of curious problems lying as it were on the outskirts of biological
inquiry which well merit attention, and which may lead to valuable
results. But these problems are, as you see, for the most part
connected with questions of locality, and require full and accurate
knowledge of the productions of a number of small islands and
other limited areas, and the means of comparing them one with the
other. To make such comparisons, however, is now quite impossible.
No museum contains any fair representation of the productions of
these localities; and such specimens as do exist, being scattered
through the general collection, are almost useless for this special
purpose. If, then, we are to make any progress in this inquiry
it is absolutely essential that some collectors should begin to
arrange their cabinets primarily on a geographical basis, keeping
together the productions of every island or group of islands, and
of such divisions of each continent as are found to possess any
special or characteristic fauna or flora. We shall then be sure to
detect many unsuspected relations between the animals and plants of
certain localities, and we shall become much better acquainted with
those complex reactions between the vegetable and animal kingdoms,
and between the organic world and the inorganic, which have almost
certainly played an important part in determining many of the most
conspicuous features of living things.
RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN VIEWS AS TO THE ANTIQUITY AND ORIGIN
OF MAN.
I now come to a branch of our subject which I would gladly
have avoided touching on; but as the higher powers of the
British Association have decreed that I should preside over the
Anthropological Department, it seems proper that I should devote
some portion of my address to matters more immediately connected
with the special study to which that Department is devoted.
As my own knowledge of and interest in Anthropology is confined
to the great outlines rather than to the special details of the
science, I propose to give a very brief and general sketch of the
modern doctrine as to the Antiquity and Origin of Man, and to
suggest certain points of difficulty which have not, I think, yet
received sufficient attention.
Many now living remember the time (for it is little more than
twenty years ago) when the antiquity of man, as now understood, was
universally discredited. Not only theologians, but even geologists
then taught us, that man belonged altogether to the existing state
of things; that the extinct animals of the Tertiary period had
finally disappeared, and that the earth’s surface had assumed its
present condition before the human race first came into existence.
So prepossessed were even scientific men with this idea--which yet
rested on purely negative evidence, and could not be supported by
any arguments of scientific value--that numerous facts which had
been presented at intervals for half a century, all tending to prove
the existence of man at very remote epochs, were silently ignored;
and, more than this, the detailed statements of three distinct and
careful observers confirming each other, were rejected by a great
scientific Society as too improbable for publication, only because
they proved (if they were true) the coexistence of man with extinct
animals.[54]
[54] In 1854 (?) a communication from the Torquay Natural-History
Society confirming previous accounts by Mr. Godwin-Austen, Mr.
Vivian, and the Rev. Mr. M‘Enery, that worked flints occurred in
Kent’s Hole with remains of extinct species, was rejected as too
improbable for publication.
But this state of belief in opposition to facts, could not long
continue. In 1859 a few of our most eminent geologists examined for
themselves into the alleged occurrence of flint implements in the
gravels of the north of France, which had been made public fourteen
years before, and found them strictly correct. The caverns of
Devonshire were about the same time carefully examined by equally
eminent observers, and were found fully to bear out the statements
of those who had published their results eighteen years before.
Flint implements began to be found in all suitable localities in
the south of England, when carefully searched for, often in gravels
of equal antiquity with those of France. Caverns giving evidence
of human occupation at various remote periods were explored in
Belgium and the south of France--lake-dwellings were examined in
Switzerland--refuse-heaps in Denmark--and thus a whole series of
remains have been discovered carrying back the history of mankind
from the earliest historic periods to a long distant past.
The antiquity of the races thus discovered cannot be measured in
years; but it may be approximately determined by the successively
earlier and earlier stages of civilization through which we can
trace them, and by the changes in physical geography and of animal
and vegetable life that have since occurred. As we go back metals
soon disappear, and we find only tools and weapons of stone and of
bone. The stone weapons get ruder and ruder; pottery, and then the
bone implements, cease to occur; and in the earliest stage we find
only chipped flints of rude design, though still of unmistakably
human workmanship. In like manner domestic animals disappear as we
go backward; and though the dog seems to have been the earliest,
it is doubtful whether the makers of the ruder flint implements of
the gravels possessed even this. Still more important as a measure
of time are the changes in the distribution of animals, indicating
changes of climate, which have occurred during the human period.
