluding lecture of the course, I opened the fresh-cut leaves of the Revue des Deux Mondes, the number for the first of this month. In it my eye quickly fell upon Un Essai de Synthèse Paléoethnique, in which M. le Marquis G. de Saporta sums up and sets forth the latest results of paleontological research, so far as they bear upon ethnology. Judge of my gratification to find some twenty pages devoted to the question of the cradle of the human race in the light of the latest science, and to read as the conclusion of this learned savant that this cradle must have been "within the Arctic Circle."

As Count Saporta has lately shown a little anxiety that American scholarship should not receive too exclusive credit for first proposing a closely related doctrine which he holds in common with our Professor Gray, and with Switzerland's Professor Heer (see American Journal of Science, May, 1883, p. 396, footnote), he will doubtless pardon the public statement of this, to me, most interesting coincidence.

William F. Warren.

Boston, May 24, 1883.

99:2 See Appendix, Sect. II.: "How the Earth was Peopled."

100:1 "Es muss dort, wo der Mensch aus dem Zustand, den er mit den Thieren gemeinsam hat, sich entwickelte, ein gewaltiger Wechsel der Naturkräfte und seiner Umgebung stattgefunden haben. Nichts ist natürlicher als an die Eiszeit des Endes der Pleiocänen und der Diluvial-Periode, welche durch eine Reihe schlagender geologischer Thatsachen für das nördliche Europa, Asien und America bestätigt wird, zu denken. Damals, wo das Paradies des in der Befriedigung leiblicher Bedürfnisse einzig und allein dahinlebenden, unschuldigen, Gutes und Böses noch nicht unterscheidenden Menschen mit eisiger Hand zertrümmert wurde, damals fing der Mensch den eigentlichen Kampf ums Dasein an, und stieg durch Anspannung aller seiner Kräfte zum Herrn der Natur empor." As the tree no more bore fruit the "climber" was forced to "become a runner;" this differentiated the foot from the hand, modified the leg, and in time changed the pithecoid ancestors of humanity into men. Friedrich Müller, Allgemeine Ethnographie. Wien, 1893: p. 36.