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MAN AND HIS ANCESTOR
_A STUDY IN EVOLUTION_
BY
CHARLES MORRIS
AUTHOR OF "CIVILIZATION: AN HISTORICAL REVIEW
OF ITS ELEMENTS," "THE ARYAN RACE," ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
1900
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
PREFACE
It would be difficult to find any intelligent person in this age of the
world who has not some theory or opinion in regard to the origin of man,
and perhaps almost as difficult to find any such person who can give a
good and sufficient reason for the faith that is in him. This is
especially the case with those who look upon man as a product of
evolution, a natural outgrowth from the world of lower life, since here
simple faith or ancient authority is not sufficient, as in the creation
hypothesis, but scientific evidence and logical argument are necessary.
It is to enable this class of readers to test the quality and
sufficiency of their belief that this book has been prepared.
The question of the evolutionary origin of man has been by no means
neglected by recent authors, yet it has been dealt with chiefly as a
side issue in works of a more extended purpose, and largely in technical
language, simple to the scientist, but difficult to the general reader.
The only work that makes this subject its leading theme, Darwin's
"Descent of Man," adds to it a still longer treatise on "Sexual
Selection," so that the subject of man's evolutionary origin cannot be
said to have been yet dealt with for itself alone. Darwin's work,
moreover, is now nearly thirty years old, and to this extent antiquated,
while at best it cannot be considered as well suited for general
reading.
These considerations have given rise to the present work, in which an
effort has been made to present the subject of man's origin in a popular
manner, to dwell on the various significant facts that have been
discovered since Darwin's time, and to offer certain lines of evidence
never before presented in this connection, and which seem to add much
strength to the general argument.
The subject is one of such widespread interest as to make it probable
that a plain and brief presentation of it will be acceptable, both to
enable those who are evolutionists in principle to learn on what grounds
their acceptance of this phase of evolution stands, and to aid those who
are at sea on the whole subject of man's origin to reach some fixed
conclusion. For these purposes this little book has been set afloat,
with the hope that it may carry some doubters to solid land and teach
some believers the fundamental elements of their faith.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EVOLUTION VERSUS CREATION 1
II. VESTIGES OF MAN'S ANCESTRY 5
III. RELICS OF ANCIENT MAN 21
IV. FROM QUADRUPED TO BIPED 39
V. THE FREEDOM OF THE ARMS 54
VI. THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE 68
VII. THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 100
VIII. HOW THE CHASM WAS BRIDGED 111
IX. THE FIRST STAGE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 130
X. THE CONFLICT WITH NATURE 158
XI. WARFARE AND CIVILIZATION 195
XII. THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY 206
XIII. MAN'S RELATION TO THE SPIRITUAL 225
MAN AND HIS ANCESTOR
I
EVOLUTION VERSUS CREATION
In any consideration of the origin of man we are necessarily restricted
to two views: one, that he is the outcome of a development from the
lower animals; the other, that he came into existence through direct
creation. No third mode of origin can be conceived, and we may safely
confine ourselves to a review of these two claims. They are the
opposites of each other in every particular. The creation doctrine is as
old almost as thinking man; the evolutionary doctrine belongs in effect
to our own generation. The former is not open to evidence; the latter
depends solely upon evidence. The former is based on authority; the
latter on investigation. The doctrine of direct creation can merely be
asserted, it cannot be argued; the statement once made, there is nothing
more to be said; it is an _ipse dixit_ pure and simple. The doctrine of
evolution, on the contrary, founded as it must be on ascertained facts,
is fully open to argument, and depends for its acceptance on the
strength and validity of the evidence in its favor.
If the doctrine of the direct creation of man had been originally
presented in our own day, proof of the assertion would have been at once
demanded, and the only evidence admissible would have been that of
witnesses of the act of creation. There could, of course, have been no
human witnesses, as there would have been no preceding human beings, and
witnesses not human have, in the present day, no standing in our courts.
As the case stands, however, the doctrine arose in an age when man did
not trouble himself about evidence, but was content to accept his
opinions on authority; and this, strangely enough, is held by many to be
a strong point in its favor, it gaining, in their minds, authenticity
from antiquity. It is claimed, indeed, to be sustained by divine
authority, but this is a claim that has no warrant in the words of the
statement itself, and one to which no form of words could give warrant.
To establish it, direct and incontestable evidence from the creative
power itself would be necessary, and it need scarcely be said that no
such evidence exists. It is not easy, indeed, to conceive what form such
evidence could take. It would certainly need to be something far more
convincing than a statement in a book.
It might have been better for civilized mankind if the opening pages of
Genesis had never been written, since they have played a potent part in
checking the development of thought. As the case now stands, the
cosmological doctrines they contain can no longer claim even a shadow of
divine authority, since they have been distinctly traced back to a human
origin. It has been recently discovered that they are simply a
restatement of the Babylonian cosmology, as given in a literary
production ages older than the Bible, an epic poem of very remote date.
