Chapter IV.
THE UNFOLDING OF THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN
Fossil Man.
Ignorance and prejudice combined to assert that man was created a few thousand years ago in a state of physical perfection. The possibility of the discovery of fossil man was therefore inconceivable to most people, and those earlier writers who entertained the idea were generally inclined to deny it. Cuvier, limiting the age of the earth to the orthodox 6,000 years, had stated that fossil bones of man did not exist. Moreover, up to the time of his death (1832) nothing had been found to disturb this generally received opinion.
More than a hundred years before (1726) Professor Scheuchzer, of Zürich, had discovered his famous “Homo diluvii testis”—“Man, witness of the Flood”—and had described it as a “rare relic of the accursed race of the primitive world,” exclaiming piously: “Melancholy skeleton of an old sinner, convert the hearts of modern reprobates!” His fossil was proved later to be that of a gigantic salamander, and fossil man was allowed to sleep for more than a century.
When the question was again raised, in the middle of the nineteenth century, evidence of human remains which had been hitherto disregarded assumed a new importance, and earlier finds were re-examined.
Cannstadt. Neanderthal.
First there was the Cannstadt cranium, found in 1700 by Duke Eberhard of Würtemberg, which remained undescribed for 135 years in the Stuttgart Museum. Later it was claimed as belonging to the prehistoric “race,” proofs of whose existence were so rapidly accumulating. In 1856 a fresh stimulus was given by the discovery of a cranium and some other remains in the Feldhofen Cave, at the entrance to a small ravine called Neanderthal, on the right bank of the river Düssel, in Rhenish Prussia.
This was the first discovery of remains of palæolithic man to receive serious attention. The skeleton was embedded in a hard, consolidated loam, but unfortunately was badly damaged by the workmen before it was extricated. By the intervention of Fuhlrott, the thigh bones, the upper bone of each arm, shoulder-blade, collar-bone, some fragments of ribs and the cranium, were rescued, and are now in the Rheinische-Antiquitäts’ Museum at Bonn. When the remains were first exhibited by their discoverer at Bonn, doubts were freely expressed as to their human character. Virchow pronounced his opinion that the cranium was diseased; in the long controversy which raged over this skull his wide pathological experience, his distrust of merely morphological considerations, his agnostic position with regard to the origin of species in general and of man in particular, led him, perhaps, to propound this extreme view. Broca declared it to be normal. Huxley recognised the skull as human, but declared it to be the most ape-like ever discovered; and he placed it below the Australian in type.
No absolute reliance could, however, be placed on the evidence of a single skull, and an imperfect one at that; but later discoveries served in the main to confirm Huxley’s opinion.
Spy.
Another important find was that of two crania and other skeletal remains discovered in 1886 at Spy, in the Namur district, Belgium, by de Puydt and Lohest,[[51]] with an associated fauna which included the woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, cave bear, hyæna, etc., five out of the nine species being extinct.
[51]. Fraipont et Lohest, Arch. de Biol., vii., 1887, p. 623.
Other Finds.
Since 1886 new discoveries of human remains have been made at short intervals in various parts of Europe, and these range in date from historic to prehistoric times, the oldest skulls having naturally the most interest.
The very careful studies of these remains that have been made by numerous anatomists are of extreme interest to students, and their general conclusions will be found summarised in certain text-books; but the details are of a somewhat technical character. Suffice it to say that even as far back as the palæolithic period, when men used only chipped stone implements, there were several human varieties in Europe; and, though in their anatomical characters they were in some respects more animal-like than existing Europeans, they were scarcely more so than certain non-European races of the present day—such, for example, as the Australian. In all cases the skulls were unmistakably those of true men, but on the whole it may be said that the points in which they differed from more recent Europeans betrayed “lower” characters.
In order that the reader may appreciate what rapid progress is now being made in this direction, we give a brief account of the most recent discoveries of fossil man.
Homo Heidelbergensis.
