severe and protracted one. The animal kingdom did not yield readily to
man's lordship, and the war must have been long and bitter, settled as
the relations now seem. Rest has succeeded victory. The lower animals
are now submissive to man, or retire before him in dread of his strength
and resources, and the strain upon his powers has ceased. So far as
this phase of evolution is concerned the influences aiding the mental
development of man have lost their strength. The warfare is over, and
man reigns supreme over the kingdom of life.
Of all animals the man-ape was the best adapted for such a struggle. The
other anthropoid apes, while favored by the formation of their hands,
lacked that freedom of the arms to which man mainly owes his success. No
other animal has ever appeared with arms freed from duty in locomotion
and at the same time endued with the power of grasping, and these are
the features of organization to which the evolution of the human
intellect was wholly due in its first stages. The man-ape was not able
to contend successfully with the larger animals by aid of its natural
weapons. Its diminutive size, its lack of tearing claws, and its lesser
powers of speed, left it at a disadvantage, and had it attempted to
conquer by the aid of its strength and the seizing and rending powers of
teeth and nails, its victory over the larger animals would never have
been won. Even with the aid of the cunning and alertness of the apes,
their power of observation, their combination for defence and attack,
and their general mental superiority to the tenants of the animal world,
their supremacy in the event of their becoming carnivorous must have
been confined to the smaller creatures, and could not have been
established over the larger animals of their native habitat except
through the aid of other than their natural powers.
It was by the use of artificial weapons that the conquest was gained.
The tendency to use missiles as weapons of offence and defence, which is
shown by various species of monkeys, was in all probability greatly
developed by the man-ape, the only carnivorous member, if our premises
are correct, of the whole extensive family of the apes, and the only one
with the free use of its hands and arms. By the use of weapons of this
kind the powers of offence of this animal were enormously increased. As
skill was acquired in their use, and more efficient weapons were
selected or formed, the man-ape steadily advanced in controlling
influence, and the lower animal world became more and more subordinated.
No doubt the struggle was a protracted one. The previously dominant
animals did not submit without a severe and long-continued contest.
Thousands of years may have passed before the larger animals were
subdued, for it is probable that the invention of superior weapons by an
animal of low mental powers was a very slow process. Each stage of
invention gave higher success, but these stages were very deliberate
ones.
However this be, we can be assured that the superiority of the ancestral
man lay in his mental resources, and that his victory was due to the
employment of his mind rather than of his body. As a result, the
developing influence of the conflict was exerted upon his brain, the
organ of the mind, far more than upon his physical frame, and this organ
gradually increased in size, while the body as a whole remained
practically unchanged. The conflict began with the man-ape on a level in
power and dominance with animals of its own size and inferior to those
of greater size and strength. It ended with man dominant over all the
lower animals. Such a progress, if made by any animal through variation
in physical structure, must have caused radical and extraordinary
changes in size, strength, and utility of the natural organs of offence.
If made, as in the instance in question, through development of the
organ of the mind alone, it could not but have produced a great increase
in the size and power of this organ; and the dimensions of the brain in
primitive man, as compared with those of the brain in the anthropoid
apes, do not seem too great for the magnitude of the result.
The conflict ended, a new animal, man, finally and fully emerged from
the family of the apes and settled down in the restful consciousness of
victory, with a much larger brain and greatly superior mental powers
than were possessed at the beginning of the struggle, yet in physical
aspect not greatly changed from his ancestral form after it had first
fully gained the erect attitude. The powers gained enabled early man
easily to hold the position he had won, and there was no further
special strain upon his faculties until a new contest began, that
between man and nature, supplemented by a still more vital struggle,
that between man and man.
To return to the point from which we set out, it may be said that, as
the man-ape gained facility in walking in the erect attitude, and its
hands and arms became fully adapted to the use of weapons, its standing
in the animal kingdom changed essentially from that before held. Fear
and flight ended, retreat ceased, attack began, pursuit succeeded
flight, and the great battle for mastery entered upon its long course.
An element which aided materially in the victory was the social habit of
the animal in question, and the mutual aid which the members of any
group gave one another. Educative influences also naturally follow
association, every invention or improvement devised by one becomes the
property of the whole, and nothing of importance once gained is lost.
The stages of this progress were, undoubtedly, in their outer aspect,
stages of improvement in weapons. We seem to see ancestral man, in his
early career as a carnivorous animal, seizing the stones and sticks that
came readily to hand, and flinging them with some little skill at his
prey, in the same manner as we can perceive the baboon doing the same
thing. In like manner we observe him breaking off branches from the
trees and using them as clubs. One of the first steps of development
from this crude stage in the use of weapons would be the selection of
stones suited by size and shape for throwing, and the choice of clubs of
suitable length and thickness, the latter being stripped of their twigs.