They are, doubtless, an outgrowth of the cosmological ideas of early
man, and those who accept them must do so on the basis of belief in
their probability; it is no longer permissible to claim for them the
warrant of divine origin.
Modern science stringently demands facts in support of any assertion,
the word "faith" having no place in its lexicon. Facts are absolutely
and necessarily wanting in support of the creation doctrine, and the
only argument its advocates can advance is one that deals in negatives,
and demands its acceptance on the ground that the opposite doctrine has
not been proved. Such an argument is valueless. Disproof of one
statement is never proof of another. Its effect is simply to leave both
unproved, and neither, therefore, in condition for acceptance. In the
present case the weight of disproof is small. The facts in support of
the evolution hypothesis are multitudinous, and many of them of great
cogency; the facts against it are few, and none of them absolute. It is
simply argued that some questions remain unsolved, and that there are
facts which seem inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of development,
and which no supplementary hypotheses have explained. But no advocates
of evolution hold that the Darwinian theory is final. Evolution is a
growing doctrine. It has been expanding ever since it was first
promulgated. Various seeming difficulties have been explained away, and
it is quite possible that all may disappear as investigation widens. No
such arguments add any weight to the opposite view, which has not and
never could have any standing in science, since it is impossible to
adduce any facts to sustain it. We shall therefore dismiss it from
further consideration, and proceed to state certain general facts in
favor of the evolutionary hypothesis of the origin of man.
II
VESTIGES OF MAN'S ANCESTRY
When, some centuries ago, men began to find fossil remains of animals in
the rocks, a severe shock was given to the prevailing doctrine of the
recent creation of the earth. The adherents of the old theology made
strenuous efforts to explain away this unwelcome circumstance. The
shells found had been dropped by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem;
they were mineral simulations of shells; they had been created by the
Deity and placed where found; they were anything but what they appeared
to be, the existing evidences of a long ancient period of animal life
reaching back very far beyond the assumed date of creation.
It need scarcely be said that these explanations, especially the one
that God had created fossil forms to deceive man, for some
incomprehensible purpose, could not long be maintained. Some of them
were inconsistent with the facts, others with common sense, and in due
time it was everywhere admitted that the earth is of remote duration and
has been inhabited by animals and plants for untold ages. Its structure
revealed its history; its annals were found to be written in the rocks;
its anatomy was full of the evidences of its origin.
When, not many years ago, men began to find the fossil remains of
ancient structures in the body of man himself, theology was brought face
to face with a problem as difficult to explain, from its special point
of view, as that of the fossils in the rocks. As the latter had
threatened and finally disproved the doctrine of the special creation of
the earth, so the former assailed the doctrine of the special creation
of man, and annihilated it in the minds of many eminent scientists. It
formed a prominent argument in favor of the theory of organic evolution,
and as such calls for consideration here, as a suitable groundwork for
our special theme.
The structures referred to may justly be called fossil, since they
present strong evidence of being the useless remains of structures which
played an active part in the bodies of some former animals. A
significant example of this exists in the vermiform appendix, a narrow,
blind tube descending from the caecum of man, and detrimental instead of
useful, since it is the seat of the frequently fatal disease known as
appendicitis. This tube, usually from three to six inches long and of
the thickness of a goose quill, is occasionally absent in man,
occasionally of considerable size. It is quite large, as compared with
the other intestines, in the human embryo, but ceases to grow after a
certain stage of development. The caecum is extremely long in some of the
lower vegetable-eating animals, and the vermiform appendix seems to be a
rudiment of the formerly extended portion of this organ. It is large in
the anthropoid apes, especially in the orang, in which it is very long
and spirally convoluted. Its survival in man as a useless and dangerous
aborted organ is a powerful argument in favor of his descent from the
lower animals.
In the brain of man and many of the lower vertebrates, hanging by two
peduncles, or strands of nerve fibre, from the thalami, or beds of the
optic nerve, is a small rounded or heart-shaped body of about the size
of a pea, known as the pineal gland. It is so destitute of any evident
function that Descartes, in lack of any more probable explanation of its
presence, ascribed to it the noble duty of serving as the seat of the
soul. Late research has been more successful in tracking this organ to
its lair. It is larger in the embryo than in the adult man, still larger
in some lower vertebrates, and in certain lizards has been found to
exist as an eye, its parts plainly distinguishable under the microscope.
It is placed in the middle of the forehead, between the other eyes, and
was no doubt an active organ of vision in some ancient batrachians.
