File:Ridpath's history of the world; being an account of the ethnic origin, primitive estate, early migrations, social conditions and present promise of the principal families of men (1897) (14596719819).jpg

Identifier: ridpathshistoryo01ridp (find matches)
Title: Ridpath's history of the world; being an account of the ethnic origin, primitive estate, early migrations, social conditions and present promise of the principal families of men ..
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Ridpath, John Clark, 1840-1900
Subjects: World history Ethnology
Publisher: New York, Merrill & Baker
Contributing Library: Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston University

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clingto the shores and inlets of the seeminglyinfinite deep! It must be remembered 124 GREAT RACES OF MANKIND. that the concept of the impassibility ofthe sea and even of lakes and rivers wasCheck offered to one of those ideas which ethnic progress jn t^e earJy acres 0f theby seas and J ° oceans. world became fixed by the law of heredity—transmitted from gen-eration to generation, until it was a partof the intellectual and even the reli-gious belief of the primitive peoples. Noscience but history—and history notwell—is able to estimate at its full value the rate of diffusion by which the earthwas peopled with the aboriginal races; the Slowness Of the prog- Rate of race dif- ress by which from valley S^^to valley, from river to stacies thereto,river, through untrodden forests, fromshore to shore, and finally from conti-nent to continent, the aborigines of theworld at last made their way into its morefavorable and favoring parts; the vast,almost immeasurable, periods of duration
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THE AGE OF BOATS.—Earliest Navigators, of Neolithic Epoch. the retarding and paralyzing effect ofhereditary beliefs upon even the physi-cal, to say nothing of the intellectualand moral, progress of mankind. Notinfrequently we find the forward marchutterly impeded and a given people heldabsolutely to their last camping groundfor a thousand years by a single hereditarythought driven down like their tent pinsthrough the belief and practice of thatkindred. The significance of these facts andprinciples is their powerful bearing on that must have elapsed between thebeginning and the end of the distribu-tion of the human race, and the con-sequent remoteness of the date whichmust be assigned for the appearance ofman on the earth. Every part of the problem tends toestablish the same conclusion. Perhaps the most Striking attribute Division and de- of man is his faculty of ^anguTgTsVe-speech. Language is his. quire great time.Philology as a science has risen, as abranch of anthropological stud

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