THE UNFOLDING OF THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN
[Sidenote: =Fossil Man.=]
IGNORANCE and prejudice combined to assert that man was created a few
thousand years ago in a state of physical perfection. The possibility of
the discovery of fossil man was therefore inconceivable to most people,
and those earlier writers who entertained the idea were generally
inclined to deny it. Cuvier, limiting the age of the earth to the
orthodox 6,000 years, had stated that fossil bones of man did not exist.
Moreover, up to the time of his death (1832) nothing had been found to
disturb this generally received opinion.
More than a hundred years before (1726) Professor Scheuchzer, of Zürich,
had discovered his famous “_Homo diluvii testis_”—“Man, witness of the
Flood”—and had described it as a “rare relic of the accursed race of the
primitive world,” exclaiming piously: “Melancholy skeleton of an old
sinner, convert the hearts of modern reprobates!” His fossil was proved
later to be that of a gigantic salamander, and fossil man was allowed to
sleep for more than a century.
When the question was again raised, in the middle of the nineteenth
century, evidence of human remains which had been hitherto disregarded
assumed a new importance, and earlier finds were re-examined.
[Sidenote: =Cannstadt.= Neanderthal.]
First there was the Cannstadt cranium, found in 1700 by Duke Eberhard of
Würtemberg, which remained undescribed for 135 years in the Stuttgart
Museum. Later it was claimed as belonging to the prehistoric “race,”
proofs of whose existence were so rapidly accumulating. In 1856 a fresh
stimulus was given by the discovery of a cranium and some other remains
in the Feldhofen Cave, at the entrance to a small ravine called
Neanderthal, on the right bank of the river Düssel, in Rhenish Prussia.
This was the first discovery of remains of palæolithic man to
receive serious attention. The skeleton was embedded in a hard,
consolidated loam, but unfortunately was badly damaged by the
workmen before it was extricated. By the intervention of Fuhlrott,
the thigh bones, the upper bone of each arm, shoulder-blade,
collar-bone, some fragments of ribs and the cranium, were rescued,
and are now in the Rheinische-Antiquitäts’ Museum at Bonn. When the
remains were first exhibited by their discoverer at Bonn, doubts
were freely expressed as to their human character. Virchow
pronounced his opinion that the cranium was diseased; in the long
controversy which raged over this skull his wide pathological
experience, his distrust of merely morphological considerations, his
agnostic position with regard to the origin of species in general
and of man in particular, led him, perhaps, to propound this extreme
view. Broca declared it to be normal. Huxley recognised the skull as
human, but declared it to be the most ape-like ever discovered; and
he placed it below the Australian in type.
No absolute reliance could, however, be placed on the evidence of a
single skull, and an imperfect one at that; but later discoveries served
in the main to confirm Huxley’s opinion.
[Sidenote: =Spy.=]
Another important find was that of two crania and other skeletal remains
discovered in 1886 at Spy, in the Namur district, Belgium, by de Puydt
and Lohest,[51] with an associated fauna which included the woolly
rhinoceros, mammoth, cave bear, hyæna, etc., five out of the nine
species being extinct.
Footnote 51:
Fraipont et Lohest, _Arch. de Biol._, vii., 1887, p. 623.
[Sidenote: =Other Finds.=]
Since 1886 new discoveries of human remains have been made at short
intervals in various parts of Europe, and these range in date from
historic to prehistoric times, the oldest skulls having naturally the
most interest.
The very careful studies of these remains that have been made by
numerous anatomists are of extreme interest to students, and their
general conclusions will be found summarised in certain text-books; but
the details are of a somewhat technical character. Suffice it to say
that even as far back as the palæolithic period, when men used only
chipped stone implements, there were several human varieties in Europe;
and, though in their anatomical characters they were in some respects
more animal-like than existing Europeans, they were scarcely more so
than certain non-European races of the present day—such, for example, as
the Australian. In all cases the skulls were unmistakably those of true
men, but on the whole it may be said that the points in which they
differed from more recent Europeans betrayed “lower” characters.
In order that the reader may appreciate what rapid progress is now being
made in this direction, we give a brief account of the most recent
discoveries of fossil man.
