Looking backwards, we discern the following stages: (1) The setting
apart of a Primate stock, marked off from other mammals by a tendency to
big brains, a free hand, gregariousness, and good-humoured
talkativeness. (2) The divergence of marmosets and New World monkeys and
Old World monkeys, leaving a stock--an anthropoid stock--common to the
present-day and extinct apes and to mankind. (3) From this common stock
the Anthropoid apes diverged, far from ignoble creatures, and a humanoid
stock was set apart. (4) From the latter (we follow Sir Arthur Keith and
other authorities) there arose what may be called, without
disparagement, tentative or experimental men, indicated by
Pithecanthropus "the Erect," the Heidelberg man, the Neanderthalers,
and, best of all, the early men of the Sussex Weald--hinted at by the
Piltdown skull. It matters little whether particular items are
corroborated or disproved--e.g. whether the Heidelberg man came before
or after the Neanderthalers--the general trend of evolution remains
clear. (5) In any case, the result was the evolution of _Homo sapiens,
the man we are_--a quite different fellow from the Neanderthaler. (6)
Then arose various stocks of primitive men, proving everything and
holding fast to that which is good. There were the Palæolithic peoples,
with rude stone implements, a strong vigorous race, but probably, in
most cases, supplanted by fresh experiments. These may have arisen as
shoots from the growing point of the old race, or as a fresh offshoot
from more generalised members at a lower level. This is the eternal
possible victory alike of aristocracy and democracy. (7) Palæolithic men
were involved in the succession of four Great Ice Ages or
Glaciations, and it may be that the human race owes much to the
alternation of hard times and easy times--glacial and interglacial. When
the ice-fields cleared off Neolithic man had his innings. (8) And we
have closed the story, in the meantime, with the Metal Ages.
[Illustration: _After the restoration modelled by J. H. McGregor._
PILTDOWN MAN, PRECEDING NEANDERTHAL MAN, PERHAPS 100,000 TO 150,000
YEARS AGO]
[Illustration: _After the restoration modelled by J. H. McGregor._