The following is my translation of an article called: Über die Wiege des Menschengeschlechts von Dr Hermann Brix, Fasano. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1910, Heft 8, Seiten 301-302. Even allowing all due regard for hindsight resulting form nearly a century of further research and discovery, much of the argumentation strikes me as being thoroughly bizarre. In my honest opinion, some points addressed require health warnings, and I've got little trust in the reliability of any of the article. I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Trevor Dykes.

On the cradle of humanity by Dr Hermann Brix, Fasano
When our present research attempts to unveil the cradle of humanity, we are not concerned with identifying the place on our planet where some simple life form arose, which could be seen as the most primitive ancestor of people. That would simply be the first origin of life on the Earth itself, a matter which will remain open for as long as research continues. The person we are interested in is the one of the very moment, when characteristics arose which distinguished them physically and mentally so clearly from other life forms, and especially from other mammals, that we may speak of him as the oldest father of the human race, as the first link in the chain connecting him with descendant generations of which we ourselves are the most recent links.

The gorge which separates people today from all others, including the most highly developed mammals, appears so wide to the eyes that it is not difficult to see it as a clear divide. The pronounced understanding, the dominance of the intellect in comparison to the physical capabilities, the emergence of language and the possibility this provides for close associations to bring common and self interests into harmony, one of the decisive characteristics dividing people from the other animals, which allowed and achieved that which we understand today as custom and culture. The moment, when our ancestors first consciously came together, in a community, can legitimately be seen as the beginning of human history, and accepted as the cradle of humanity.

Should one want to be specific about the question as to the cradle of humanity, then one will have to do without finding tangible evidence of the first cultural epochs, if they may be so called; instead of that, the only way remaining open is to find out which part of the surface of the offered first offered the possibility of people existing, without their degree of occupancy becoming unsustainable. After all, there were enemies among the animal world before humans were sufficiently organised to be able to defend themselves. Even more perilous, however, were profound climatic changes that could not be defended against, regardless of cleverness. Which points of the Earth's surface seem to have offered the most favourable conditions, taking into account the points mentioned? The icy polar regions can be seen as improbable, as the most northerly residing peoples of today do not possess cultures worthy of the name, and the temperate zones present an extreme difference between summer and winter, so it is only the equatorial regions which come into the question, with their uniform climate interrupted only by refreshing showers of rain. Central America, Middle Africa and East Asia are not prone to fluctuating influences and these areas come into the question, but can it be answered more precisely? We know that the Earth makes another movement as well as its orbit around the sun and its rotation around its own axis, and this is termed the pendulation, and we believe we also know the cause of this movement. Pendulation refers to a wobble of the Earth in relation to its vertical axis, which runs approximately from the Antilles to the Philippines. It can, at this point, be stated that this wobble is held to be a result of an impact, experienced by the Earth long ago, with some other smaller planetary body -possibly a second moon of our Earth- and it collided from the southerly direction near the level of Central Africa. Because the Earth is not a sphere, but rather a rotating ellipsoid, then it is clear that water masses must have flooded over the northern coasts of lands, which are lowered by the periodic wobble in relation to the north, only to give them free again when southern coasts went under the water. The length of this period of pendulation, which still requires evidencing, is something like a hundred years. But climatic changes must also occur in the interior of continents if the lands are pushed to some extent longitudinally. Should we assume that out then ancestors could have been spread across most the inhabitable mainland, then the probability is that they lived less in areas where changes in water distribution promoted great fluctuations in temperatures, and perhaps icy conditions prevailed every three generations. Any huts that may have been built there would have to have been deserted, and more hospitable conditions sought. Actual calm reigned only at the poles of the axis during pendulation, in Central America and Southeast Asia or in island groups there, the Antilles and Philippines*. (* Footnote: Simroth, the author of the relevant and very enlightening work "Die Pendulationstheorie" (1907, Leipzig, Grethlein) thinks Ecuador and Sumatra are the poles involved with pendulation.) It could be that the concentration of life on Earth develops in a manner similar to that which can physically be seen, as clusters produced by Chladnian rhythm figures, which can be made clear through experiment. Sand corns accumulate on surfaces where finger pressure stops vibrations, while they remain in movement elsewhere for as long as the vibrations remain in action. That certain organisms must have found conditions for existence to be the same in both regions of the Earth has been demonstrated by, for example, the presence of some deep sea snails, otherwise found nowhere on Earth except for the corresponding sea areas of the Antilles and Philippines. Furthermore, it is certainly no coincidence that the earliest representatives of the mammalian group of marsupials have persisted in Central America and the Philippines' neighbour, Australia, and this again nearly points to where the struggle for survival is not made more difficult by dramatic climatic fluctuations.
[Translator's protest:
As I happen to have some grasp of the known distribution of early marsupial fossils -and even a reasonable idea of the state of knowledge in 1910- I'm struggling to appreciate what Dr Brix might have thought he was talking about. This appears very lame for a number of reasons, including Australia being in the wrong place. Readers down under should not panic at the apparently abrupt tectonic movements. Still, perhaps if we pretend the Philippines includes Indonesia and New Guinea... As for marsupials, 'earliest representatives' presumably attempts to refer to all 'opossums'...
I've consulted what may be the 4th edition of Brehm's Das Leben der Tiere (Editor, Fritz Bley) and a somewhat more recent Brehm's Tierleben (Copyright 1928, Editor Carl W Neumann). Neither gives any mention of Australian possums at all. Both content themselves with only the Virginian opossum which, Neumann states on page 427 of Säugertiere 3 (there are 8 volumes to the work): "Es ist träge, schlafsüchtig und anscheinend erschrecklich dumm. ("It is lethargic, eager to sleep and appears shockingly stupid.") Unfortunately, this doesn't reveal how Australian possums were generally classified in Germany at the time. It's now understood that the extant American critters aren't close relatives of their counterparts in Oz, and the latter can't sensibly be termed persistent "earliest representatives". With apologies for the interjection. We will now continue with this tediously long paragraph of Brix's.]
It is also a known fact that the American parrots, which appeal to us because of their splendid colours, are exceeded much in cleverness by the plainly coloured African grey parrots, and this fact can perhaps be explained by their having lived in fluctuating conditions and being sometimes forced to flee to seek sanctuary, should they not have been wiped out by the difficulties confronting them. (Translator's protest continued: Regardless of the benefits of hindsight, this is remarkably silly! Perhaps the editor was off sick.)

