ABSTRACT

Despite all the picturesque and speculative mythologies of the great religions that date and explain the genesis of man and his kind, we know to-day, in more or less certain terms, that the genus homo has lived on this earth for many hundred thousand years and the species sapiens for about 50,000 years. Man's early groping existence must have been precarious, for disease, starvation, violent death and other causes must have severely limited his numbers. Human numbers grew so slowly, almost imperceptibly, over a period of centuries that the population remained almost stationary over a vast stretch of time. When hunting and fishing were the only sources of sustenance, there must have been vast areas all over the world with no human beings in sight. So sparse must have been the population that the density may be set down as say one person per two hundred square miles. Man, of course, did not deliberately control his numbers, as centuries later he learnt to do in many parts of the world. On the contrary, biologically, man continued to multiply as fast as his hostile and uncontrolled environment would permit him to. But when agriculture was discovered, some useful animals were domesticated, and crude pottery and textiles were invented, man began to multiply faster because the resources for his sustenance became larger and more stable and reliable, even though the advent of medicine and sanitation and the conquest of disease were yet to be thought of. Even then there was no question of man's migration in search of new land for food or habitat as there was abundance almost everywhere in terms of the human needs of that day. This must have been so even though man 22had not thought yet of human conquest of nature and pressing her forces into his service.