And before this there is the vast stretch of time
in which the ape slowly became a primitive human.
This long, early period is, as we saw, still wrapped in mist and
controversy. A few bones tell of a race living, in semi-human
shape, in the region of the Indian Ocean; a few crude stones are
held by many to indicate that a more advanced, but very lowly
race, wandered over the south of Europe and north of Africa
before the Ice-Age set in. The starting-point or cradle of the
race is not known. The old idea of seeking the patriarchal home
on the plains to the north of India is abandoned, and there is
some tendency to locate it in the land which has partly survived
in the islands of the Indian Ocean. The finding of early remains
in Java is not enough to justify that conclusion, but it obtains
a certain probability when we notice the geographical
distribution of the Primates. The femurs and the apes are found
to-day in Africa and Asia alone; the monkeys have spread eastward
to America and westward to Europe and Africa; the human race has
spread north-eastward into Asia and America, northwestward into
Europe, westward into Africa, and southward to Australia and the
islands.
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