[Sidenote: =Homo Heidelbergensis.=]
In October, 1907, a lower jaw was found in a deposit of sand at Mauer,
near Heidelberg. The teeth are typically human; but the chinless jaw,
with its thick body, very broad and short ascending portion, and other
special points, surpasses in its combination of primitive characters all
known recent and ancient human jaws, thus it is a generalised type from
which they can readily be derived. It has been suggested that, as the
jaw is neither distinctly human nor anthropoid, it is a survival from
that remote ancestor from which there branched off on the one side the
genus Homo, and on the other the genera of anthropoid apes. Dr. O.
Schoetensack regards _Homo Heidelbergensis_ as of early Pleistocene or
late Pliocene age; but Dr. E. Werth[52] relegates it to the middle of
the Ice Age.
Footnote 52:
_Globus_, xcvi., 1909, p. 229.
[Sidenote: =Homo Primigenius.=]
In March, 1908, Herr Otto Hauser found a skeleton of a young man in the
upper valley of the Vézère, Dordogne; the skull had a receding forehead,
prominent jaws, and large orbits, surmounted by massive brow-ridges; the
limbs were short. It was a distinct burial with associated objects which
prove it to be of Mousterian age (p. 75, _n._ 2).
Also of Mousterian age are the skeleton discovered in August, 1908,[53]
and the skull in February, 1909, at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Corrèze, and
the skeleton exhumed in September in the latter year at Ferrassie,
Dordogne, by M. Peyrony, who had previously discovered another skeleton
of the same age at Peche de l’Azé, near Sarlat, also in Dordogne. These
two finds have not yet been described.
Footnote 53:
Bouysonnie et Bardon, _l’Anthropologie_, xix., 1908, p. 513.
[Illustration:
SKULL OF THE FOSSIL MAN OF LA CHAPELLE-AUX-SAINTS,
after the restoration of the nasal bones and jaws. From
_l’Anthropologie_, xx.,
1909, p. 267; with the permission of Professor M. Boule.
]
Compared with the short stature (5ft. 3in.) of the La Chapelle man, the
skull is of remarkably large size. It is narrow, with a flattened
cranial vault and enormous brow-ridges; the orbits are large, and the
face is very projecting. Professor Boule agrees with other investigators
in regarding this skull as belonging to the Neanderthal-Spy type, and
considers that the group is distinct from all other human groups, living
or fossil.[54]
Footnote 54:
M. Boule, _l’Anthropologie_, xix., 1908, p. 519; xx., 1909, p. 257.
See also M. Alsberg, _Globus_, xcv., 1909, and H. Klaatsch, _Arch. für
Anth._, N.F., vii., p. 287.
As Professor Sollas points out, “the primitive inhabitants of France
were distinguished from the highest civilized races, not by a smaller,
but by a larger, cranial capacity; in other words, as we proceed
backwards in time the human brain increases in volume.”[55] We know that
they buried their dead, and in some cases provided weapons and food for
use in a future state. Their inventiveness is proved by the variety and
gradual improvement in the technique of their tools and weapons. Their
carvings in the round or low relief, their spirited engravings on bone
and ivory, and their wonderful mural paintings, whether in outline,
shaded monochrome, or polychrome, evince an astonishing æsthetic sense
and technical skill.
Footnote 55:
_Quart. Journ. Geol. Sci._, vol. 66, 1910, p. lxii.
As the diggers in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Crete, and elsewhere, have
proved that civilisation was far more ancient than could have been
conceived even fifty years ago, so the cave explorers have shown us that
during the latter half of the Palæolithic age there lived mighty
hunters, skilful artists, big-brained men, who laid the foundations upon
which subsequent generations have built. This, then, is the lesson that
the latest results of investigations into the antiquity of man has
taught us—that brain, not brawn, has been the essential factor in the
evolution of man. The human brain had developed at a greater rate than
the body, which even then retained unmistakable evidence of man’s lowly
origin. How long had this evolution been progressing before Mousterian
times?[56] The ruder stone implements of the Acheulian and Chellian
epochs carry us an appreciable time backward; and if even some of the
eoliths are artifacts, we can project tool-using man to yet earlier
times. Then the record becomes blurred, as it is manifestly impossible
to decide whether simple bruising of stones was caused by man or natural
agencies.