The pineal eye, as it is now named, once useful, long useless, has
persisted as a fossil structure through a far extended line of
development. No more convincing evidence that man gained his body
through descent from the lower animals could be asked for than the
survival in the human brain of this wonderfully significant remnant of
a formerly useful organ. Like various other vestiges of ancient organs,
it is not only useless but detrimental. It occasionally enlarges and
becomes the seat of large and complicated tumors, which may cause death
by their compression of the brain.
Two other structures common to most of the vertebrate animals exist in
man, though they render him little or no service. These are the thymus
and thyroid glands, apparently vestigial structures. The thymus gland
attains a considerable development in the embryo and shrinks away to the
merest vestige in the adult. It begins to form early in the embryo life
as an epithelial ingrowth from the throat, and extends from the neck
into the chest. It continues to grow after birth, but later begins to
shrink and nearly disappears in the adult.
The thyroid gland has a somewhat similar origin, it beginning as an
ingrowth from the lower section of the pharynx and extending down to the
lower part of the neck. It subsequently loses its connection with the
pharynx, and in adult life is a bilobed structure on either side of the
windpipe. Like the thymus it is a ductless gland, abundantly supplied
with blood-vessels, and possesses a vast number of small cavities, lined
with cells and containing an insoluble jelly. So far as appears, both
these glands are useless, or nearly so, to man; or if the thyroid
performs any useful service it is a minor and obscure one. Such
functions as it may have could probably be performed by some of the
other organs, while it is positively detrimental as the seat of goitre.
This unsightly disease is due to its enlargement, either by a great
increase of its blood-vessels or a development of the capsules and
increase of their contained jelly. Dr. S. V. Clevenger considers these
organs to have had a branchial or respiratory origin, saying that there
are many reasons for believing them to be rudimentary gills. Owen says
that the thymus appears in vertebrates with the establishment of the
lung as the main or exclusive respiratory organ. It is wanting in all
fishes, also in the gill-bearing batrachians, siren and proteus. The
thyroid appears in fishes, and Gegenbaur believes that it may have been
a useful organ to the Tunicata in their former state of existence.
Dr. Clevenger, in the _American Naturalist_ for January, 1884, points
out another curious structure in man, whose significance does not seem
to have been previously observed. This is a strange and striking fact
relating to the formation of the veins. It is well known that these
organs possess valves, which permit the free upward flow of the blood
toward the heart, but resist its descent through the action of gravity,
in this way aiding its return from the extremities. The rule holds good
throughout the quadrupeds that the vertical veins possess valves, while
they are absent from the horizontal veins, in which they would be of no
utility. But the singular fact exists that in the human trunk the valves
occur in the horizontal and are absent from the vertical veins. In other
words, they exist where they are useless for their apparent purpose and
are absent where they would be useful.
The only conclusion that can reasonably be drawn from this strange fact
is that we are here dealing with a fossilized structure, a functionless
survival. It leads irresistibly to the inference that man has descended
from a quadruped ancestor, and that when his body took the upright
position the structure of the veins, not being seriously detrimental,
remained unchanged. Those which had been vertical became horizontal, and
retained their now useless valves; those which had been horizontal
became vertical, and remained destitute of valves. The veins of the arms
and legs, vertical in both forms, retained their valves.
Dr. Clevenger points out that the intercostal veins, which carry blood
almost horizontally backward to the azygos veins and which would run
vertically upward in quadrupeds, possess valves. These are not only
useless to man, but when he lies upon his back they are an actual
hindrance to the free flow of the blood. In like manner, the inferior
thyroid veins, whose blood flows into the innominate, are obstructed by
valves at the point of junction.
We quote from him as follows: "There are two pairs of valves in the
external jugular and one pair in the internal jugular, but in
recognition of their uselessness they do not prevent regurgitation of
blood nor liquids from passing upward. An apparent anomaly exists in the
absence of valves from parts where they are most needed, as in the venae
cavae, spinal, iliac, haemorrhoidal, and portal. The azygos veins have
imperfect valves. Place men upon 'all fours' and the law governing the
presence and absence of valves is at once apparent, applicable, so far
as I have been able to ascertain, to all quadrupedal and quadrumanous
animals: _Dorsal veins are valved; cephalad, ventrad, and caudad veins
have no valves._"
Of the few exceptions to this rule, he considers the valves of the
jugular veins as in process of becoming obsolete, and the rudimentary
azygos valves as a recent development. Valves in the haemorrhoidal veins
would be out of place in quadrupeds, but their absence in man is a
serious defect in his organization, since the resulting engorgement of
blood gives rise to the distressing disease known as piles. The presence
of valves would obviate this.
No one can argue that this useless and, to some extent, injurious
condition is a designed result of creation. There could not, indeed, be
stronger evidence that man has descended from a quadruped ancestor. Dr.
Clevenger points out other serious results of the upright position of
the body, from which quadrupeds are free. One of these is the liability
to inguinal hernia, or rupture, which leads to much suffering and
frequent death in man. Prolapsis uteri is another, and a third to which
he particularly alludes is difficulty in parturition.
