File:The fossil antecedents of man, and where to discover them (1883) (14764601364).jpg

Identifier: fossilantecedent00dunc (find matches)
Title: The fossil antecedents of man, and where to discover them
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Duncan, William Stewart, 1839-
Subjects:
Publisher: London
Contributing Library: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library

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separating Europe fromAfrica. On the south of sub-tropical Asia was the Arabiansea and its diverging branches, which in Miocene times extendedfrom at least high up the Euphrates valley, down the PersianGulf, round into the valley of the Indus and the Punjab. TheEed Sea and Gulf of Suez, moreover, then ran into the Mediter-ranean. It is not impossible even that the Jordan valley wasthen filled with water, extending from the Eed Sea to theEuphrates valley, thereby probably cutting off Arabia fromAsia. It is not certain that, in Miocene times, what is now theStrait of Gibraltar was dry land, or that Europe was connectedby an isthmus through Italy and Sicily to Africa. But allowingthat land connections did exist, both between Gibraltar andTangier, and between Italy and Tunis, yet there was still awater separation of some five thousand miles extent on itsnorthern border between Europe and Africa, as compared withtwo bands, of fifty and a hundred miles respectively, of land H-3 Ci3 53 PQP-i
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of Mans Evolution. connection. Then, even if we admit that Arabia and India, aswell as Malaysia, might have been reachable by similar narrowland routes, there was still a sea-barrier, of four to five thousandmiles extent, cutting off the tropical from the sub-tropical regionsof Asia. Thus the Mediterranean Sea on the one hand, and the ArabianSea, with its diverging branches up the Euphrates, Scinde, andPunjab valleys, on the other, proved immense sea-barriers, whichmust have arrested the southward migration of the anthropo-morphous apes in Miocene and Pliocene times, preventing themfrom reaching the tropical regions of the Old World, so necessaryto their comfort, and so well suited to their physical consti-tution. Let us now inquire into the importance of this fact of asouthern sea-barrier, together with attendant physical conditionson the future of anthropomorphic life. The gradual southward dispersal of all forms of life was dueto the approach of cold from the northern latitudes, di

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