In October, 1907, a lower jaw was found in a deposit of sand at Mauer, near Heidelberg. The teeth are typically human; but the chinless jaw, with its thick body, very broad and short ascending portion, and other special points, surpasses in its combination of primitive characters all known recent and ancient human jaws, thus it is a generalised type from which they can readily be derived. It has been suggested that, as the jaw is neither distinctly human nor anthropoid, it is a survival from that remote ancestor from which there branched off on the one side the genus Homo, and on the other the genera of anthropoid apes. Dr. O. Schoetensack regards Homo Heidelbergensis as of early Pleistocene or late Pliocene age; but Dr. E. Werth[[52]] relegates it to the middle of the Ice Age.
[52]. Globus, xcvi., 1909, p. 229.
Homo Primigenius.
In March, 1908, Herr Otto Hauser found a skeleton of a young man in the upper valley of the Vézère, Dordogne; the skull had a receding forehead, prominent jaws, and large orbits, surmounted by massive brow-ridges; the limbs were short. It was a distinct burial with associated objects which prove it to be of Mousterian age (p. 75, n. 2).
Also of Mousterian age are the skeleton discovered in August, 1908,[[53]] and the skull in February, 1909, at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Corrèze, and the skeleton exhumed in September in the latter year at Ferrassie, Dordogne, by M. Peyrony, who had previously discovered another skeleton of the same age at Peche de l’Azé, near Sarlat, also in Dordogne. These two finds have not yet been described.
[53]. Bouysonnie et Bardon, l’Anthropologie, xix., 1908, p. 513.
Skull of the fossil man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints,
after the restoration of the nasal bones and jaws. From l’Anthropologie, xx.,
1909, p. 267; with the permission of Professor M. Boule.
Compared with the short stature (5ft. 3in.) of the La Chapelle man, the skull is of remarkably large size. It is narrow, with a flattened cranial vault and enormous brow-ridges; the orbits are large, and the face is very projecting. Professor Boule agrees with other investigators in regarding this skull as belonging to the Neanderthal-Spy type, and considers that the group is distinct from all other human groups, living or fossil.[[54]]
[54]. M. Boule, l’Anthropologie, xix., 1908, p. 519; xx., 1909, p. 257. See also M. Alsberg, Globus, xcv., 1909, and H. Klaatsch, Arch. für Anth., N.F., vii., p. 287.
As Professor Sollas points out, “the primitive inhabitants of France were distinguished from the highest civilized races, not by a smaller, but by a larger, cranial capacity; in other words, as we proceed backwards in time the human brain increases in volume.”[[55]] We know that they buried their dead, and in some cases provided weapons and food for use in a future state. Their inventiveness is proved by the variety and gradual improvement in the technique of their tools and weapons. Their carvings in the round or low relief, their spirited engravings on bone and ivory, and their wonderful mural paintings, whether in outline, shaded monochrome, or polychrome, evince an astonishing æsthetic sense and technical skill.
[55]. Quart. Journ. Geol. Sci., vol. 66, 1910, p. lxii.
As the diggers in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Crete, and elsewhere, have proved that civilisation was far more ancient than could have been conceived even fifty years ago, so the cave explorers have shown us that during the latter half of the Palæolithic age there lived mighty hunters, skilful artists, big-brained men, who laid the foundations upon which subsequent generations have built. This, then, is the lesson that the latest results of investigations into the antiquity of man has taught us—that brain, not brawn, has been the essential factor in the evolution of man. The human brain had developed at a greater rate than the body, which even then retained unmistakable evidence of man’s lowly origin. How long had this evolution been progressing before Mousterian times?[[56]] The ruder stone implements of the Acheulian and Chellian epochs carry us an appreciable time backward; and if even some of the eoliths are artifacts, we can project tool-using man to yet earlier times. Then the record becomes blurred, as it is manifestly impossible to decide whether simple bruising of stones was caused by man or natural agencies.
[56]. W. L. H. Duckworth, Morphology and Anthropology, 1904, p. 520.
