The Pleistocene or “Ice Age,” and the Recent period in which we are
living at the present moment are not sharply separated by any event
readily recognized or dated, and the two combined are of very short
duration as compared with other periods more clearly established by the
passing of centuries. Together they comprise the Age of Man as commonly
recognized, with about a million years representing the Pleistocene
period, some ten to twenty thousand years the Recent. When geologists of
the nineteenth century suggested that the coming of man should be
regarded as the beginning of a new era, the name Psychozoic was
proposed, and to some extent this term has been applied to the present
period. More in keeping with other period names is Holocene, meaning
_entirely recent_. Common usage, however, applies the simple term Recent
to this unfinished chapter which is also without a clear-cut beginning.
Zoologically, man is merely one of the creatures that arrived in the
course of time, along with other mammals. Just when he arrived and how
he looked at the time of his coming cannot be determined from a study of
fossils. Perhaps it is of no importance. There is nothing to indicate
his existence before the Cenozoic, no completely satisfactory proof of
existence before the Pleistocene period. As with other inhabitants of
the earth, it is probable that he became prominent only after a great
deal of competition with other creatures which kept his ancestors
submerged for thousands of years. The Ice Age, with its check upon the
progress of competing animals, undoubtedly gave him an advantage. His
superior mentality enabled him to overcome adversity by methods not
available to other mammals; his inventive and mechanical genius must
have been greatly strengthened by his experience during this interval.
At about this point, where prehistory begins to merge into history, the
geologist and paleontologist must let other interpreters carry on.
Archeologists and anthropologists take up the work, and through their
efforts many details have been added to our knowledge of the human race.
The study of biology, which is the science of life, has provided an
instructive viewpoint that enables us to see ourselves against the vast
background built up by investigations into the nature of the earth and
its ancient inhabitants. This science deals with living creatures as
_organisms_—plants and animals so organized as to be capable of
existence only in an environment which provides exact life requirements.
The Age of Man has been variously characterized as an age of soul, of
higher intelligence, of culture, and finally, of civilization, freedom
and democracy. The “crowning glory” of the organic world is pictured in
history as a creature who has busied himself for thousands of years with
the building up and tearing down of civilizations. Prehistory reveals
this habit as something unique in the human character, for there is no
other organism that has specialized so persistently in the creation of
its own environment, no other that has had the combined power and talent
to produce so much change.
More than anything else, the prehistoric record is a lesson in
adaptation, which in its broadest sense means fitness for life under
particular conditions, and always subject to organic law. Man’s efforts
to bring about an adjustment between himself and his civilization have
centered largely on the method of forcing himself into the mold that
happens to be present, one pattern today, another tomorrow. No creature
of the past has had to adapt itself to anything so radically new or so
thoroughly revolutionary. The vital problem now is whether this man-made
environment will prove helpful or disastrous.
Though one of its names is “culture,” it has grown sporadically and
unevenly, with little evidence of the cultivation that is implied and
required. Parts have been expanded to extraordinary proportions while
others equally essential have been retarded in their growth. A more
intelligent handling of this environment factor seems to be possible,
and the present mania for “organization” may become tempered with an
awakening consciousness of organic requirements where organism and
environment are involved. Once we grasp the idea that “culture” results
from man’s effort to improve his living, by putting into his environment
something that was not there before—then, surely, this history of a
billion years of living, and as many “ways of life,” should teach us
something we ought to know as we go into an all-out endeavor to teach a
whole world how to obtain a one-and-only way.
We may stand at the beginning of an era for which an appropriate name
has not yet been suggested. Civilization, on the other hand, may provide
only a minor epoch to be added in some remote time to the story of
fossils.