Historical sources on early human migrations

Extract A

"In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man's nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early [ancestors] lived on the African continent than elsewhere. But it is useless to [guess] on this subject, for an ape nearly as large as a man, namely the Dryopithecus of Lartet, which was closely allied to the [human-like] Hylobates, existed in Europe during the Upper Miocene period; and since so remote a period the earth has certainly undergone many great [changes], and there has been ample time for migration on the largest scale." 

Extract B

"The sole object of this work is to consider, firstly, whether man, like every other species, is descended from some pre-existing form; secondly, the manner of his development; and thirdly, the value of the differences between the so-called races of man. As I shall confine myself to these points, it will not be necessary to describe in detail the differences between the several races — an enormous subject which has been fully discussed in many valuable works. The high [age] of man has recently been demonstrated by the labours of a host of eminent men, beginning with M. Boucher de Perthes; and this is the [essential] basis for understanding his origin." 

Extract C

"It is notorious that man is constructed on the same general type or model with other mammals. All the bones in his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels and internal [organs]. The brain, the most important of all the organs, follows the same law, as shewn by Huxley and other anatomists." 

Extract D

"Not one of the higher animals can be named which does not bear some part in a [underdeveloped] condition; and man forms no exception to the rule. [Underdeveloped] organs must be distinguished from those that are [developing]; though in some cases the distinction is not easy." 

Contextual information:

Charles Darwin was a British naturalist who had already transformed scientific thought with On the Origin of Species (1859). He published The Descent of Man in 1871, twelve years later, to apply his theory of evolution by natural selection directly to human origins for the first time. This was a period when almost no human fossils had been discovered, so Darwin relied heavily on comparative anatomy and the geographic distribution of living animals to make his case. 

Bibliographical reference:

Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex (Vol. 1). John Murray. pp. 2–3, 10, 17, 199. 

Copyright: Public domain. 

Extract A

"Between 1848 and 1914 successive discoveries have been made of a series of human fossils belonging to intermediate races: some of these are now recognized as missing links between the existing human species, Homo sapiens, and the anthropoid apes; and others as the earliest known forms of Homo sapiens." 

Extract B

"It is singular that in the Descent of Man, published in 1871, eight years after the appearance of Lyell's great work, Charles Darwin made only passing mention of the Neanderthal race, as follows: 'Nevertheless, it must be admitted that some skulls of very high antiquity, such as the famous one at Neanderthal, are well-developed and [large in brain size].' It was the relatively large brain [size] which turned Darwin's attention away from a type which has furnished most powerful support to his theory of human descent. In the two hundred pages which Darwin devotes to the descent of man, he treats especially the evidences presented in comparative anatomy and comparative psychology, as well as the evidence afforded by the comparison of the lower and higher races of man. As regards the 'birthplace and [age] of man,' he observes: '... In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man's nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early [ancestors] lived on the African continent than elsewhere.'" 

Extract C

"In the whole [history of the different peoples] of western Europe there has never occurred so [great] a change as that involving the disappearance of the Neanderthal race and the appearance of the Cro-Magnon race." 

Extract D

"[A change in conditions] and [a drop] in numbers would not account for their total [dying out], and we are inclined to attribute this to the entrance into the whole Neanderthal country of western Europe toward the close of Lower [Old Stone Age] times of a new and highly superior race. [Archaeologists] find traces of a new culture and industry in certain Mousterian stations preceding the disappearance of the typical Mousterian industry. Such a mingling is found in the valley of the Somme in northern France. From this [limited] evidence we may [suggest] that the new race competed for a time with the Neanderthals before they [removed] them of their [main] stations and drove them out of the country or killed them in battle." 