Pithecanthropus erectus.
But these investigations all fade into relative insignificance compared with the sensation caused by the discovery made by Dr. Dubois in Java in 1891. Dr. Eugene Dubois was a graduate of Leyden University who, besides having some knowledge of geology and palæontology, had attained distinction in anatomy. Between 1890 and 1896 he was stationed in Java, as surgeon to the Dutch Indian army, and by order of the Government he conducted some explorations with a view to determining the fossil fauna which had been discovered in those parts many years before. While examining the beds attributed to the Pleistocene period below the dry season level of the Bengawan River, at Trinil, he found the teeth, calvarium, and femur of the now world-famous Pithecanthropus erectus. This was announced even in scientific journals as “The ‘Missing Link’ found at last.” Dubois published his account in Java in 1894, and since that date a vast amount of literature has accumulated round the subject, representing the three antagonistic points of view. Some, like Virchow, Krause, Waldeyer, Ranke, Bumüller, Hamann, and Ten Kate, claim a simian origin for the remains; Turner, Cunningham, Keith, Lydekker, Rudolf Martin, and Topinard believed them to be human; while Dubois, Manouvrier, Marsh, Haeckel, Nehring, Verneau, Schwalbe, Klaatsch, and Duckworth ascribe them to an intermediate form. The last-mentioned sums up the evidence in these words: “I believe that in Pithecanthropus erectus we possess the nearest likeness yet found of the human ancestor, at a stage immediately antecedent to the definitely human phase, and yet at the same time in advance of the simian stage.”[[57]]
[57]. “The lowest term of the human series yet discovered is represented by Pithecanthropus, and dates from some part of the Pleistocene epoch” (W. J. Sollas, Science Progress, 1908, p. 353). See also W. Volz, Neues Jahrb. f. Mineral., 1907.
The English, as Dr. Dubois somewhat slyly noted, claimed the remains as human; while the Germans declared them to be simian; he himself, as a Dutchman, assigned them to a mixture of both.
The geological horizon in which the remains of Pithecanthropus erectus were discovered is still an open question. Of late opinion seems to tend towards regarding it as belonging to the early Pleistocene instead of the Pliocene, to which it was at first referred.[[58]] After reviewing all the evidence concerning Tertiary man, Professor Sollas concludes:—“We have now reached the end of this summary, and find ourselves precisely where we were, having obtained no evidence either for or against the existence of man in times previous to the great Ice Age” (loc. cit., p. 350).
[58]. The terms Magdalenian, Solutrian, Aurignacian, Mousterian, Acheulian, Chellian, refer to various epochs of culture in Palæolithic times, giving their sequence from the newest to the most ancient. These epochs are further sub-divided by some investigators, and several, if not all of them, are connected by intermediate stages. In other words, the remains prove that a steady evolution in culture has taken place. Nowhere do all these layers occur in one locality, and the evidence of their order is a matter of stratigraphy (i.e., it is essentially a geological method). Palæontology decides on the animal remains found in the beds. The human anatomist discusses the human remains, and the archæologist deals with the artifacts or objects made by man. The accurate determination of the order of the beds is obviously of fundamental importance.
The discovery of these human remains has had a very noticeable effect on anthropometry. Most of them are imperfect, some very much so; as in the case, for example, of the partial calvaria of Pithecanthropus and of the Neanderthal specimen. The remains are of such intense interest that they stimulated anatomists to a more careful analysis and comparison with other human skulls and with those of anthropoids. As time rolled on, new ways of looking at the problems suggested themselves, which led to the employment of more elaborate methods of measurement or description. Almost every specimen of fossil man has led to some improvement in technical research; and the subject is not yet exhausted, as the character of the inner walls of the crania have not yet yielded all their secrets, more particularly in regard to the brains which they once protected. It would be tedious to enumerate the names of those who have studied even the two calvaria just mentioned, and impossible to record all of those who have advanced our knowledge of the anatomy of fossil man.