At a comparatively recent epoch in the record of prehistoric times
we find that the Baltic was far salter than it is now and produced
abundance of oysters, and that Denmark was covered with pine forests
inhabited by Capercailzies, such as now only occur further north in
Norway. A little earlier we find that reindeer were common even in
the south of France; and still earlier this animal was accompanied
by the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, by the arctic glutton, and
by huge bears and lions of extinct species. The presence of such
animals implies a change of climate; and both in the caves and
gravels we find proofs of a much colder climate than now prevails
in Western Europe. Even more remarkable are the changes of the
earth’s surface which have been effected during man’s occupation
of it. Many extensive valleys in England and France are believed
by the best observers to have been deepened at least a hundred
feet; caverns now far out of the reach of any stream must for a
long succession of years have had streams flowing through them, at
least in times of floods; and this often implies that vast masses of
solid rock have since been worn away. In Sardinia land has risen at
least 300 feet since men lived there who made pottery and probably
used fishing-nets;[55] while in Kent’s Cavern remains of man are
found buried beneath two separate beds of stalagmite, each having a
distinct texture, and each covering a deposit of cave-earth having
well-marked differential characters, while each contains a distinct
assemblage of extinct animals.
[55] Lyell’s _Antiquity of Man_, fourth edition, p. 115.
Such, briefly, are the results of the evidence that has been rapidly
accumulating for about fifteen years, as to the antiquity of man;
and it has been confirmed by so many discoveries of a like nature
in all parts of the globe, and especially by the comparison of the
tools and weapons of prehistoric man with those of modern savages (so
that the use of even the rudest flint implements has become quite
intelligible), that we can hardly wonder at the vast revolution
effected in public opinion. Not only is the belief in man’s vast
and still unknown antiquity universal among men of science, but it
is hardly disputed by any well-informed theologian; and the present
generation of science-students must, we should think, be somewhat
puzzled to understand what there was in the earliest discoveries
that should have aroused such general opposition, and been met with
such universal incredulity.
But the question of the mere “Antiquity of Man” almost sank
into insignificance at a very early period of the inquiry, in
comparison with the far more momentous and more exciting problem
of the development of man from some lower animal form, which the
theories of Mr. Darwin and of Mr. Herbert Spencer soon showed to
be inseparably bound up with it. This has been, and to some extent
still is, the subject of fierce conflict; but the controversy as
to the fact of such development is now almost at an end, since one
of the most talented representatives of Catholic theology, and an
anatomist of high standing--Professor Mivart--fully adopts it as
regards physical structure, reserving his opposition for those parts
of the theory which would deduce man’s whole intellectual and moral
nature from the same source and by a similar mode of development.
Never, perhaps, in the whole history of science or philosophy has so
great a revolution in thought and opinion been effected as in the
twelve years from 1859 to 1871, the respective dates of publication
of Mr. Darwin’s _Origin of Species_ and _Descent of Man_. Up to
the commencement of this period the belief in the independent
creation or origin of the species of animals and plants, and the
very recent appearance of man upon the earth, were, practically,
universal. Long before the end of it these two beliefs had utterly
disappeared, not only in the scientific world, but almost equally
so among the literary and educated classes generally. The belief
in the independent origin of man held its ground somewhat longer;
but the publication of Mr. Darwin’s great work gave even that its
death-blow, for hardly any one capable of judging of the evidence
now doubts the derivative nature of man’s bodily structure as a
whole, although many believe that his mind, and even some of his
physical characteristics, may be due to the action of other forces
than have acted in the case of the lower animals.
We need hardly be surprised, under these circumstances, if there has
been a tendency among men of science to pass from one extreme to
the other; from a profession (so few years ago) of total ignorance
as to the mode of origin of all living things, to a claim to almost
complete knowledge of the whole progress of the universe, from the
first speck of living protoplasm up to the highest development of
the human intellect. Yet this is really what we have seen in the
last sixteen years. Formerly difficulties were exaggerated, and
it was asserted that we had not sufficient knowledge to venture
on any generalizations on the subject. Now difficulties are set
aside, and it is held that our theories are so well established
and so far-reaching, that they explain and comprehend all nature.
It is not long ago (as I have already reminded you) since _facts_
were contemptuously ignored, because they favoured our now popular
views; at the present day it seems to me that facts which oppose
them hardly receive due consideration. And as opposition is the
best incentive to progress, and it is not well even for the best
theories to have it all their own way, I propose to direct your
attention to a few such facts, and to the conclusions that seem
fairly deducible from them.
_Indications of Man’s Extreme Antiquity._--It is a curious
circumstance that, notwithstanding the attention that has been
directed to the subject in every part of the world, and the numerous
excavations connected with railways and mines which have offered
such facilities for geological discovery, no advance whatever
has been made for a considerable number of years in detecting the
time or mode of man’s origin. The Palæolithic flint weapons first
discovered in the North of France more than thirty years ago, are
still the oldest undisputed proofs of man’s existence; and amid
the countless relics of a former world that have been brought to
light, no evidence of any one of the links that must have connected
man with the lower animals has yet appeared.