Those who are inclined to see Asia as the cradle of humanity, and to defend a single origin for the human race, will this more difficult to do than previously, as discoveries in America show a highly developed culture which arose entirely independently from those found in the Old World. The location again lies rather close to the Antilles, namely in Mexico and Peru. On the other hand, the research of our cultural historians with regards to Rome, Greece and the Ancient Phoenicians and Egyptians leads us to Asia Minor, and then deeper into Asia where the traces disappear. Do we not call ourselves Indo-Germanic, and do not many stems of words in our language show our relationship with Sanskrit, which may have been derived from the same source? Regardless of any presumed centres of intelligence, we know of the ancient cultures of Mongolian peoples, especially the Chinese and also Japanese, and they are also neighbours of the eastern end of the pendulation axis. [Translator' on-going protestations: !!! I'm sure many have good reasons to consider the Philippines great, but few could've enhanced its proportions to those provided by Dr Brix. It apparently neighbours Australia, China and Japan.]

It should be said again that one could never discover remains of the earliest settlements. But one may certainly assume that this first stage of settlement was a prerequisite for later culture, and that it first occurred on a part of our planet that remained sheltered from dramatic climatic and other similar alterations. If the conditions assumed here are correct, then it is the island groups of the Antilles and Philippines and nearby areas of the mainland which are most suitable to have provided people with sanctuary from storms of the climate and elements, then isolated islands or island groups have never offered favourable conditions for cultural development. Had people, however, once settled them through many generations, then it would only have been a question of time before their cultural achievements reached their neighbours. And as migrations of people have led to a further mixing of peoples, and a wider showing of the seed of intelligence, and increased social selection led to a further rise and refinement of the intelligence meanwhile attained.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.