Page:The Last link.djvu/85

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APES AND MAN
73

existed as an implement-using creature in the last Glacial epoch. His probable origin cannot, therefore, have been later than the beginning of the Plistocene. The place of origin was probably somewhere in Southern Asia.

Whilst we have to admit that there are great defects in the older (invertebrate) portion of our pedigree, we have all the more reason to be satisfied with the positive results of our investigation of the more recent (vertebrate) part of it. All modern researches have confirmed the views of Lamarck, Darwin, and Huxley, and they allow of no doubt that the nearest vertebrate ancestors of mankind were a series of Tertiary Primates.

Particularly valuable are the admirable attempts of the two zoologists, Paul and Fritz Sarasin,[1] to throw light upon the human phylogeny by painstaking comparison of all the skeletal parts of man with those of the

  1. 'Ergebnisse naturwissenschaftlicher Forschungen auf Ceylon,' vols. 4 and 5. (With an atlas of 84 plates; 1893.)