Between the remote age when our hypothetical ancestor became a hunter and the time to which probably belong the remains of the oldest known men, there lies a gap of (say) one (or two) and a half million years, concerning which we have not only no direct evidence but not even any parallel in the world by means of which to apply the comparative method. Just at the beginning, the parallel of the wolf-pack sheds some light upon our path; but the light soon grows faint; for the primitive human, from the first more intelligent than wolves, and inheriting from the ape-stock qualities of character which the new life greatly modified but could not extirpate, must under pressure of selection have become, after not many ages, an animal unlike any other. Just at the end, again, something concerning those who lived many thousand years before the beginning of history may be inferred from the parallel of existing savage customs; from their rock-dwellings, drawings, tools, weapons, hearths, something about their way of life; from evidence of their burial-customs, something of their beliefs. But what can be said of our ancestors during all those years that intervene between the beginning and the end?
Having been a hunter at the first and at the last, we may reasonably suppose that he had been so all the time. But, with our present knowledge, our chief guide as to other matters seems to be the fact that the most backward of existing savages possess powers of body and mind, and forms and products of culture, which must have been acquired gradually through a long course of development from no better origins than are traceable in apes and wolves. As the use of good stone weapons by living savages and the occurrence of stone weapons in deposits of various age in the Pleistocene—less and less perfectly made the further we go back—justify us in assuming that there must have been eoliths of even cruder workmanship at remoter dates, so the possession by savages of extensive languages, intricate customs, luxuriant myths, considerable reasoning powers and even humane sentiments, compel us to imagine such possessions as belonging to our prehistoric ancestors, in simpler and simpler forms, as we go back age by age toward the beginning. A tentative reconstruction of the lost series of events may sometimes be supported by what has been observed of the individual development of our children.
(a) For example, the constructive impulse, slightly shown by anthropoids that make beds and shelters in the trees, was called into activity in man especially in the making of weapons, tools and snares, and became an absorbing passion; so that a savage (often accused of being incapable of prolonged attention!) will sit for days working at a spear or an axe: they are inattentive only to what does not interest them. Many children from about the sixth year come under the same sort of fascination—digging, building, making bows and arrows, boats and so forth. This is a necessary preparation for all the achievements of civilised life; and it is reasonable to suppose that the stages of growth of such interest in construction are indicated by the improvement of ancient implements.
(b) As to language—in the most general sense, as the communication of emotions and ideas by vocal sounds—the rudiments of it are widespread in animal life. A sort of dog-language is recognised, and monkeys seem to have a still greater “vocabulary.” Hence, a number of emotional vocal expressions was probably in use among the primitive human stock. And the new hunting-life was favourable to the development of communicative signs; for it depended on co-operation, which is wanting in ape-life, and in the lower extant savages hardly exists, except in hunting, war, and magical or religious rites. Hunting, moreover, is (as I have said) especially encouraging to onomatopœic expression in imitating the noises of animals, etc. It was still more favourable, perhaps, to the growth of gesture-language in imitating the behaviour of animals and the actions involved in circumventing and attacking them. Increasing powers of communication were extremely useful, and the pack must have tried to develop them. Without the endeavour to communicate, there could never have been a language better than the ape’s; nor could there have been the endeavour without the need. That gesture alone was very helpful may be assumed; and it must have assisted in fixing the earliest vocal signs for things and actions and qualities, and probably determined the earliest syntax; but when, in hunting, members of the pack were hidden from one another, or when their hands were occupied, gesture was not available, and communication depended on the voice. The speech of children similarly emerges from emotional noises and impulsive babbling, assisted by gesture.
Passing to later ages, we cannot expect to learn much about the speech of prehistoric men, whom we know only by a few bones. As to the Java skull, Dr. Keith observes that “the region of the brain which subserves the essentially human gift of speech, was not ape-like in Pithecanthropus. The parts for speech are there; they are small, but clearly foreshadow the arrangement of convolutions seen in modern man.” On the other hand, “the higher association areas ... had not reached a human level.”[59] The jaw of this skull not having been found, nothing can be said of its fitness for carrying out the process of articulation. As to Eoanthropus, “if our present conception of the orbital part of the third frontal convolution is well founded, namely, that it takes part in the mechanism of speech, then we have grounds for believing that the Piltdown man had reached that point of brain-development when speech had become a possibility. When one looks at the lower jaw, however, and the projecting canine teeth, one hesitates to allow him more than a potential ability.”[60] The jaw had not undergone the characteristic changes which in modern man give freedom to the tongue in the articulation of words.[61] But Dr. Keith “cannot detect any feature in the frontal, parietal or occipital areas which clearly separate this brain-cast from modern ones.”[62] Eoanthropus, therefore, must have had a good deal to say and, being a social animal, must have felt the need of expression; and, though he was not a direct ancestor of ours, it can hardly be doubted that at some period the jaws of our own ancestors were no better adapted than his to articulate speech. May we not infer that articulate speech, meeting a need of the stock, arose very gradually, and was slowly differentiated from some less definite and structural connection of expressive and onomatopœic vocables, such as we have seen may naturally have arisen amongst the earliest hunters? Pari passu the jaw was modified.