It is, indeed, well known that negative evidence in geology is of
very slender value; and this is, no doubt, generally the case. The
circumstances here are, however, peculiar, for many converging lines
of evidence show that, on the theory of development by the same
laws which have determined the development of the lower animals,
man must be immensely older than any traces of him yet discovered.
As this is a point of great interest we must devote a few moments
to its consideration.
1. The most important difference between man and such of the lower
animals as most nearly approach him is undoubtedly in the bulk and
development of his brain, as indicated by the form and capacity of
the cranium. We should therefore anticipate that these earliest
races, who were contemporary with the extinct animals and used rude
stone weapons, would show a marked deficiency in this respect. Yet
the oldest known crania (those of the Engis and Cro-Magnon caves)
show no marks of degradation. The former does not present so low
a type as that of most existing savages, but is (to use the words
of Prof. Huxley) “a fair average human skull, which might have
belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless
brains of a savage.” The latter are still more remarkable, being
unusually large and well formed. Dr. Pruner-Bey states that they
surpass the average of modern European skulls in capacity, while
their symmetrical form without any trace of prognathism, compares
favourably not only with those of the foremost savage races, but
with many civilised nations of modern times.
One or two other crania of much lower type, but of less antiquity
than this, have been discovered; but they in no way invalidate the
conclusion which so highly developed a form at so early a period
implies, viz., that we have as yet made a hardly perceptible step
towards the discovery of any earlier stage in the development of
man.
2. This conclusion is supported and enforced by the nature of many
of the works of art found even in the oldest cave-dwellings. The
flints are of the old chipped type, but they are formed into a large
variety of tools and weapons--such as scrapers, awls, hammers, saws,
lances, &c., implying a variety of purposes for which these were
used, and a corresponding degree of mental activity and civilization.
Numerous articles of bone have also been found, including well-formed
needles; implying that skins were sewn together, and perhaps even
textile materials woven into cloth. Still more important are the
numerous carvings and drawings representing a variety of animals,
including horses, reindeer, and even a mammoth, executed with
considerable skill on bone, reindeer-horns, and mammoth-tusks.
These, taken together, indicate a state of civilization much higher
than that of the lowest of our modern savages, while they are
quite compatible with a considerable degree of mental advancement,
and lead us to believe that the crania of Engis and Cro-Magnon are
not exceptional, but fairly represent the characters of the race.
If we further remember that these people lived in Europe under
the unfavourable conditions of a sub-Arctic climate, we shall be
inclined to agree with Dr. Daniel Wilson, that it is far easier to
produce evidences of deterioration than of progress, in instituting
a comparison between the contemporaries of the mammoth and later
prehistoric races of Europe or savage nations of modern times.[56]
[56] _Prehistoric Man_, 3rd edit. vol. i. p. 117.
3. Yet another important line of evidence as to the extreme antiquity
of the human type has been brought prominently forward by Prof.
Mivart.[57] He shows, by a careful comparison of all parts of the
structure of the body, that man is related not to any one, but almost
equally to many of the existing apes--to the orang, the chimpanzee,
the gorilla, and even to the gibbons--in a variety of ways; and
these relations and differences are so numerous and so diverse that,
on the theory of evolution, the ancestral form which ultimately
developed into man must have diverged from the common stock whence
all these various forms and their extinct allies originated. But so
far back as the Miocene deposits of Europe we find the remains of
apes allied to these various forms, and especially to the gibbons;
so that in all probability the special line of variation which led
up to man branched off at a still earlier period. And these early
forms, being the initiation of a far higher type, and having to
develop by natural selection into so specialized and altogether
distinct a creature as man, must have risen at a very early period
into the position of a dominant race, and spread in dense waves of
population over all suitable portions of the great continent--for
this, on Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis, is essential to developmental
progress through the agency of natural selection.
[57] _Man and Apes_, pp. 171-193.
Under these circumstances we might certainly expect to find some
relics of these earlier forms of man along with those of animals,
which were presumably less abundant. Negative evidence of this kind
is not very weighty, but still it has _some_ value. It has been
suggested that as apes are mostly tropical, and anthropoid apes are
now confined almost exclusively to the vicinity of the equator,
we should expect the ancestral forms of man to have inhabited
these same localities--West Africa and the Malay Islands. But this
objection is hardly valid, because existing anthropoid apes are
wholly dependent on a perennial supply of easily accessible fruits,
which is only found near the equator; while not only had the south
of Europe an almost tropical climate in Miocene times, but we must
suppose even the earliest ancestors of man to have been terrestrial
and omnivorous, since it must have taken ages of slow modification
to have produced the perfectly erect form, the short arms, and the
wholly non-prehensile foot,[58] which so strongly differentiate
man from the arboreal apes.
