Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau

Still more remote areas are some seemingly chipped flints and bones cut in a way that suggests human action, which have been found in the deposits of the very far distant Miocene age.

The immense remoteness of this epoch and the rudeness of the work have cast much doubt on the human origin of these remains, though their authenticity as the work of man has been accepted by several competent observers, among them the able anthropologist Quatrefages.

If we confine ourselves, however, to the conclusions regarding ancient man which are generally accepted, we must say that he has not been clearly traced back beyond the Glacial period, though some of the relics found in the older river gravels and in the lowest cave accumulations may well be of pre-glacial age.

Many geologists believe that he reached Europe as early as the extinct mammals with which he was contemporaneous there, but how far back in time this would carry his advent it is impossible to say.

At one time they were probably bold and daring fishermen and navigators until driven to the forests and mountains by the invasion of the Malays.

As the pygmies were in all probability the aborigines of Africa, so the Negritos appear to have been the original aboriginal people of the eastern islands, if not of India.

Quatrefages in his work, quote, The Pygmies, end quote, finds reason to believe that even at the present day traces of them, pure or mixed, can be found from southeast New Guinea to the Andaman Islands and from the Sunda Islands to Japan.

On the continent, their range extends, according to him, quote, "From Anam and the peninsula of Malacca to the western Ghauts and from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas." End quote.