PDF - Wallace Online

VIIITHE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RACESNATURAL SELECTIONUNDER THE LAW OFAMONG the most advanced students of man there exists awide difference of opinion on some of the most vital questionsrespecting his nature and origin. Anthropologists are now,indeed, pretty well agreed that man is not a recent introductioninto the earth. All who have studied the question nowadmit that his antiquity is very great and; that, thoughwe have to some extent ascertained the minimum of timeduring which he must have existed, we have made no approximationtowards determining that far greater period during whichhe may have, and probably has existed. We can with tolerablecertainty affirm that man must have inhabited the earth athousand centuries ago, but we cannot assert that he positivelydid not exist, or that there isany good evidence against hishaving existed, for a period of ten thousand centuries. Weknow positively that he was contemporaneous with many nowextinct animals, and has survived changes of the earth'ssurface fifty or a hundred times greater than any that haveoccurred during the historical period; but we cannot placeany definite limit to the number of species he may haveoutlived, or to the amount of terrestrial change he mayhave witnessed.Wide differences of opinion as to Man's OriginBut while on this question of man's antiquity there is avery general agreement, and all are waiting eagerly for1 First published in the Anthropological Revieio, May 1864 ; reprinted inContributions, etc., with some alterations and additions.