It has been suggested above that the thyroid gland may possibly be of
some minor functional importance, and that the thymus is developed in
the embryo sufficiently to be functional. As regards the latter, no one
is likely to maintain that an act of direct creation would include the
production of an organ of some slight and obscure utility to the embryo
and useless in later life. The strong probability is that this gland
belongs in the same category with other embryonic survivals yet to be
pointed out. As regards the seeming function of the thyroid, it may be
said that the surviving relic of an ancient functional organ is quite
capable of varying in structure and taking upon itself a new function,
of minor value, which in its absence would be left undone or be
performed by some of the other organs.
A highly interesting example of this exists in the swim-bladder of the
fish, which there is good reason to believe is a survival of an ancient
structure used for quite a different purpose. It was originally
developed, in the opinion of the writer,[1] as an air-breathing organ,
in a very ancient semi-amphibious class of fishes, from which the
existing bony fishes have descended. When the latter resumed the
gill-breathing habit, this organ lost its original function, and its
subsequent history is a curious and significant one. In some modern
fishes it has quite disappeared. In others it exists as a minute and
useless remnant, no larger than a pea. In many it has been converted
into the swim-bladder, and in this form serves a useful purpose, but
varies very greatly in shape and size. Finally, in a few instances, it
retains some measure of its probably original function of air-breathing.
It is a fact of much significance, that those fishes without a
swim-bladder do not seem to be at any disadvantage from its absence, but
are able to make their way vertically through the water quite as well as
those which possess this organ. The presumption, therefore, is that it
is of little utility to the fish, and that its employment for this
purpose is a mere resultant of its survival and character. Such an organ
could never have been evolved as an aid in swimming, since its shrinkage
to a useless rudiment in some cases and its complete extinction in
others show that this function is in no sense a necessary one. It is
there and has lost its old use, and is, in some cases, adapted to
another purpose; that is all that can be said.
Man is the one hairless mammal,--or hairless except on a few parts of
his body. Yet the whole body is covered with a thin growth of hair,
useless for any purpose of protection, and only explainable as a
survival from the mammalian covering. The occasional considerable
development of the hair is an indication pointing to such an origin.
This applies not only to individuals, but to tribes or races, as in the
instances of the Ainos of Japan and some of the Pygmies of Africa. The
disappearance of the hair in man has been traced to no well established
cause. Darwin's view that it may have been a result of sexual selection
seems the most probable explanation. Certainly this is the case with the
beard, whose absence in women shows it to be of no utility, and whose
presence in man is in accord with the many structures in male animals
apparently due to this form of selection.
Darwin has pointed out and explained a very curious peculiarity of the
hair in man, which is absolutely inexplicable except on the theory of
descent. This is the fact that the hairs on man's arms are directed
toward the elbow from above and below, thus growing in opposite
directions on the upper and lower arms. The same peculiarity exists in
the larger anthropoid apes and in some of the gibbons, but is not found
in the lower mammals. In the apes it is believed to be due to the habit
of protecting the head from rain by covering it with the hands, the
hairs turning so that the rain can run downward freely in both
directions toward the bent elbow. This is so useless in man that it can
be explained only as a survival.
There are some other survivals in man of ancient structures to which a
passing allusion must suffice. In man's eye is a minute membrane, the
semilunar fold, which is absolutely useless in his economy. There is
every reason to believe that this is the rudiment of a membrane which is
fully developed in many animals, and is especially useful to birds, the
nictitating membrane, or third eyelid. Again, the muscles which move the
skin in many animals, especially in horses, have left inactive remnants
in many parts of the human body. These are normally active only in the
forehead, where they serve to lift the eyebrows, but they occasionally
become active elsewhere. Thus there are some persons who can move the
skin of the scalp. Darwin cites some who could throw heavy books from
the head in this manner. The same may be said of the rudimentary muscles
of the ear. There are persons who can move their ears in the same way as
is done by the lower animals. Again, the whole external ear may be
looked upon as a rudimentary structure, since it does not appear to aid
the hearing in man. As regards the pointed ear of man's probable
ancestor, Darwin calls attention to what seems a trace in man of the
lost tip.
Carrying this consideration farther, it may be asked, Of what use are
the five toes to man? Would not a solid foot have answered the purpose
of walking quite as well? But as survivals their presence is fully
accounted for, since they are indispensable to many of the lower
animals. Question may also be made of the utility of the large number of
bones in the wrist and heel of man. Equal flexibility of the joint could
certainly have been obtained with a smaller number of bones. It is only
when these are traced back to their probable origin in the walking
organs of the fish ancestor of the batrachians that their presence
becomes explainable. They are apparently survivals of a very ancient
structure, originated for swimming, and adapted to walking.
