plants and animals. Of course, the higher endowment of
men enabled them to move with greater ease from place to
place than could beings of lesser faculties. Most writers
of to-day, however, consider this unlikely, and think it
more probable that man originated first in some one
region, and spread from it throughout the earth. But
where this region was, they cannot tell. We always think
of the races of Europe as having come westward from some
original home in Asia. This is, of course, perfectly
true, since nearly all the peoples of Europe can be traced
by descent from the original stock of the Aryan family,
which certainly made such a migration. But we know also
that races of men were dwelling in Europe ages before
the Aryan migration. What particular part of the globe
was the first home of mankind is a question on which we
can only speculate.

Of one thing we may be certain. If there was a migration,
there must have been long ages of separation between
mankind in America and mankind in the Old World; otherwise
we should still find some trace of kinship in language
which would join the natives of America to the great
racial families of Europe, Asia, and Africa. But not the
slightest vestige of such kinship has yet been found.
Everybody knows in a general way how the prehistoric
relationships among the peoples of Europe and Asia are
still to be seen in the languages of to-day. The French
and Italian languages are so alike that, if we did not
know it already, we could easily guess for them a common
origin. We speak of these languages, along with others,