The area in question is
sufficiently extensive and varied to admit of primeval man having
attained to a considerable population, and having developed his full
human characteristics, both physical and mental, before there was any
need for him to migrate beyond its limits. One of his earliest important
migrations was probably into Africa, where, spreading westward, he
became modified in colour and hair in correlation with physiological
changes adapting him to the climate of the equatorial lowlands.
Spreading north-westward into Europe the moist and cool climate led to a
modification of an opposite character, and thus may have arisen the
three great human types which still exist. Somewhat later, probably, he
spread eastward into North-West America and soon scattered himself over
the whole continent; and all this may well have occurred in early or
middle Pliocene times. Thereafter, at very long intervals, successive
waves of migration carried him into every part of the habitable world,
and by conquest and intermixture led ultimately to that puzzling
gradation of types which the ethnologist in vain seeks to unravel.
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