As regards the wrist of man, a curious prediction that a certain bone
found in some of the lower animals, the _os centrale_, would be found in
man has been made and verified, it being discovered as a very small
rudiment in the human embryo. The tail, so common a feature in the lower
animals, but absent from the higher apes and from man, has not vanished
without leaving its traces. In the human embryo it is plainly indicated;
and while it vanishes in man beyond the embryo stage, it is simply
hidden beneath the skin, where its vertebrae are still apparent, usually
three, sometimes four or five, in number. In addition to this, the
muscles which move the tail have left traces of their presence, which
not infrequently develop into true muscles.
In the human embryo, indeed, we find ourselves in the midst of highly
significant indications of man's origin. The body of man passes in its
early development through a series of stages, in each of which it
resembles the mature or the embryo state of certain animals lower in the
stage of existence. It begins its existence as a simple cell, analogous
in form to the amoeba, one of the lowest living creatures, and later
assumes the gastrula form supposed to have been that of the earliest
many-celled animals. From this state it progresses by successive stages,
each of which has some relation in form to a lower class.
The most significant of these is that in which the embryo is closely
assimilated to the fish, by the possession of gill slits. There are four
of these openings in the neck of the human foetus, and they are at times
so persistent that children have been born with them still open, so that
fluids taken in at the mouth could trickle out at the neck, the opening
being sufficient to admit a thin probe.[2] These slits are utilized in
the developing embryo, one of them being devoted to an important duty,
that of conversion into the external and middle ear. Thus the opening
for hearing is an adaptation of what was once an opening for breathing.
Occasionally an ear-like outgrowth appears on the neck, indicative of
the attempt of a second slit to develop into an ear. The purpose of the
gill slits is made more apparent by the presence in the embryo of gill
arches of the blood-vessels, like those normal to the fish. These
disappear in common with the slits.
The temporary appearance of these gill slits is the strongest evidence
that could well be demanded that the human embryo passes through the
various stages which the adult has assumed in its long development in
past time, and that one of these stages was the fish. And these form
only one of the evidences of man's origin to be found in the embryo.
Another which may be mentioned is the wool-like hair which covers the
foetus, and whose presence is incomprehensible except on the theory of
descent. Its most probable explanation is that it appears as a passing
survival of the first permanent coat of hair of the lower mammals.
In the milk teeth of man we have another useless and often annoying
survival of an ancient state of the dental organs. We cannot well
imagine that in any direct creation a set of temporary teeth would have
been provided as preliminary to a permanent set--an utterly useless
provision. But when we find that in a lower stage of animal life the old
teeth are periodically succeeded by new ones, we can understand how a
trace of this condition has persisted in the mammalia.
Other evidences of man's origin in the lower animals could be drawn from
the phenomena of atavism, or arrest of development in parts or organs of
the body. Atavism is usually confined within the line of human descent,
conditions appearing in many of us which belonged to some of our human
ancestors a few generations, occasionally many generations, in the past.
But conditions now and then appear which are abnormal to man, but which
are normal to some of the lower animals. This tendency is exhibited by
all organisms. In an occasional horse the long-lost stripes of the
zebra-like ancestor reappear. Now and then a blue pigeon, like the
ancestral form, crops up in a pure breed of domesticated birds. Even in
the details of anatomy some long-vanished character suddenly appears.
Many instances of this in man might be cited, embracing various features
of the muscular and other internal organs. The abnormality of club-foot
may be pointed to as a reversion to the shape of the foot in the
anthropoid apes. This, however, is a retention of a condition existing
in the foetus of man, the foot being drawn up and the sole turned inward
and upward. It is simply a passing testimony to the ancestral condition
of man.
Again, we have the fact that man possesses normally only twelve ribs,
one less than is found in the gorilla and the chimpanzee. This leads to
the possibility that man may have lost a rib in his development, and in
significant evidence of this is the fact that occasionally a thirteenth
rib appears in the human framework.
The functionless organs in men are, as above said, closely analogous to
the fossils in the rocks, in that both point back to a period in which
they were active, vital forms occupying a definite place in the long
line of animal life or animal structure. The argument that God directly
created the fossils is no more absurd than the one that He directly
created these useless and at times detrimental organs. It is impossible
to offer a reason for such a futile exercise of creative power, unless
that it was intended to make it falsely appear that man arose from the
world of life below him. Will any one in this age assert that God placed
useless and dangerous structures in the body of man for the incredible
purpose of deceiving him in regard to his origin? And will it be further
asserted that the Deity placed similar stumbling-blocks to the human
reason in the embryo, in order to deceive those who should extend their
researches to this low level? It would be difficult to conceive of a
more preposterous idea, yet there is no other escape from what seems a
self-evident fact, that man is a product of evolution from the lower
animals, and bears the marks of his ancestry thick upon him.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "On the Air Bladder of Fishes." Proceedings of the Academy
of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1885.]
