Indications of Man’s Extreme Antiquity.—It is a curious circumstance that, notwithstanding the attention that has been directed to the subject in every part of the world, and the numerous excavations connected with railways and mines which have offered such facilities for geological discovery, no advance whatever has been made for a considerable number of years in detecting the time or mode of man’s origin. The Palæolithic flint weapons first discovered in the North of France more than thirty years ago, are still the oldest undisputed proofs of man’s existence; and amid the countless relics of a former world that have been brought to light, no evidence of any one of the links that must have connected man with the lower animals has yet appeared.
It is, indeed, well known that negative evidence in geology is of very slender value; and this is, no doubt, generally the case. The circumstances here are, however, peculiar, for many converging lines of evidence show that, on the theory of development by the same laws which have determined the development of the lower animals, man must be immensely older than any traces of him yet discovered. As this is a point of great interest we must devote a few moments to its consideration.
1. The most important difference between man and such of the lower animals as most nearly approach him is undoubtedly in the bulk and development of his brain, as indicated by the form and capacity of the cranium. We should therefore anticipate that these earliest races, who were contemporary with the extinct animals and used rude stone weapons, would show a marked deficiency in this respect. Yet the oldest known crania (those of the Engis and Cro-Magnon caves) show no marks of degradation. The former does not present so low a type as that of most existing savages, but is (to use the words of Prof. Huxley) “a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage.” The latter are still more remarkable, being unusually large and well formed. Dr. Pruner-Bey states that they surpass the average of modern European skulls in capacity, while their symmetrical form without any trace of prognathism, compares favourably not only with those of the foremost savage races, but with many civilised nations of modern times.
One or two other crania of much lower type, but of less antiquity than this, have been discovered; but they in no way invalidate the conclusion which so highly developed a form at so early a period implies, viz., that we have as yet made a hardly perceptible step towards the discovery of any earlier stage in the development of man.
2. This conclusion is supported and enforced by the nature of many of the works of art found even in the oldest cave-dwellings. The flints are of the old chipped type, but they are formed into a large variety of tools and weapons—such as scrapers, awls, hammers, saws, lances, &c., implying a variety of purposes for which these were used, and a corresponding degree of mental activity and civilization. Numerous articles of bone have also been found, including well-formed needles; implying that skins were sewn together, and perhaps even textile materials woven into cloth. Still more important are the numerous carvings and drawings representing a variety of animals, including horses, reindeer, and even a mammoth, executed with considerable skill on bone, reindeer-horns, and mammoth-tusks. These, taken together, indicate a state of civilization much higher than that of the lowest of our modern savages, while they are quite compatible with a considerable degree of mental advancement, and lead us to believe that the crania of Engis and Cro-Magnon are not exceptional, but fairly represent the characters of the race. If we further remember that these people lived in Europe under the unfavourable conditions of a sub-Arctic climate, we shall be inclined to agree with Dr. Daniel Wilson, that it is far easier to produce evidences of deterioration than of progress, in instituting a comparison between the contemporaries of the mammoth and later prehistoric races of Europe or savage nations of modern times.[56]
[56] Prehistoric Man, 3rd edit. vol. i. p. 117.
3. Yet another important line of evidence as to the extreme antiquity of the human type has been brought prominently forward by Prof. Mivart.[57] He shows, by a careful comparison of all parts of the structure of the body, that man is related not to any one, but almost equally to many of the existing apes—to the orang, the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and even to the gibbons—in a variety of ways; and these relations and differences are so numerous and so diverse that, on the theory of evolution, the ancestral form which ultimately developed into man must have diverged from the common stock whence all these various forms and their extinct allies originated. But so far back as the Miocene deposits of Europe we find the remains of apes allied to these various forms, and especially to the gibbons; so that in all probability the special line of variation which led up to man branched off at a still earlier period. And these early forms, being the initiation of a far higher type, and having to develop by natural selection into so specialized and altogether distinct a creature as man, must have risen at a very early period into the position of a dominant race, and spread in dense waves of population over all suitable portions of the great continent—for this, on Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis, is essential to developmental progress through the agency of natural selection.
[57] Man and Apes, pp. 171–193.
Under these circumstances we might certainly expect to find some relics of these earlier forms of man along with those of animals, which were presumably less abundant. Negative evidence of this kind is not very weighty, but still it has some value. It has been suggested that as apes are mostly tropical, and anthropoid apes are now confined almost exclusively to the vicinity of the equator, we should expect the ancestral forms of man to have inhabited these same localities—West Africa and the Malay Islands. But this objection is hardly valid, because existing anthropoid apes are wholly dependent on a perennial supply of easily accessible fruits, which is only found near the equator; while not only had the south of Europe an almost tropical climate in Miocene times, but we must suppose even the earliest ancestors of man to have been terrestrial and omnivorous, since it must have taken ages of slow modification to have produced the perfectly erect form, the short arms, and the wholly non-prehensile foot,[58] which so strongly differentiate man from the arboreal apes.
[58] The common statement of travellers as to savages having great prehensile power in the toes, has been adopted by some naturalists as indicating an approach to the apes. But this notion is founded on a complete misconception. Savages pick up objects with their feet, it is true, but always by a lateral motion of the toes, which we should equally possess if we never wore shoes or stockings. In no savage have I ever seen the slightest approach to opposability of the great toe, which is the essential distinguishing feature of apes; nor have I ever seen it stated that any variation in this direction has been detected in the anatomical structure of the foot of the lower races.