[58] The common statement of travellers as to savages having great
prehensile power in the toes, has been adopted by some naturalists
as indicating an approach to the apes. But this notion is founded
on a complete misconception. Savages pick up objects with their
feet, it is true, but always by a lateral motion of the toes, which
we should equally possess if we never wore shoes or stockings. In
no savage have I ever seen the slightest approach to opposability
of the great toe, which is the essential distinguishing feature of
apes; nor have I ever seen it stated that any variation in this
direction has been detected in the anatomical structure of the foot
of the lower races.
The conclusion which I think we must arrive at is, that if man has
been developed from a common ancestor with all existing apes, _and
by no other agencies than such as have affected their development_,
then he must have existed, in something approaching his present
form, during the tertiary period--and not merely existed, but
predominated in numbers, wherever suitable conditions prevailed.
If then, continued researches in all parts of Europe and Asia fail
to bring to light any proofs of his presence, it will be at least
a presumption that he came into existence at a much later date,
and by a much more rapid process of development. In that case it
will be a fair argument that, just as he is in his mental and moral
nature, his capacities and aspirations, so infinitely raised above
the brutes, so his origin is due, in part, to distinct and higher
agencies than such as have affected their development.
_Antiquity of Intellectual Man._--There is yet another line of
inquiry bearing upon this subject to which I wish to call your
attention. It is a somewhat curious fact that, while all modern
writers admit the great antiquity of man, most of them maintain the
very recent development of his intellect, and will hardly contemplate
the possibility of men equal in mental capacity to ourselves having
existed in prehistoric times. This question is generally assumed to
be settled by such relics as have been preserved of the manufactures
of the older races, showing a lower and lower state of the arts;
by the successive disappearance in early times of iron, bronze,
and pottery; and by the ruder forms of the older flint implements.
The weakness of this argument has been well shown by Mr. Albert
Mott in his very original but little-known presidential address to
the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool in 1873. He
maintains that “our most distant glimpses of the past are still of
a world peopled as now with men both civilised and savage,” and
“that we have often entirely misread the past by supposing that the
outward signs of civilisation must always be the same, and must
be such as are found among ourselves.” In support of this view he
adduces a variety of striking facts and ingenious arguments, a few
of which I will briefly summarize.
_Sculptures on Easter Island._--On one of the most remote islands of
the Pacific--Easter Island, 2,000 miles from South America, 2,000
from the Marquesas, and more than 1,000 from the Gambier Islands,
are found hundreds of gigantic stone images, now mostly in ruins.
They are often forty feet high, while some seem to have been much
larger, the crowns on their heads, cut out of a red stone, being
sometimes ten feet in diameter, while even the head and neck of
one is said to have been twenty feet high.[59] These images once
all stood erect on extensive stone platforms.
[59] _Journ. of Roy. Geog. Soc._ 1870, pp. 177, 178.
The island containing these remarkable works of art has only an area
of about thirty square miles, or considerably less than Jersey.
Now as one of the smallest images (eight feet high) weighs four
tons, the largest must weigh over a hundred tons, if not much more;
and the existence of such vast works implies a large population,
abundance of food, and an established government. Yet how could
these coexist on a mere speck of land wholly cut off from the rest
of the world? Mr. Mott maintains that these facts necessarily
imply the power of regular communication with larger islands or a
continent, the arts of navigation, and a civilisation much higher
than now exists in any part of the Pacific. Very similar remains
in other islands scattered widely over the Pacific add weight to
this argument.
_North American Earthworks._--The next example is that of the ancient
mounds and earthworks of the North American continent, the bearing
of which is even more significant. Over the greater part of the
extensive Mississippi valley, four well-marked classes of these
earthworks occur. Some are camps, or works of defence, situated on
bluffs, promontories, or isolated hills; others are vast inclosures
in the plains and lowlands, often of geometric forms, and having
attached to them roadways or avenues often miles in length; a third
are mounds corresponding to our tumuli, often seventy to ninety feet
high, and some of them covering acres of ground; while a fourth group
consists of representations of various animals modelled in relief
on a gigantic scale, and occurring chiefly in an area somewhat to
the north-west of the other classes, in the plains of Wisconsin.
The first class--the camps or fortified inclosures--resemble in
general features the ancient camps of our own islands, but far
surpass them in extent. Fort Hill, in Ohio, is surrounded by a
wall and ditch a mile and a half in length, part of the way cut
through solid rock. Artificial reservoirs for water were made
within it, while at one extremity, on a more elevated point, a keep
is constructed with its separate defences and water-reservoirs.
Another, called Clark’s Work, in the Scioto valley, which seems
to have been a fortified town, incloses an area of 127 acres, the
embankments measuring three miles in length, and containing not
less than three million cubic feet of earth. This area incloses
numerous sacrificial mounds and symmetrical earthworks, in which
many interesting relics and works of art have been found.