[Footnote 2: Sutton, "Evolution and Disease."]
III
RELICS OF ANCIENT MAN
If now, instead of seeking for evidences of man's ancestry within the
human body, in survivals of ancient anatomical structures, we seek for
them within the crust of the earth, we find ourselves confronted with
evidences of a great antiquity of the human race, partly in implements
of human manufacture, partly in ancient or fossilized bones of primitive
man. These indicate not only great remoteness of origin, but also a very
gradual advance from the lowest stage of inventive ability to the high
level now attained.
These relics of primitive man are divided by Dana into ten varieties,
(1) Buried human bones; (2) stone arrow and lance heads, hatchets,
pestles, etc.; (3) flint chips, left in the manufacture of implements;
(4) arrow heads and other implements made of bone and deer horn; (5)
bones, teeth, and shells bored or notched by human hands; (6) cut or
carved wood; (7) bone, horn, ivory, or stone graven with figures, or cut
into the shapes of animals; (8) marrow bones broken longitudinally to
obtain the marrow for food; (9) fragments of charcoal and other
indications of the use of fire; (10) fragments of pottery.
Relics of the kinds above cited have been found at intervals for many
years past, but their age and significance were doubted, and only within
some forty years has the great antiquity of man upon the earth been
generally acknowledged by scientists. The most important early find of
ancient implements was made by Boucher de Perthes in 1841 and
subsequently, in the high level gravels of the valley of the Somme, in
Picardy, France. In deep layers of these gravels, which were deposited
at a period when the river occupied a wider and higher channel than at
present, he found rude flint weapons and tools, bearing plain evidences
of human workmanship, and mingled with the teeth and bones of animals,
both of living and extinct species. Among the bones were those of the
mammoth and the hairy rhinoceros, species evidently contemporary with
man, though they have long since vanished from the earth. At a somewhat
earlier date, implements of men, mingled with bones of the cave-bear,
cave-lion, hyena, and other species, had been found in the caves of
France and Belgium. These were frequently buried beneath deposits of
stalagmite and other materials that must have taken a long time to
accumulate.
The significance of these discoveries was long in forcing itself upon
the attention of scientific men. Nearly twenty years passed before
Boucher de Perthes could get the noted geologists of France and England
to investigate the Somme gravels. When they did so they were quickly
convinced of the genuine antiquity of these relics, and announced it as
a fact beyond question that man had lived in the Somme valley and
fashioned rude implements out of flint during what was known as the
Quaternary or Drift Period of geology.
The discoveries here made set men actively at work investigating
elsewhere. Excavations were made in other high level gravels, caverns
were carefully and minutely examined, Kent's Cavern, England, was dug
out to its rock bottom, dozens of important finds resulted, and the
antiquity of man was proved to extend back from thousands to tens of
thousands, if not to hundreds of thousands, of years. And the
coexistence of man with the animals whose bones accompanied his relics
was proved by unquestionable evidence, for drawings and carved forms of
these animals were found, proving incontestably that man had gazed upon
their living forms. Thus the sketch of a mammoth, showing the long hair
which served to protect this animal from the cold, was found engraved
upon a piece of mammoth ivory, and one of a group of reindeer on a piece
of reindeer horn. There were also drawings of the cave-bear, the seal,
etc., and one very interesting group showing the aurochs, a number of
trees, and a man with a snake apparently biting his heel. The carvings
consisted of the horn handle of a dagger, cut into the shape of a
reindeer, and other forms.
That these relics belong to a far distant age is proved by the strongest
evidence. It must suffice here to give some of the more striking of
these proofs of antiquity. The flint hatchets found at St. Acheul,
France, were obtained from a gravel bed which lay below twelve feet of
sand and marl. On the surface was a layer of soil, in which were graves
of the Gallo-Roman period, showing that it had been there for at least
fifteen hundred years. The time needed for the slow accumulation of the
whole series of deposits must have been very considerable.
A much more decisive proof of antiquity is given by the position in
which this and similar gravel beds lie. They are found along the sides
of rivers at a height often of a hundred or two hundred feet above the
flood level of the streams. When they were deposited, the rivers must
have run at this elevation, so that time has since elapsed sufficient
for the streams to cut down their valleys to the present depths. The
streams may have formerly been of greater volume, and had superior
cutting powers, and they may have been aided by the ice of the Glacial
Age, yet, however we estimate, the conclusion is inevitable that the men
who dropped their implements into those gravels must have lived upon the
earth ages before the beginning of historical times.
