The Outline of Science Part 23

PILTDOWN MAN, PRECEDING NEANDERTHAL MAN, PERHAPS 100,000 TO 150,000 YEARS AGO]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _After the restoration modelled by J. H. McGregor._

THE NEANDERTHAL MAN OF LA CHAPELLE-AUX-SAINTS

The men of this race lived in Europe from the Third Interglacial period through the Fourth Glacial. They disappeared somewhat suddenly, being replaced by the Modern Man type, such as the Cromagnards. Many regard the Neanderthal Men as a distinct species.]

It seems not unfitting that we should at this point sound another note--that of the man of feeling. It is clear in William James's words:

Bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, are these half-brutish prehistoric brothers. Girdled about with the immense darkness of this mysterious universe even as we are, they were born and died, suffered and struggled. Given over to fearful crime and pa.s.sion, plunged in the blackest ignorance, preyed upon by hideous and grotesque delusions, yet steadfastly serving the profoundest of ideals in their fixed faith that existence in any form is better than non-existence, they ever rescued triumphantly from the jaws of ever imminent destruction the torch of life which, thanks to them, now lights the world for us.

Races of Mankind

Given a variable stock spreading over diverse territory, we expect to find it splitting up into varieties which may become steadied into races or incipient species. Thus we have races of hive-bees, "Italians,"

"Punics," and so forth; and thus there arose races of men. Certain types suited certain areas, and periods of in-breeding tended to make the distinctive peculiarities of each incipient race well-defined and stable. When the original peculiarities, say, of negro and Mongol, Australian and Caucasian, arose as brusque variations or "mutations,"

then they would have great staying power from generation to generation.

They would not be readily swamped by intercrossing or averaged off.

Peculiarities and changes of climate and surroundings, not to speak of other change-producing factors, would provoke new departures from age to age, and so fresh racial ventures were made. Moreover, the occurrence of out-breeding when two races met, in peace or in war, would certainly serve to induce fresh starts. Very important in the evolution of human races must have been the alternating occurrence of periods of in-breeding (endogamy), tending to stability and sameness, and periods of out-breeding (exogamy), tending to changefulness and diversity.

Thus we may distinguish several more or less clearly defined primitive races of mankind--notably the African, the Australian, the Mongolian, and the Caucasian. The woolly-haired African race includes the negroes and the very primitive bushmen. The wavy-to curly-haired Australian race includes the Jungle Tribes of the Deccan, the Vedda of Ceylon, the Jungle Folk or Semang, and the natives of unsettled parts of Australia--all sometimes slumped together as "Pre-Dravidians." The straight-haired Mongols include those of Tibet, Indo-China, China, and Formosa, those of many oceanic islands, and of the north from j.a.pan to Lapland. The Caucasians include Mediterraneans, Semites, Nordics, Afghans, Alpines, and many more.

There are very few corners of knowledge more difficult than that of the Races of Men, the chief reason being that there has been so much movement and migration in the course of the ages. One physical type has mingled with another, inducing strange amalgams and novelties. If we start with what might be called "zoological" races or strains differing, for instance, in their hair (woolly-haired Africans, straight-haired Mongols, curly-or wavy-haired Pre-Dravidians and Caucasians), we find these replaced by _peoples_ who are mixtures of various races, "brethren by civilisation more than by blood." As Professor Flinders Petrie has said, the only meaning the term "race" now can have is that of a group of human beings whose type has been unified by their rate of a.s.similation exceeding the rate of change produced by the infiltration of foreign elements. It is probable, however, that the progress of precise anthropology will make it possible to distinguish the various racial "strains" that make up any people. For the human sense of race is so strong that it convinces us of reality even when scientific definition is impossible. It was this the British sailor expressed in his answer to the question "What is a Dago?" "Dagoes," he replied, "is anything wot isn't our sort of chaps."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RESTORATION BY A. FORESTIER OF THE RHODESIAN MAN WHOSE SKULL WAS DISCOVERED IN 1921

Attention may be drawn to the beetling eyebrow ridges, the projecting upper lip, the large eye-sockets, the well-poised head, the strong shoulders.