Extract E

"There is, on the contrary, some possibility that the newly arriving Cro-Magnon race may have been familiar with the bow and arrow, for a barbed arrow or spear head appears in drawings of a later stage of Cro-Magnon history, the so-called Magdalenian. It is [therefore] possible, though very far from being [proven], that when the Cro-Magnons entered western Europe, at the dawn of the Upper [Old Stone Age], they were armed with weapons which, with their superior intelligence and [physical build], would have given them a very great advantage in contests with the Neanderthals." 

Extract F

"This volume is the outcome of an ever-memorable tour through the country of the men of the Old Stone Age... Another great impression from this region is that it is the oldest centre of human [living] of which we have a complete, unbroken record of continuous residence from a period as remote as 100,000 years corresponding with the dawn of human culture, to the hamlets of the modern peasant of France of A.D. 1915." 

Extract G

"The most telling argument against the Lamarck-Lyell-Darwin theory was the absence of those missing links which, [in theory], should be found connecting Man with the anthropoid apes, for at that time the Neanderthal race was not recognized as such." 

Extract H

"Throughout this long [time period] western Europe is to be viewed as a peninsula, surrounded on all sides by the sea and stretching westward from the great land mass of eastern Europe and of Asia, which was the chief [centre] of evolution both of animal and human life. It was the 'far west' of all migrations of animals and men. Nor may we [ignore] the [large] African land mass, the northern coasts of which afforded a great southern migration route from Asia, and may have supplied Europe with certain of its human races such as the 'Grimaldi.'" 

Contextual information:

Henry Fairfield Osborn was an American palaeontologist and the president of the American Museum of Natural History. He published Men of the Old Stone Age in 1915 after an extended tour of prehistoric cave sites and fossil deposits across France and Spain with leading European archaeologists. The book attempted to organise the entire known history of human prehistory into a single chronological account, and it became one of the most widely read works on the subject in the English-speaking world. 

Bibliographical reference:

Osborn, H. F. (1915). Men of the Old Stone Age: Their environment, life and art. Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 5–7, 240, 256–258, Preface (pp. ix–x). 

Copyright: Public domain.

"Thus, whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result — that the structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes." 

Contextual information:

Thomas Henry Huxley was a British biologist and one of the most influential defenders of Darwin's theory of evolution. He published Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature in 1863, making it the first book ever devoted entirely to the subject of human evolution. The work was written at a time when the scientific establishment was fiercely divided over whether humans could be classified alongside other primates. 

Bibliographical reference:

Huxley, T. H. (1863). Evidence as to man's place in nature. Williams and Norgate. p. 123. 

Copyright: Public domain.

Extract A

"This discovery, should it be confirmed, will not only carry the existence of the Australian aborigines back into the remote [Ice Age] epoch [approximately 50,000 years ago] but will at the same time afford important evidence of evolution in place." 

Extract B

"In reviewing the successive [Old Stone Age] industries as they occur in Europe, I find little evidence of [local] evolution, but much that suggests the influence of migrating races... 

"If the views we have expressed in this and preceding chapters are well founded, it would appear that the surviving races which represent the vanished [Old Stone Age] hunters have succeeded one another over Europe in the order of their intelligence: each has yielded in turn to a more highly developed and more highly gifted form of man. From what is now the [centre] of civilisation they have one by one been [pushed out] and driven to the uttermost parts of the earth: the Mousterians survive in the remotely [located parts of the world – now known as the ‘multi-regional hypothesis']." 

Contextual information:

William Johnson Sollas was Professor of Geology at the University of Oxford. He published Ancient Hunters and Their Modern Representatives in 1911, with a revised second edition in 1915. The book attempted to match each stage of Stone Age culture in Europe with a living group of indigenous people, an approach that has since been entirely rejected by modern anthropology. Sollas was writing during a period when European imperial expansion coloured scientific thinking about human difference. 

Bibliographical reference:

Sollas, W. J. (1915). Ancient hunters and their modern representatives (2nd ed.). Macmillan. Preface, pp. v–vi; Chapter contents and framework, pp. 87–287. 

Copyright: Public domain.