For a long time fresh weapons, those immediately at hand, would be
seized and used for every new conflict; but as the idea of the
superiority of some weapons to others arose, a second stage of evolution
must have begun. The selected club, broken from the tree and prepared
for use with some care, and thus embodying a degree of choice and labor,
would be too valuable to fling idly away, and might be retained for
future use, the first personal possession of inchoate man. Similarly,
stones carefully chosen for their suitability for throwing would be
probably kept, and a small store of them collected. In short, we may
conceive of the man-ape thus gathering a magazine of weapons,--clubs and
stones,--sought or shaped during hours of leisure for use in hours of
conflict. In this way our animal ancestor doubtless slowly became a
skilful hunter, carrying his weapons with him in the chase, and using
them efficiently in the conquest of prey.
A third stage in this progress was reached when to some wise-headed old
man-ape came the idea of combining the two forms of weapon in use, of
fastening in some way the stone to the club in order that a more
effective blow might be struck. The vegetable kingdom furnishes natural
cords, flat stones with more or less cutting edges could be chosen and
bound to the end of the club, and the earliest form of the battle-axe
would be produced. With its formation the man-ape made another important
step of progress and added greatly to his powers of offence. Stage by
stage he was bringing his animal competitors under his control.
The formation of an axe or hatchet, however crude it may have been,
would naturally lead to another step in advance. With it the ancestral
man had passed beyond the possession of a weapon into the possession of
a tool. The shaping of his clubs previously had been done by a rude
tearing or hammering off of their twigs. These could now be cut off, and
in addition the club might be wrought into a better shape. Manufacture
had begun. Our ancestor stood at one end of a long line, at the other
end of which we behold the steam-engine, the electric motor, and an
interminable variety of other instruments.
Primitive manufacture was not confined to the shaping of wood. The
shaping of stone followed in due time. If a tree branch could be made
more suitable for its purpose by cutting it into shape with a rude stone
axe or hatchet, a stone of better shape might be obtained by hammering.
Doubtless the chipping effect of striking stone upon stone had been
often observed before the idea arose that this could be made useful, and
that where stones of the desired shape were not to be found, the shape
of those at hand might in this way be improved.
If we seek for some turning-point, some stage of progress, in which the
man-ape fairly emerged into man, perhaps it would be well to select that
which we have now reached, that in which the animal in question, which
had hitherto used the objects of nature in their natural form, first
gained the idea of manufacture and began to shape these objects by the
use of tools. In truth, the dividing line between man-ape and man was
imperceptibly fine. Various points of demarcation might be chosen, each
founded on some important step in evolution. But among them all that in
which the effort to convert the objects of nature into better weapons by
the use of tools is perhaps the best, as it was probably the first step
in that long process of manufacture to which man owes his wonderful
advance.
With this early effort at manufacture, man had reached a stage in which
he was first able to make a permanent record of his existence upon the
earth--aside from that of the very infrequent preservation of his bones
as fossil remains. A chipped stone is a permanent object. Even a very
rudely shaped one bears some indications of its origin upon its surface,
some marks pointing back to man in his early days. Unfortunately for
anthropologists, natural agencies sometimes produce effects resembling
those achieved by man's hands, and some degree of skill in manufacture
and well-marked design is necessary before one can be sure that a
seeming stone weapon has not been shaped by nature instead of man.
Within a recent period research for the evidence of early man in the
shape of chipped stones has been diligently made, with an abundance of
undoubted and a number of doubtful results. Some of these reach very far
back in time, and if actually the work of man he must have lived upon
the earth as a manufacturing animal for years that may be numbered by
the million. Seemingly chipped stones have been found that belong to the
remote Miocene geological age. With the latter are some scratches upon
bones that also seem the work of tools. But these Miocene relics are
questionable. They do not seem to surpass the shaping power of nature
herself. Unless some more indubitable relics are found, we must place
the advent of man as a tool-using animal at a much later date. How far
back he may have existed as a man-like biped is another question, which
we are not likely soon to solve.
It is scarcely necessary to pursue this branch of our subject farther.
We have reached one end of a line of development, the succeeding course
of which is well known. From the earliest rudely chipped stones and
flints that are certainly the work of man, we can easily trace his
progress upward through better examples of the chipped and later through
those of the polished stone implement, until the age of metal began.
And with these stones have been found many other indications of the
progressing powers of man, in the shaping of bone, the invention and use
of a considerable variety of implements and ornaments, and the earliest
efforts of art, as stated in a preceding section. There is no occasion
to go into the detail of these steps of progress. When they are reached,
this section of our work ends. We are concerned here simply with man's
ancestor and man in his earliest stage of existence, not with man in his
later course of development.
