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yielded to the blandishments of the Darwinian view of evolution, some
75 years ago, geologists have been arranging the sequence of rocks and
fossils to suit Darwinian theories, and Darwinians have been quoting the
geologists’ interpretation of rocks as the greatest proof of their hypotheis
- a splendid example of arguing in a vicious circle.
“Hence it is much safer for the student
of history to turn from the biological approach to the problem of the
first home of man, to the anthropological approach to it. This may be
made both from the a priori and the a posteriori standpoints. On the one
hand, we may discuss which part of the surface of the earth was best fitted
to support primitive man is fairly large numbers when he first arose in
ancient times. He could surely not have inhabited bleak mountain tops
of the Himalayas where man even now cannot live; nor could he have inhabited
the dense forests that clothe the lower levels of the Himalayan mountains
or the equally thick jungle region called Da-dakƒra-yam,
which in those days stretched from where the Indo-Gangetic plain ended
to within a few miles of Cape Comorin. The inner recesses of the tropical
jungle, even today, many milleniums after man learnt to conquer nature
and utilize or transcend the conditions of his environment, continue to
be too unhealthy for human habitation and too thickly infested with animal
and vegetable monsters for feeble man to flourish there. Nor could early
man have inhabited the great river valleys of ancient India. In early
days the beds of rivers were much broader and higher than they are now,
and the regions adjoining them, far too marshy. The great Indo-Gangetic
plain, however fitted to maintain a teeming population now that the rivers
have hollowed for themselves a deep bed, and man has drained the soil
for thousands of years and learnt to raise several kinds of crops, must
have been in the far-off past too much without covert to afford primitive
man shelter against his animal foes both huge and small, and too much
water-logged to be fit for men to live and grow there. Man, therefore,
most probably, rose and grew in the comparatively narrow strip of coast
between the jungle and the
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