The squatting figure is crus.h.i.+ng seeds with a stone, and a crusher is lying on the rock to his right.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: RESTORATION BY A. FORESTIER OF THE RHODESIAN MAN WHOSE SKULL WAS DISCOVERED IN 1921

The figure in the foreground, holding a staff, shows the erect att.i.tude and the straight legs. His left hand holds a flint implement.

On the left, behind the sitting figure, is seen the entrance to the cave. This new Rhodesian cave-man may be regarded as a southern representative of a Neanderthal race, or as an extinct type intermediate between the Neanderthal Men and the Modern Man type.]

Steps in Human Evolution

Real men arose, we believe, by variational uplifts of considerable magnitude which led to big and complex brains and to the power of reasoned discourse. In some other lines of mammalian evolution there were from time to time great advances in the size and complexity of the brain, as is clear, for instance, in the case of horses and elephants.

The same is true of birds as compared with reptiles, and everyone recognises the high level of excellence that has been attained by their vocal powers. How these great cerebral advances came about we do not know, but it has been one of the main trends of animal evolution to improve the nervous system. Two suggestions may be made. First, the prolongation of the period of ante-natal life, in intimate physiological partners.h.i.+p with the mother, may have made it practicable to start the higher mammal with a much better brain than in the lower orders, like Insectivores and Rodents, and still more Marsupials, where the period before birth (gestation) is short. Second, we know that the individual development of the brain is profoundly influenced by the internal secretions of certain ductless glands notably the thyroid. When this organ is not functioning properly the child's brain development is arrested. It may be that increased production of certain hormones--itself, of course, to be accounted for--may have stimulated brain development in man's remote ancestors.

Given variability along the line of better brains and given a process of discriminate sifting which would consistently offer rewards to alertness and foresight, to kin-sympathy and parental care, there seems no great difficulty in imagining how Man would evolve. We must not think of an Aristotle or a Newton except as fine results which justify all the groaning and travailing; we must think of average men, of primitive peoples to-day, and of our forbears long ago. We must remember how much of man's advance is dependent on the external registration of the social heritage, not on the slowly changing natural inheritance.

Looking backwards it is impossible, we think, to fail to recognise progress. There is a ring of truth in the fine description aeschylus gave of primitive men that--

first, beholding they beheld in vain, and, hearing, heard not, but, like shapes in dreams, mixed all things wildly down the tedious time, nor knew to build a house against the sun with wicketed sides, nor any woodwork knew, but lived like silly ants, beneath the ground, in hollow caves unsunned. There came to them no steadfast sign of winter, nor of spring flower-perfumed, nor of summer full of fruit, but blindly and lawlessly they did all things.

Contrast this picture with the position of man to-day. He has mastered the forces of Nature and is learning to use their resources more and more economically; he has harnessed electricity to his chariot and he has made the ether carry his messages. He tapped supplies of material which seemed for centuries unavailable, having learned, for instance, how to capture and utilise the free nitrogen of the air. With his telegraph and "wireless" he has annihilated distance, and he has added to his navigable kingdom the depths of the sea and the heights of the air. He has conquered one disease after another, and the young science of heredity is showing him how to control in his domesticated animals and cultivated plants the nature of the generations yet unborn. With all his faults he has his ethical face set in the right direction. The main line of movement is towards the fuller embodiment of the true, the beautiful, and the good in healthy lives which are increasingly a satisfaction in themselves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo: British Museum (Natural History)._

SIDE-VIEW OF A PREHISTORIC HUMAN SKULL DISCOVERED IN 1921 IN BROKEN HILL CAVE, NORTHERN RHODESIA

Very striking are the prominent eyebrow ridges and the broad ma.s.sive face. The skull looks less domed than that of modern man, but its cranial capacity is far above the lowest human limit. The teeth are interesting in showing marked rotting or "caries," hitherto unknown in prehistoric skulls. In all probability the Rhodesian man was an African representative of the extinct Neanderthal species. .h.i.therto known only from Europe.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _After the restoration modelled by J. H. McGregor._

A CROMAGNON MAN OR CROMAGNARD, REPRESENTATIVE OF A STRONG ARTISTIC RACE LIVING IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE IN THE UPPER PLEISTOCENE, PERHAPS 25,000 YEARS AGO

