768
��AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
��[n. s., i, 1899
��on what must always have been one of the main routes of trade and intercourse between the inhabitants of the interior and those of the coast. George M. Dawson.
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��Man, Past and Present. By A. H. Keane, F. R. G. S. [etc.], Cam- bridge [England] : University Press, 1899. 8°, 584 pp., 12 plates of type portraits.
In 1896 Mr Keane wrote his Ethnology, in which the subject of the varieties of mankind is discussed in two parts, fundamental ethnical problems and the primary ethnical groups. In the present volume the author essays to establish the independent specialization of the Negro, the Mongol, the American, and the Caucasian. Already in 1896 Mr Keane had declared, "l'heure des grandes syntheses a deja sonne," and now the effort is made to present from the point of view of the evolutionist the story of humanity from first to last and everywhere. Of course, you realize that to undertake such a task one must have read widely and been in touch during the last forty years with every worthy writer on any phase of the subject.
The author believes in the specific unity of mankind, of whom he makes four primary divisions, all descended from a generalized proto- human form, the Pleistocene man, from whom they sprung divergently and independently by adaptation to environment. The recently dis- covered Pithecanthropus erectus, found in the Pliocene beds of eastern Java by Dr Eugène Dubois, is the link that brings man nearer to the common stem, as will be seen in the table :
��European, cranial capacity 1550 c.
��Low races
��P. erectus
��it
��1250 c.c.
��IOOO c.c.
���Simian Stem.
