Ridpath's history of the world; being an account of the ethnic origin, primitive estate, early migrations, social conditions and present promise of the principal families of men .. . onof the antiquity of the prehistoric ani-mals that were his coinhabitants of theearth in prehistoric ages. The questionof the antiquity of these animals resolvesitself, in turn, into the question of theage of the world when they were theprevailing forms; that is, the latter ques-tion is partly so resolved. For, as wehave seen above, there are some princi-ples by which the age of a given formof animal life may be
Ridpath's history of the world; being an account of the ethnic origin, primitive estate, early migrations, social conditions and present promise of the principal families of men .. . onof the antiquity of the prehistoric ani-mals that were his coinhabitants of theearth in prehistoric ages. The questionof the antiquity of these animals resolvesitself, in turn, into the question of theage of the world when they were theprevailing forms; that is, the latter ques-tion is partly so resolved. For, as wehave seen above, there are some princi-ples by which the age of a given formof animal life may be approximately de-termined even without reference to thegeological conditions under which theremains of such animals are for the most part the decision of thequestion goes back, as before, to the dateof that post-glacial epoch in geology atwhich the extinct animals referred toand primeval man existed together. Ina word, the geological date is the deter-minative factor in the greater part of theinquiry, while the corroborative elementsof the argument are derived from ar-chaeology and palaeontology. 114 GREAT RACES OF MANKIND, Chapter Ethnological E have thus by progres-sive stages already im-pinged on the domainof that recent branchof science called an-thropology. The scopeand limitations of thisdepartment of inquiry have already beendefined in the first chapter of this science in question has one division,namely, the human division, of palaeon-tology as its first part, while in its afterdevelopment it divides naturally intoethnology and ethnography. For ourpresent purpose it is sufficient to say thatAnthropology anthropology throws atSeriStySof° ^ast some reflected lightman- on the question of the antiq- uity of man. Take, for example, the lon-gevity of the individual of our species as ahint on the longevity of the race of beingsto which we belong. There is undoubted-ly a correlation between the brief life ofephemeral and transient livi
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksub, booksubjectworldhistory
