THE CRADLE OF THE HUMAN RACE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3227, 2 November 1881, Page 3

THE CRADLE OF THE HUMAN RACE.

The spot on the earth's surface which was the earliest home of man, and from whence he spread over the world, has also been the subjeofc of keen dispute among those who are at variance with Louis Agassiz and the illogical advocates of the doctrines held by him in considering man of one species. This is a poinfc that can never be accurately determined, though for our purposes we may accept Quatr.fages' view, that the primitive family from whioh all the nations of mankind have sprung originally lived in Central Asia, and wandered forth Blowly in the course of long ages, impelled by various causes, into the regions where we now find their descendants. , That the people of the world have been wanderers we have ample proof. There" is scarcely any great nation without traditions of having, afc some period in its history, migrated from another country, and even when they do not possess any such legend, language supplies a proof of their roamings, more substantial even than vague mythical history. The European nations by this test are shown to be near relatives of those of India, while both are sprung from the shadowy Aryans, whose home was most probably in the regions of the Hindoo Koosh in Central Asia, but about whom we hear so much and know so little. The Maoris of New Zealand are no immediate relations of the Australians, but of the Sandwich Islanders, from whose country they migrated within comparatively recent periods. The aborigines of Western America have still traditions of their arrival in that country . from Asia, just as have the nations of South America and other countries. The dominant race in Madagascar are the Hovas, people of undoubted Malay origin; and in the peopling of the Pacific Islands, far apart, by tribes of the same kindred, we have a proof that this kind of voyaging is possible, and has been actually accomplished. In modern times we have seen the Kalmouk Horde, which in 1616 left the confines of China to settle in the Khanate of Kazan, upon the shores of the Volga, retreating to the number of 600,000, with their cattle, children, and effects, in eight months back to their original homes, nearly 800 leagues distant from the Volga. This well-known historical event happened in the year 1771. But long before that date, and even since, we have seen man peopling the earth in a manner more extraordinary than any hypothesis of one original centre for the race demands. The Europeans came from Asia, but they have extended far beyond the limits of the Continent which they colonised, and have displaced aborigines more numerous and powerful than any which, afc the remote era of the arrival of the Aryans, in all likelihood wandered through the European forests. In less then four centuries they have covered North and South America, much of Northern, Western, Southern, and Eastern Africa, and within the last few years have begun to spread into the interior of that torrid Continent. Before them the warlike aborigines of New Zealand have been compelled to retire ; to make room for their surplus population the Tasmanians have disappeared. Australia, which, prior to its attracting their attention, was the home of a few miserable savages, is now being rapidly colonised in its habitable parts by busy graziers, farmers, miners, and traders of European birth or descent. Long before Columbus touched the outliers of the j American shore, wanderers from Norway I and Greenland had reached the New England coast and established settlements. There i 9 indeed some grounds for believing that, forestalling even the Scandinavian rovers, Europeans had visited the New World, and got gradually absorbed among the aborigines, prior to the dawn of history. Who reared the great earthen mounds in the Ohio Valley we do not know any more than who mined by Lake Superior for copper and left their tools behind. Ifc could not have been the present race of Indians, otherwise they must have rapidly degenerated, since erections are feats at present beyond their powers. We are equally at a loss to know who was the highly civilised race who built the Camsgrancles, the 'great houses' which the traveller comes upon in the depths of forests in Yucatan and Central America, and which in size and grandeur can only be compared with the like ruins in the jungles of Cambodia, regarding the origin of which we are also in the dark. —The Peoples of the World.