IX
THE FIRST STAGE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
The question has often been asked, if man has descended from an ape
ancestor why is it that no traces of this ancestral form have been found
in a fossil state? If man has gone through such an extended course of
development, why has he left no remains? This question, looked upon as
unanswerable by many of those who ask it, is really of minor importance.
A half-dozen answers, each of considerable weight, could easily be made
to it. In the first place, it may be said that the absence of remains
referred to is far from a single instance, but one out of thousands. It
is generally admitted that the species of animals found fossil are very
far from representing all the species that have existed upon the earth,
and probably form but a minute percentage of them. In the second place,
the remains of man's ancestor have not been sought for in its native
locality, the tropical regions. In the third place, man belongs to the
class of animals least likely to be preserved in the fossil state, since
they dwell in the depths of forests and at a distance from the lakes and
streams in whose muddy bottoms the remains of so many animals have been
fossilized. Another answer is, that of the various species of anthropoid
apes that probably existed in the past, a few relics only of a single
species have been found. If there were this one species alone, its
number of individuals must have reached into the millions, yet of those
hosts only a few fugitive bones are known to exist. There could not well
be a more striking instance of the imperfection of the geological
record. The sparse remains of Dryopithecus, the species in question,
with some few other fossils of doubtfully anthropoid species, save us
from a total blank, and open the vista to a myriad of active arboreal
creatures which had their dwelling-place in the old-time European
forests, but have almost utterly vanished from human knowledge.
These are not the only answers that can be made to the question
propounded. Though the bones of the man-ape have not been found, relics
of several stages of developing man exist. Most significant among these,
until recently, was the celebrated Neanderthal skull, which in facial
aspect departs widely from the ordinary human and approaches the simian
type. More significant still is the Pithecanthropus cranium, indicative
of an animal that stood midway between man and ape, a creature fully
erect in posture, as its thigh bone proves, but with a brain that had
attained but the halfway stage of development. In this notable find we
seem to see man in the making, the body already fully man-like, the
brain advanced much beyond the stage of the ape intellect, but still far
below that of man. It is the remnant of a creature significantly on the
dividing line between man-ape and man.
So much for the response to the question as hitherto made. As the case
stands, we are not obliged to stop at this point. Within the latter
section of the nineteenth century discoveries have been made which fit
in admirably with our argument. Rediscoveries, perhaps, we should call
them, for they were imperfectly known in ancient times, but only
recently have they fairly come within human ken. We refer to the Pygmy
tribes of the African forests, not definitely offered hitherto as aids
to the elucidation of this problem, yet which seem to adapt themselves
closely to it, and certainly help essentially in filling the gap between
civilized man and his ape-like ancestor.
We have already said that there appear to have been two separate and
distinct stages in the evolution of man: one, that of his conflict with
the animal world, ending in his mastery of the brute creation; the
second that of his conflict with nature, ending in his mastery of the
resources of the earth. Overlapping and succeeding the second there has
been a third, that of the conflict of man with man, ending in the
survival of the fittest of the human race. In the discussion of this
problem, as hitherto made, these distinct stages of evolution, with
their intermediate resting stages, have not been recognized; argument
being based on man as a whole, and no thought directed to the
possibility that existing man may represent several separate processes
of development, with broad lapses between. The argument we propose to
offer is that man as he was at the completion of his first stage, that
of the subjugation of the animal world, and before the beginning of the
conflict with nature, still exists, the first derivation from the
man-ape, living in the location and possessing much of the appearance
and many of the habits of this ancestral form.
Late travellers in Africa have found more than trees and streams in the
forest depths. They have found there a distinct and peculiar race of
men, negro-like in many particulars, yet differing from the negroes in
others, and specially marked by their dwarfish stature, which is
indicated in the name of Pygmies, usually given them. These diminutive
beings were known as long ago as the days of Homer, and their legendary
combats with the cranes are spoken of by him in his poems. He was not
aware of what is known now, that these forest dwarfs would disdain the
cranes as antagonists, and are quite capable of overcoming the lordly
elephant. In truth, they know no equals in the forest, and, while
destitute of any knowledge of agriculture, are the most skilful,
considering the primitive character of their weapons, of the hunters of
the earth.
The forest is the home of the Pygmy, as in all probability it was of the
man-ape. He dwells in its deepest recesses, its moist and sultry depths,
and pines when removed from his native realm in the heart of the tropic
woods. In truth, he is almost as fully arboreal as was his tree-dwelling
ancestor and as are his forest relatives, the anthropoid apes of to-day;
not inhabiting the limbs of trees, indeed, but living under their shade,
and forming the true man of the woodland, the nomad hunters of the vast
equatorial forests. It must be said, however, that this is not wholly
the case. There are tribes seemingly belonging to this race in South
Africa who dwell in the open desert, but retain there, in great measure,
the habits of their forest kin.