The presence there of remains of animals which ages ago perished from
the earth is another circumstance indicative of high antiquity. These
embrace the mammoth,--the great hairy elephant of prehistoric times,--an
extinct hair-clad rhinoceros, the large and powerful cave-bear and
cave-lion, the great Irish elk, and still other animals of whose
existence we know only by their bones. Others, which existed in common
with men of later date, are the reindeer and the musk-ox, species of
which now inhabit the coldest regions of the north, and whose presence
in southern Europe at that era seems to indicate a much colder climate
than that of historic times.
The evidences of human antiquity here briefly presented are accompanied
by indications of a gradual development of the human intellect. If man
has "fallen from his high estate," he has left no traces of this high
estate on his downward path. We possess abundant indications of his
upward climb, we find none of a preceding descent. If we base our
opinions on known facts, the theory of development is the only one that
can be sustained; the doctrine of a fall is absolutely without warrant
outside the pages of Genesis.
The successive stages of man's mental development, as indicated in the
work of his hands, are well and clearly marked. At the lowest level we
find tools and weapons of the palaeolithic or old stone age, made of
roughly chipped stone, rude in form, and never ground or polished. These
present some evidence of gradual improvement, but we must go to a
higher level to find implements of a decidedly higher order, the neatly
shaped and polished stone implements of the neolithic or new stone age.
With the coming of these appears a much greater diversity in tools and
weapons, and evidences of a growing skill in manufacture and a
considerably greater power of invention. Still higher lie the deposits
of the bronze age, in which metal replaces stone in human implements.
Finally appears the age of iron, that in which we still remain. We need
merely refer in passing to the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, with their
many interesting relics of man during the later stone, the bronze, and
the early iron eras; and the kitchen-middens, or refuse-heaps, of the
Danish islands and elsewhere, which extend from the old stone age far
down toward the historic period.
These are but a portion of the evidences of man's antiquity and his
gradual progress in the arts of manufacture. Others have been found in
many parts of the earth. Many of them exist in America, proving that man
resided on this continent at a very distant era. When we consider that
late discoveries in Babylonia appear to carry back the age of
civilization and historical relics to some ten thousand years, and that
semi-civilization must have extended very considerably beyond that time,
the vista of man's gradual progress seems to recede interminably and the
era of primitive man to stretch backward to an enormously remote
period. In truth, discoveries have been made which are claimed to carry
man back beyond the Quaternary and into the Tertiary Period of geology,
since cut and scratched bones have been found in Pliocene deposits,
which some geologists of experience believe to have been the work of
human hands. Still more remote are some seemingly chipped flints and
bones cut in a way that suggests human action, which have been found in
deposits of the very far-distant Miocene Age. The immense remoteness of
this epoch and the rudeness of the work have cast much doubt on the
human origin of these remains, though their authenticity as the work of
man has been accepted by several competent observers, among them the
able anthropologist, Quatrefages.
If we confine ourselves, however, to the conclusions regarding ancient
man which are generally accepted, we must say that he has not been
clearly traced back beyond the Glacial Period, though some of the relics
found in the older river gravels and in the lowest cave accumulations
may well be of pre-glacial age. Many geologists believe that he reached
Europe as early as the extinct mammals with which he was contemporaneous
there, but how far back in time this would carry his advent it is
impossible to say.
Coming now to the consideration of more immediate human relics, the
bones of man himself, it must be said that well-authenticated remains
of palaeolithic or early neolithic man are not numerous. As long as man
left his bones to the unaided agencies of nature, they were little
likely to be preserved. Of the anthropoid apes of Europe, probably
numerous in individuals, a few remains of one or two species alone
survive. Of pre-glacial man none remain, but this may merely indicate
that he has shared the fate of numerous other species that died out and
left no trace. It was only when the growing cold drove man from the open
woods to seek shelter in caves that remnants of his body were likely to
be preserved, and only when a growing sense of human dignity led to the
art of sepulture that the preservation of his bones became assured.
The burial art was seemingly not practised by the hunters of the
river-drift period or by men of still earlier date. The only remains of
primitive man known are those found in caves and rock shelters. A number
of human skulls have been discovered in these situations, and in a few
instances skeletons have been exhumed. In the neolithic period interment
became more common and more carefully performed, and the progress of
this period is marked by many remains of man, which in later times were
buried in elaborately constructed stone sepulchres, sometimes massive in
materials and covered by great earth-mounds.
What is meant by the Glacial Age is probably well-known to most readers,
but its close relations to ancient man render it important for those
who are not familiar with its meaning that a passing description of it
should here be given. It will suffice to say that there are found over
much of the northern portions of America and Europe accumulations of
clays, sands, and gravels, sometimes laid down in stratified beds,
sometimes rudely piled together. In these occur blocks of stone, large
and small, and other blocks, occasionally of great size, are found in
isolated localities. The solid rocks which lie beneath these heaps are
often scratched or polished, as if the material had been pushed over
them with great force.
