Man And His Ancestor: A Study In Evolution

by Charles Morris

Coming now to the consideration of more immediate human relics, the bones of man himself, it must be said that well-authenticated remains of palæolithic or early neolithic man are not numerous. As long as man left his bones to the unaided agencies of nature, they were little likely to be preserved. Of the anthropoid apes of Europe, probably numerous in individuals, a few remains of one or two species alone survive. Of pre-glacial man none remain, but this may merely indicate that he has shared the fate of numerous other species that died out and left no trace. It was only when the growing cold drove man from the open woods to seek shelter in caves that remnants of his body were likely to be preserved, and only when a growing sense of human dignity led to the art of sepulture that the preservation of his bones became assured.

The burial art was seemingly not practised by the hunters of the river-drift period or by men of still earlier date. The only remains of primitive man known are those found in caves and rock shelters. A number of human skulls have been discovered in these situations, and in a few instances skeletons have been exhumed. In the neolithic period interment became more common and more carefully performed, and the progress of this period is marked by many remains of man, which in later times were buried in elaborately constructed stone sepulchres, sometimes massive in materials and covered by great earth-mounds.

What is meant by the Glacial Age is probably well-known to most readers, but its close relations to ancient man render it important for those who are not familiar with its meaning that a passing description of it should here be given. It will suffice to say that there are found over much of the northern portions of America and Europe accumulations of clays, sands, and gravels, sometimes laid down in stratified beds, sometimes rudely piled together. In these occur blocks of stone, large and small, and other blocks, occasionally of great size, are found in isolated localities. The solid rocks which lie beneath these heaps are often scratched or polished, as if the material had been pushed over them with great force.

All geologists now believe that these accumulations were made by ice, at some remote period when a very cold climate prevailed in the northern hemisphere, and great glaciers slowly made their way southward, grinding and rending as they went, and burying the land under their mountain-like heaps, which sometimes were a mile or more in depth. In North America the glacial ice pushed southward to the 40th degree of north latitude. In Europe it extended to the Alpine region, but failed to reach the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.

The elaborate and minute investigation of the glacial deposits has made it highly probable that there were two glacial eras, two periods in which the ice pushed down far to the south, and that these were separated by a period in which the ice retreated and an age of warmer weather intervened. This is known as the interglacial period. So far as can be positively ascertained, all the authentic relics of man belong to the Glacial Age. They seem first to become numerous in the interglacial period, and continue to increase and become diversified as we descend lower in time. How long ago it was that the sea of ice began its downflow over the earth it is impossible to say. Some place it back six hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand years. Some seek to bring it down to a quite recent date. It is still so uncertain and such a matter of controversy that the utmost we are able definitely to say is that it was very long ago.

While there is no positive proof that men dwelt in Europe before the coming on of the glacial chill, we have no just reason to doubt it. That he lived there during glacial times is unquestionable, and we may be very well assured that a naked tropical animal, destitute of the hairy covering of the other animals, would not have chosen that frozen period to migrate to the north. The fact that he was there during the ice age seems satisfactory evidence that he was there before that age, during the mild climate of late Tertiary times, and that—for a reason which we shall hereafter consider—he was caught there and unable to retreat, and was forced to adapt himself to the new conditions.

During the warm preceding period he probably wandered as a hunter through the European forests. But with the gradual coming on of a wintry chill, as the advance of the ice began, shelter of some kind became necessary, and he sought refuge in caves. From being a forest wanderer he became a troglodyte. Everywhere in southwestern Europe we find traces of this period of man's existence. There is hardly a cave or rock shelter in that region within which he has not left his marks. He made his way to England, which was probably then connected by land with Europe, and dwelt long in its caverns. His period of cave residence, indeed, appears to have been a very extended one. While it continued, deposits many feet in depth gradually accumulated on the floors of the caverns, slowly filling them up. And that, in some cases at least, this cave residence ended a very long time ago, we are assured, for since then a great thickness of stalagmite, which is deposited with extreme slowness, has spread over the lower cave deposits and sealed them in.

It is in these caves that we find, not only the rude stone spearheads, scrapers, hammers, etc., the bone awls, borers, and other implements of palæolithic man, but the bones of man himself. And it is significant of his primitive condition that these earliest relics indicate a man of a very low grade of development, mentally far above the ape, it is true, but mentally and physically much below modern man.

The most ape-like of those human remains is the famous Neanderthal skull, found in 1856 in a limestone cavern of the Neanderthal Valley, between Düsseldorf and Elberfeld, in Rhenish Prussia. The relics discovered consist of the brain cap, two femori, two humeri, and other fragments. The fragment of the skull attracted wide attention by its bestial aspect, it presenting a low, narrow and receding forehead, and an enormous thickness of the bony ridges over the eyes, like that seen in the gorilla. This skull, which was associated with remains of the cave-bear, hyena, and rhinoceros, is, with one exception, the most ape-like human relic yet found. Yet its cranial capacity is far above that of the highest apes, and is assimilated with that of Hottentot and Polynesian skulls.

It has been maintained that this is a pathological specimen, and does not represent normal man. But this theory has been disproved by the fact that other skulls of similar cranial characters are now known, indicating that the Neanderthal cranium represents a type of man, not an abnormal individual. In the Spy Cavern, in the province of Namur, Belgium, there were found, in 1886, two nearly perfect skeletons of a man and a woman, both of them with very prominent eye ridges, low, retreating foreheads, and large orbits. This was strikingly the case with the woman. The lower jaws in both were heavy, while the woman was almost destitute of a chin—a marked ape-like characteristic. The tibia was shorter than in any known race and stouter than in most. Its curious feature was the articulation with the femur, which was such that to maintain the equilibrium the head and body must have been thrown forward, as is the case in the anthropoid apes.