The first of modern travellers to see the Pygmies was Du Chaillu, in his
journey through the African woodlands in 1867. He describes them as
averaging four feet seven inches in height, their complexion of a pale
yellow brown, the hair of their head short, but their bodies covered
with a thick growth of hair, as if the loss of their ancestral covering
had not been completed. The tribe seen by him was known as the Obongo,
and dwelt in Ashango Land, occupying the forest region between the
Gaboon and the Congo.
Dr. Schweinfurth, whose exploration extended from 1868 to 1870, was the
next to meet these nomads of the forests, of whom he has given an
interesting description in his "Heart of Africa." He met with them in
the country of the Manbuttoo, on the Welle River, between three degrees
and four degrees north latitude. The tribe seen by him, known as the
Akka, was made up of very diminutive individuals, none being over four
feet ten inches high, and some only four feet. Their bodies were in due
proportion to their height, so that they resembled half-grown boys in
size.
The Akkas, as described by him, have large heads, huge ears, and very
prognathous faces. Their arms are long and lank, the chest flat and
narrow, widening below to support a huge hanging abdomen, the legs short
and bandy, and the walk a waddling motion, there being a sort of lurch
with each step. In this latter respect they recall the gibbon in its
effort to walk. The gaping aspect of the mouth has a suggestive
resemblance to that of the ape. They are also ape-like in their
incessant play of countenance, twitching of eyebrows, rapid gestures of
hands and feet, nodding and wagging of the head, and remarkable agility.
Their skin is of a dull brown color, "like partly roasted coffee," and
destitute of the covering of hair seen by Du Chaillu on the Obongos. The
hair of the head and the beard is scanty and of woolly texture.
Stanley, who frequently met those forest dwarfs in his expedition for
the relief of Emin Pacha, gives much information concerning them in his
"In Darkest Africa." He found, indeed, two types of dwarfs, one the
Wambutti, who were of attractive aspect, having large, round eyes, full
and prominent round faces with broad foreheads, jaws slightly
prognathous, hands and feet small, figures well formed though
diminutive, and complexion of a brick red hue. The other type, the Akka,
he describes as having "small, cunning, monkey eyes, close and deeply
set." One woman described by him had "protruding lips overhanging her
chin, a prominent abdomen, narrow flat chest, sloping shoulders, long
arms, feet strongly turned inward, and very short lower legs." She was
"certainly deserving of being classed as an extremely low, degraded,
almost a bestial type of a human being." The language of the Akka is of
a very undeveloped type, and seems a link between articulate and
inarticulate speech.
Stanley, in his journey down the Congo, heard many stories of the forest
dwarfs, who were described to him as a yard high, with long beards and
large heads. Other traditional accounts of them similarly speak of their
long beards, though Stanley saw none answering to this description. The
first individual seen by him in this journey was four feet six and a
half inches high, and measured thirty inches round the chest. He was of
a light chocolate color, with a thin fringe of whiskers, his legs bowed
and with thin shanks, the calf being undeveloped. His body was covered
with a thick, fur-like hair, nearly half an inch long, in this respect
agreeing with those described by Du Chaillu.
The Batwas, seen and measured by Dr. Ludwig Wolfe in the middle Congo
basin in 1886, were of an average height of four feet three inches. They
resemble the Akka in general appearance, and have longish heads, long
narrow faces, and small reddish eyes. They bounded through the tall
herbage "like grasshoppers" and were remarkably agile in climbing.
For several years past there have been rumors of a race of Pygmies in
the interior of the Cameroons, but these reports were not verified until
the year 1898, when the Bulu expedition of the German military force
succeeded, with much difficulty, in seeing several individuals of this
race, secured through the aid of a native chief. One woman was measured
and proved to be just four feet high. The color was from chocolate-brown
to copperish, except the palms, which were of a yellowish white. The
hair was deep black, thick, and frizzled; the skull broad and high; the
lips full and swollen. Like other Pygmy tribes, these are very shy,
wandering from place to place in the forest, and avoiding frequented
routes of travel. They are skilful hunters and collect much rubber,
which they dispose of to the negro tribes.
In the same year Mr. Albert B. Lloyd made a journey in Central Africa,
following Stanley's route down the Congo. He was alone, with the
exception of a few carriers, and had the good fortune of passing through
the country of the Pygmies and that of the cannibals of the Aruwimi
without conflict or injury, entering into cordial relations with both
peoples. He journeyed for three weeks in the Pygmy forest and had
excellent opportunities for examining its inhabitants.