They seemed to have lived for a while contemporaneously with the Neanderthal Men, and there may have been interbreeding. Some Cromagnards probably survive, but the race as a whole declined, and there was repopulation of Europe from the East.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Reproduced by permission from Osborn's "Men of the Old Stone Age."_

PHOTOGRAPH SHOWING A NARROW Pa.s.sAGE IN THE CAVERN OF FONT-DE-GAUME ON THE BEUNE

Throughout the cavern the walls are crowded with engravings; on the left wall, shown in the photograph, are two painted bison. In the great gallery there may be found not less than eighty figures--bison, reindeer, and mammoths. A specimen of the last is reproduced below.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MAMMOTH DRAWN ON THE WALL OF THE FONT-DE-GAUME CAVERN

The mammoth age was in the Middle Pleistocene, while Neanderthal Men still flourished, probably far over 30,000 years ago.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GRAZING BISON, DELICATELY AND CAREFULLY DRAWN, ENGRAVED ON A WALL OF THE ALTAMIRA CAVE, NORTHERN SPAIN

This was the work of a Reindeer Man or Cromagnard, in the Upper or Post-Glacial Pleistocene, perhaps 25,000 years ago. Firelight must have been used in making these cave drawings and engravings.]

Factors in Human Progress

Many, we believe, were the gains that rewarded the arboreal apprentices.h.i.+p of man's ancestors. Many, likewise, were the results of leaving the trees and coming down to the solid earth--a transition which marked the emergence of more than tentative men. What great steps followed?

Some of the greatest were--the working out of a spoken language and of external methods of registration; the invention of tools; the discovery of the use of fire; the utilisation of iron and other metals; the taming of wild animals such as dog and sheep, horses and cattle; the cultivation of wild plants such as wheat and rice; and the irrigation of fields. All through the ages necessity has been the mother of invention and curiosity its father; but perhaps we miss the heart of the matter if we forget the importance of some leisure time--wherein to observe and think. If our earth had been so clouded that the stars were hidden from men's eyes the whole history of our race would have been different. For it was through his leisure-time observations of the stars that early man discovered the regularity of the year and got his fundamental impressions of the order of Nature--on which all his science is founded.

If we are to think clearly of the factors of human progress we must recall the three great biological ideas--the living organism, its environment, and its functioning. For man these mean (1) the living creature, the outcome of parents and ancestors, a fresh expression of a bodily and mental inheritance; (2) the surroundings, including climate and soil, the plants and animals these allow; and (3) the activities of all sorts, occupations and habits, all the actions and reactions between man and his milieu. In short, we have to deal with FOLK, PLACE, WORK; the _Famille_, _Lieu_, _Travail_ of the LePlay school.

As to FOLK, human progress depends on intrinsic racial qualities--notably health and vigour of body, clearness and alertness of mind, and an indispensable sociality. The most powerful factors in the world are clear ideas in the minds of energetic men of good will. The differences in bodily and mental health which mark races, and stocks within a people, just as they mark individuals, are themselves traceable back to germinal variations or mutations, and to the kind of sifting to which the race or stock has been subjected. Easygoing conditions are not only without stimulus to new departures, they are without the sifting which progress demands.

As to PLACE, it is plain that different areas differ greatly in their material resources and in the availability of these. Moreover, even when abundant material resources are present, they will not make for much progress unless the climate is such that they can be readily utilised.

Indeed, climate has been one of the great factors in civilisation, here stimulating and there depressing energy, in one place favouring certain plants and animals important to man, in another place preventing their presence. Moreover, climate has slowly changed from age to age.

As to WORK, the form of a civilisation is in some measure dependent on the primary occupations, whether hunting or fis.h.i.+ng, farming or shepherding; and on the industries of later ages which have a profound moulding effect on the individual at least. We cannot, however, say more than that the factors of human progress have always had these three aspects, Folk, Place, Work, and that if progress is to continue on stable lines it must always recognise the essential correlation of fitter folk in body and mind: improved habits and functions, alike in work and leisure; and bettered surroundings in the widest and deepest sense.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DARWIN, CHARLES, _Descent of Man_.

HADDON, A. C., _Races of Men_.

HADDON, A. C., _History of Anthropology_.