(c) All savages live by custom; gregarious animals have their customs; and in the primitive hunting-pack customs must have been early established as “conditions of gregariousness.” M. Salomon Reinach, indeed, thinks that the anthropoid probably became human as the result of inventing taboos, especially in sexual relations; there was economy of nervous energy in the direction of the senses, and consequent enrichment of the intellect.[63] His hypothesis does not carry us far, perhaps, into the particulars of human form and faculty; but it contains this truth, that without the growth of customs there could have been no progress for human nature; and it certainly points to the probability that some custom was early established with regard to marriage. In Prof. Westermarck’s opinion our species was originally monogamous.[64] Supposing this to have been the custom, as it is amongst many Primates, could it have persisted after the formation of the hunting-pack? According to Mr. Thompson Seton, wolves pair “probably for life”;[65] but this is disputed; and so it is whether or no the male of a seasonal pair takes part in caring for the puppies.[66] Of the primitive human stock one may say that whilst, on the one hand, the association of many males and females in the same pack may have tended to break up the family, on the other hand, the long youth of the children and the parental care generally characteristic of Primates would have tended to preserve it; that the practice of pairing requires the largest number of males (setting aside polyandry), and lessens quarrelling, and is therefore favourable to the strength of the pack; and that any custom may have been established that was most favourable to the species in its new life. The least probable of all conditions is promiscuity; for the rearing of children with their ever-lengthening youth must have been difficult, taxing the care of both parents.
(d) The claim to property is instinctive in most animals—claim to a certain territory, or to a nest, or lair, or mate. Each early human pack probably claimed a certain hunting-range; and each family its lair, which it guarded, as our domestic dog guards the house. In Australia “every tribe has its own country, and its boundaries are well known; and they are respected by others”;[67] and the Bushmen, who retained the ancient hunting-life more perfectly than any other known people, are said to have been formerly divided into large tribes with well-defined hunting-grounds.[68] As weapons or other implements, charms, or ornaments came into use, the attitude toward the territory or lair will have been extended to include them; indeed, it seems to be instinctive even in lower Primates. “In the Zoological Gardens,” says Darwin, “a monkey, which had weak teeth, used to break open nuts with a stone; and I was assured by the keepers that, after using the stone, he hid it in the straw, and would not let any other monkey touch it. Here, then, we have the idea of property.”[69] Among the half-wolf train-dogs of Canada, the claims of one to property seem to be recognised by others; for a dog will defend its cache of food against another that ordinarily it fears; and “the bigger dog rarely presses the point.”[70] The utility of keeping the peace within the tribe, no doubt, led to the growth of customs concerning property, and to their protection by the social sanction, and later by the taboo.[71] For taboo cannot be the origin of respect for property or for any custom: it implies a custom already existing, which it protects by the growth of a belief in some magical penalty that is effective even when there are no witnesses. The same utility of order must have established customs of dividing the kill of the pack: later also protected by taboo, as we still see in many savage tribes.
The attitude towards property is very variable amongst the tribes now known to us. Still, considering how early and strongly it is manifested by children, we may infer with some plausibility its antiquity in the race. The urgent desire of property, and tenacity in holding it, displayed by many individuals, though not an amiable, has been a highly useful trait, to which is due that accumulation of capital that has made possible the whole of our material and much of our spiritual civilisation. Amongst barbarians it may be a necessary condition of social order. Had not wealth been highly prized amongst our own ancestors, it is hard to see how revenge could ever have been appeased by the wergeld. The payment, indeed, was not the whole transaction; it implied an acknowledgment of guilt and of the obligation to make amends; but these things would not have mollified an enemy nurtured in the tradition of the blood-feud, if silver had not been dear to him. It is still accepted as compensation for injuries that seem difficult to measure by the ounce. Wealth gives rank, and gratifies not only the greed but also the emulative spirit of the pack. Acquisitiveness is an essential trait of aristocracy, and adhesiveness of its perpetuity. Homespun prudence belongs, in our ancestry, to a more recent stratum of motives; we see it as a blind instinct in squirrels and beavers, a quasi-instinctive propensity in dogs and wolves (who hide food that they cannot immediately devour); but it is not known in any anthropoid, and is acquired at some stage by some human races—not by all; for it is not found in many extant savages. The only occasion on which Australian tribes show prudential foresight as to food is on the approach of the season of magical rites, when they lay in a stock of food before giving themselves up for weeks or months body and soul to thaumaturgy.[72] Prudence is not, however, merely a function of foresight or intelligence, or else the Irish would be as prudent as the Scotch.
(e) The first wars, probably, were waged for hunting-grounds; and this may have been a revival, for the carnivorous anthropoid pack, of a state of affairs that existed amongst their ancestors at a much earlier date; for battles for a feeding-ground have been witnessed between troops of the lower Primates. Such a battle between two bands of langur (Semnopithecus entellus) has been described;[73] and Darwin relates after Brehm how “in Abyssinia, when baboons of one species (C. gelada) descend in troops from the mountains to plunder the fields, they sometimes encounter troops of another species (C. hamadryas), and then a fight ensues. The Geladas roll down great stones, which the Hamadryas try to avoid, and then both species, making a great uproar, rush furiously against each other.”[74] As packs of the wolf-ape increased in numbers and spread over the world, they no doubt generally came to regard one another as rivals upon the same footing as the great cats and packs of dogs, and every attempt at expansion or migration provoked a battle. Wars strengthened the internal sympathies and loyalties of the pack or tribe and its external antipathies, and extended the range and influence of the more virile and capable tribes.
It is true that neighbouring tribes of savages are not now always mutually hostile. In Australia, we are told, local groups and adjacent tribes are usually friendly;[75] but with them the age of expansion seems to have closed some time ago, and a sort of equilibrium has been established. On the other hand, it is a shallow sort of profundity that insists upon interpreting every war as a struggle for nutrition, an effort to solve the social problem. Aggressiveness and insatiable greed are characteristic of many tribes—passions always easily exploited by their leaders, as in the civilised world by dynasts and demagogues. Plethora is more insolent than poverty. Lust of power, of glory, of mere fighting is a stronger incentive than solicitude for the poor.