presently return.
ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE RACES OF MAN.
The partial or complete extinction of many races and sub-races of man
is historically known. Humboldt saw in South America a parrot which was
the sole living creature that could speak a word of the language of a
lost tribe. Ancient monuments and stone implements found in all parts
of the world, about which no tradition has been preserved by the
present inhabitants, indicate much extinction. Some small and broken
tribes, remnants of former races, still survive in isolated and
generally mountainous districts. In Europe the ancient races were all,
according to Shaaffhausen (29. Translation in Anthropological Review,
Oct. 1868, p. 431.), lower in the scale than the rudest living
savages ; they must therefore have differed, to a certain extent, from
any existing race. The remains described by Professor Broca from Les
Eyzies, though they unfortunately appear to have belonged to a single
family, indicate a race with a most singular combination of low or
simious, and of high characteristics. This race is entirely different
from any other, ancient or modern, that we have heard of. (30.
Transactions, International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology 1868,
pp. 172-175. See also Broca (tr.) in Anthropological Review, Oct.
1868, p. 410.) It differed, therefore, from the quaternary race of the
caverns of Belgium.
Man can long resist conditions which appear extremely unfavourable for
his existence. (31. Dr. Gerland, Ueber das Aussterben der
Naturvolker, 1868, s. 82.) He has long lived in the extreme regions of
the North, with no wood for his canoes or implements, and with only
blubber as fuel, and melted snow as drink. In the southern extremity of
America the Fuegians survive without the protection of clothes, or of
any building worthy to be called a hovel. In South Africa the
aborigines wander over arid plains, where dangerous beasts abound. Man
can withstand the deadly influence of the Terai at the foot of the
Himalaya, and the pestilential shores of tropical Africa.
Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe,
and race with race. Various checks are always in action, serving to
keep down the numbers of each savage tribe, such as periodical famines,
nomadic habits and the consequent deaths of infants, prolonged
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