Others remained in the
islands, and we seem to have remnants of them in the Kalangs,
Veddahs, etc. But these islands have been repeatedly overrun by
higher races, and the primitive life has been modified.
Comparing the most isolated of these relics of early humanity, we
obtain many suggestions about the life of that remote age. The
aboriginal Tasmanians, who died out about forty years ago, were
of great evolutionary interest. It is sometimes said that man is
distinguished from all other animals by the possession of
abstract ideas, but the very imperfect speech of the Tasmanians
expressed no abstract ideas. Their mind seems to have been in an
intermediate stage of development. They never made fire, and,
like the other surviving fragments of early humanity, they had no
tribal organisation, and no ideas of religion or morality.
The first effect of the Ice-Age on this primitive humanity would
be to lead to a beginning of the development of racial
characters. The pigment under the skin of the negro is a
protection against the actinic rays of the tropical sun; the
white man, with his fair hair and eyes, is a bleached product of
the northern regions; and the yellow or brown skin seems to be
the outcome of living in dry regions with great extremes of
temperature.
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