Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1894 — How Old Is the Human Race? [ARTICLE]

How Old Is the Human Race?

The fullest answer that science can yet give to the three most interesting questions perhaps ever asked in the world are explained by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, the ethnologist. These questions are: “When did the first man appear?” “By what process did he appear?" and “Where did he appear?” Summing up all that geologists and anthropologists know, he appeared certainly 50,000 years ago, and it may be as many as 200,000 years ago. The evidences of his existence which date back 50,000 years are unmistakable. By what process he came into being science has no definite answer. If it refuse to accept the doctrine of specific creation it must refuse also, for lack of complete evidence, to accept the doctrine of gradual evolution—the old Darwinian doctrine. Dr. Brinton thinks the theory of “evolution by a leap” is as good as any other theory. According to this, man sprang from some high order of mammal, the great tree ape, perhaps, by a freak, just as men of genius are freaks, and as all the vegetable and animal kingdom show freaks. As to where man first appeared, it is beyond doubt that his earliest home was in Southern Europe, or Asia, or North Africa. No earlier traces of him have been found than those found in the area that is now England, France, and Spain.—[Forum.