All geologists now believe that these accumulations were made by ice, at
some remote period when a very cold climate prevailed in the northern
hemisphere, and great glaciers slowly made their way southward, grinding
and rending as they went, and burying the land under their mountain-like
heaps, which sometimes were a mile or more in depth. In North America
the glacial ice pushed southward to the 40th degree of north latitude.
In Europe it extended to the Alpine region, but failed to reach the
countries bordering on the Mediterranean.
The elaborate and minute investigation of the glacial deposits has made
it highly probable that there were two glacial eras, two periods in
which the ice pushed down far to the south, and that these were
separated by a period in which the ice retreated and an age of warmer
weather intervened. This is known as the interglacial period. So far as
can be positively ascertained, all the authentic relics of man belong to
the Glacial Age. They seem first to become numerous in the interglacial
period, and continue to increase and become diversified as we descend
lower in time. How long ago it was that the sea of ice began its
downflow over the earth it is impossible to say. Some place it back six
hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand years. Some seek to bring it
down to a quite recent date. It is still so uncertain and such a matter
of controversy that the utmost we are able definitely to say is that it
was very long ago.
While there is no positive proof that men dwelt in Europe before the
coming on of the glacial chill, we have no just reason to doubt it. That
he lived there during glacial times is unquestionable, and we may be
very well assured that a naked tropical animal, destitute of the hairy
covering of the other animals, would not have chosen that frozen period
to migrate to the north. The fact that he was there during the ice age
seems satisfactory evidence that he was there before that age, during
the mild climate of late Tertiary times, and that--for a reason which we
shall hereafter consider--he was caught there and unable to retreat, and
was forced to adapt himself to the new conditions.
During the warm preceding period he probably wandered as a hunter
through the European forests. But with the gradual coming on of a wintry
chill, as the advance of the ice began, shelter of some kind became
necessary, and he sought refuge in caves. From being a forest wanderer
he became a troglodyte. Everywhere in southwestern Europe we find traces
of this period of man's existence. There is hardly a cave or rock
shelter in that region within which he has not left his marks. He made
his way to England, which was probably then connected by land with
Europe, and dwelt long in its caverns. His period of cave residence,
indeed, appears to have been a very extended one. While it continued,
deposits many feet in depth gradually accumulated on the floors of the
caverns, slowly filling them up. And that, in some cases at least, this
cave residence ended a very long time ago, we are assured, for since
then a great thickness of stalagmite, which is deposited with extreme
slowness, has spread over the lower cave deposits and sealed them in.
It is in these caves that we find, not only the rude stone spearheads,
scrapers, hammers, etc., the bone awls, borers, and other implements of
palaeolithic man, but the bones of man himself. And it is significant of
his primitive condition that these earliest relics indicate a man of a
very low grade of development, mentally far above the ape, it is true,
but mentally and physically much below modern man.
The most ape-like of those human remains is the famous Neanderthal
skull, found in 1856 in a limestone cavern of the Neanderthal Valley,
between Duesseldorf and Elberfeld, in Rhenish Prussia. The relics
discovered consist of the brain cap, two femori, two humeri, and other
fragments. The fragment of the skull attracted wide attention by its
bestial aspect, it presenting a low, narrow and receding forehead, and
an enormous thickness of the bony ridges over the eyes, like that seen
in the gorilla. This skull, which was associated with remains of the
cave-bear, hyena, and rhinoceros, is, with one exception, the most
ape-like human relic yet found. Yet its cranial capacity is far above
that of the highest apes, and is assimilated with that of Hottentot and
Polynesian skulls.
It has been maintained that this is a pathological specimen, and does
not represent normal man. But this theory has been disproved by the fact
that other skulls of similar cranial characters are now known,
indicating that the Neanderthal cranium represents a type of man, not an
abnormal individual. In the Spy Cavern, in the province of Namur,
Belgium, there were found, in 1886, two nearly perfect skeletons of a
man and a woman, both of them with very prominent eye ridges, low,
retreating foreheads, and large orbits. This was strikingly the case
with the woman. The lower jaws in both were heavy, while the woman was
almost destitute of a chin--a marked ape-like characteristic. The tibia
was shorter than in any known race and stouter than in most. Its curious
feature was the articulation with the femur, which was such that to
maintain the equilibrium the head and body must have been thrown
forward, as is the case in the anthropoid apes.
In the cave of Naulette, near Dinant, Belgium, has been found the lower
jaw of a man of decidedly ape-like aspect. Its prognathism or protrusion
is extreme, and the canine teeth were very strong, while the molars were
evidently large and increased in size backward, a non-human
characteristic. At La Denise, in the upper Loire, France, have been
found the frontal bones of a man like the Neanderthal man in type, the
forehead being depressed and retreating, and the superciliary ridges
large and thick. Several other skulls of this general type are known,
but the above will suffice as examples.