Footnote 56:
W. L. H. Duckworth, _Morphology and Anthropology_, 1904, p. 520.
[Sidenote: =Pithecanthropus erectus.=]
But these investigations all fade into relative insignificance compared
with the sensation caused by the discovery made by Dr. Dubois in Java in
1891. Dr. Eugene Dubois was a graduate of Leyden University who, besides
having some knowledge of geology and palæontology, had attained
distinction in anatomy. Between 1890 and 1896 he was stationed in Java,
as surgeon to the Dutch Indian army, and by order of the Government he
conducted some explorations with a view to determining the fossil fauna
which had been discovered in those parts many years before. While
examining the beds attributed to the Pleistocene period below the dry
season level of the Bengawan River, at Trinil, he found the teeth,
calvarium, and femur of the now world-famous _Pithecanthropus erectus_.
This was announced even in scientific journals as “The ‘Missing Link’
found at last.” Dubois published his account in Java in 1894, and since
that date a vast amount of literature has accumulated round the subject,
representing the three antagonistic points of view. Some, like Virchow,
Krause, Waldeyer, Ranke, Bumüller, Hamann, and Ten Kate, claim a simian
origin for the remains; Turner, Cunningham, Keith, Lydekker, Rudolf
Martin, and Topinard believed them to be human; while Dubois,
Manouvrier, Marsh, Haeckel, Nehring, Verneau, Schwalbe, Klaatsch, and
Duckworth ascribe them to an intermediate form. The last-mentioned sums
up the evidence in these words: “I believe that in _Pithecanthropus
erectus_ we possess the nearest likeness yet found of the human
ancestor, at a stage immediately antecedent to the definitely human
phase, and yet at the same time in advance of the simian stage.”[57]
Footnote 57:
“The lowest term of the human series yet discovered is represented by
Pithecanthropus, and dates from some part of the Pleistocene epoch”
(W. J. Sollas, _Science Progress_, 1908, p. 353). See also W. Volz,
_Neues Jahrb. f. Mineral._, 1907.
The English, as Dr. Dubois somewhat slyly noted, claimed the remains as
human; while the Germans declared them to be simian; he himself, as a
Dutchman, assigned them to a mixture of both.
The geological horizon in which the remains of _Pithecanthropus erectus_
were discovered is still an open question. Of late opinion seems to tend
towards regarding it as belonging to the early Pleistocene instead of
the Pliocene, to which it was at first referred.[58] After reviewing all
the evidence concerning Tertiary man, Professor Sollas concludes:—“We
have now reached the end of this summary, and find ourselves precisely
where we were, having obtained no evidence either for or against the
existence of man in times previous to the great Ice Age” (_loc. cit._,
p. 350).
Footnote 58:
The terms Magdalenian, Solutrian, Aurignacian, Mousterian, Acheulian,
Chellian, refer to various epochs of culture in Palæolithic times,
giving their sequence from the newest to the most ancient. These
epochs are further sub-divided by some investigators, and several, if
not all of them, are connected by intermediate stages. In other words,
the remains prove that a steady evolution in culture has taken place.
Nowhere do all these layers occur in one locality, and the evidence of
their order is a matter of stratigraphy (_i.e._, it is essentially a
geological method). Palæontology decides on the animal remains found
in the beds. The human anatomist discusses the human remains, and the
archæologist deals with the artifacts or objects made by man. The
accurate determination of the order of the beds is obviously of
fundamental importance.
The discovery of these human remains has had a very noticeable effect on
anthropometry. Most of them are imperfect, some very much so; as in the
case, for example, of the partial calvaria of Pithecanthropus and of the
Neanderthal specimen. The remains are of such intense interest that they
stimulated anatomists to a more careful analysis and comparison with
other human skulls and with those of anthropoids. As time rolled on, new
ways of looking at the problems suggested themselves, which led to the
employment of more elaborate methods of measurement or description.
Almost every specimen of fossil man has led to some improvement in
technical research; and the subject is not yet exhausted, as the
character of the inner walls of the crania have not yet yielded all
their secrets, more particularly in regard to the brains which they once
protected. It would be tedious to enumerate the names of those who have
studied even the two calvaria just mentioned, and impossible to record
all of those who have advanced our knowledge of the anatomy of fossil
man.
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