The origin of man / by Carveth Read.

  • Carveth Read
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The origin of man / by Carveth Read. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tion much earlier, in the Oligocene1. Indeed the occurrence of a chimpanzee (Dryopithecus) in a Miocene formation of Europe may be held to indicate that the anthropoid stock had already broken up. But in the Oligocene I cannot find that any extensive change of climate has been detected. As, how¬ ever, not much is known of the condition of Central Asia at that time, it is possible that a considerable elevation of land took place there. The Himalayas, indeed, attained their present elevation only in the Pliocene; but the area had been rising for a very long time; and if it reached in the Oligocene the height of only five or six thousand feet, that may have sufficed to reduce in the area affected the supply of the cus¬ tomary anthropoid food so far as to make hunting a profitable or necessary alternative. [See Note at p. 98.] Awaiting adequate evidence for such conjectures, there remains, in the last resort, “spontaneous” variation: that is 1 Estimated duration of the Cainozoic Period, assuming that the thickness of the deposits is -_,_.._ __ _ P AND Pug(SToc6Ne i3,ooo •4iOoo io,ooo fir about 63,000 feet, 4000 and that deposits accumulate at the rate of 1 foot in 100 years. Drawn to the scale of 1 mm. to 100,000 years. The estim¬ ate is given and explained by Prof. Sollas in the Quar¬ terly Journal of the Geological Society *1,000 (1909), lxv. The “tree” is based on that given by Sir A. Keith in The Antiquity of Man, p. 509. If we suppose the differentiation of the Hominidce to have begun be¬ fore the close of the Oligocene, a- bout (say) 3,500,000 species of Man. All*these reckonings are provisional. < 5 1 3 / 0 / SL. / & u i // •X / V ’ ■ .$ ft r / 1 i J V 0 VI V Si / Puocer4£ M»oce<v£ ou^oceNS EqcGNE Scale : I « looo^lr. years are allowed for the evolution of the existing
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