Abstract
THE newer concept of species makes it possible to consider both the origins of mankind and a classification of mankind in a new light freed from the limitation of requiring the sterility of crosses as a test of specific difference. The fact that human migrations from early times have had a scale, a range and a rapidity unknown among animals is another biological point of the first importance. We may give up both the view that mankind originated from a single pair or from a small group and the view that the different groups of mankind originated separately from prehuman ancestors. Bather should we picture groups of beings on the threshold of a full human status, with probably differences within the group as well as between groups, scattered over a wide area as more or less mobile collecting and hunting societies forming a sort of human network over a wide area of the Old World, stretching at least through North Africa and south-west Asia. The persons in different parts of the network would probably differ, but almost any part might contain individuals similar in many characters to individuals in other parts. With development of desertic conditions in North Africa and Arabia bringing increasing settlement near rivers, some degree of isolation and a high degree of long-continued local intermarriage developed, and no doubt different variations, at least some of them adaptive, occurred hi different regions, so that:
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Fleure, H. Racial Theory and Genetic Ideas. Nature 138, 1042–1043 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/1381042a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1381042a0