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422 TROPICAL NATUREtogether, indicate a state of civilisation much higher thanthat of the lowest of our modern savages, while they arequite compatible with a considerable degree of mental advancement,and lead us to believe that the crania of Engisand Cro-Magnon are not exceptional, but fairly represent thecharacters of the race. If we further remember that thesepeople lived in Europe under the unfavourable conditions ofa sub-arctic climate, we shall be inclined to agree with Dr.Daniel Wilson that it is far easier to produce evidences ofdeterioration than of progress, in instituting a comparisonbetween the contemporaries of the mammoth and laterprehistoric races of Europe or savage nations of moderntimes. 13. Yet another important line of evidence as to theextreme antiquity of the human type has been broughtprominently forward 2by Professor Mivart. He shows, by acareful comparison of all parts of the structure of the body,that man is related not to any one', but almost equally tomany of the existing apes to the orang, the chimpanzee,the gorilla, and even to the gibbons, in a variety of ways ;and these relations and differences are so numerous and sodiverse that, on the theory of evolution, the ancestral formwhich ultimately developed into man must have divergedfrom the common stock whence all these various forms andtheir extinct alliesoriginated. But so far back as theMiocene deposits of Europe we find the remains of apesallied to these various forms, and especially to the gibbons ;so that in all probability the special line of variation whichled up to man branched off at a still earlier period. Andthese early forms, being the initiation of a far higher type,and having to develop by natural selection into so specialisedand altogether distinct a creature as man, must have risen ata very early period into the position of a dominant race, andspread in dense waves of population over all suitable portionsof the great continent for this, on Mr. Darwin's hypothesis,is essential to developmental progress through the agency ofnatural selection.Under these circumstances we might certainly expect to1 Prehistoric Man, 3d ed., vol. i. p. 117.? Man and Apes, pp. 171-193.