Man And His Ancestor: A Study In Evolution

by Charles Morris

However this be, we can be assured that the superiority of the ancestral man lay in his mental resources, and that his victory was due to the employment of his mind rather than of his body. As a result, the developing influence of the conflict was exerted upon his brain, the organ of the mind, far more than upon his physical frame, and this organ gradually increased in size, while the body as a whole remained practically unchanged. The conflict began with the man-ape on a level in power and dominance with animals of its own size and inferior to those of greater size and strength. It ended with man dominant over all the lower animals. Such a progress, if made by any animal through variation in physical structure, must have caused radical and extraordinary changes in size, strength, and utility of the natural organs of offence. If made, as in the instance in question, through development of the organ of the mind alone, it could pot but have produced a great increase in the size and power of this organ; and the dimensions of the brain in primitive man, as compared with those of the brain in the anthropoid apes, do not seem too great for the magnitude of the result.

The conflict ended, a new animal, man, finally and fully emerged from the family of the apes and settled down in the restful consciousness of victory, with a much larger brain and greatly superior mental powers than were possessed at the beginning of the struggle, yet in physical aspect not greatly changed from his ancestral form after it had first fully gained the erect attitude. The powers gained enabled early man easily to hold the position he had won, and there was no further special strain upon his faculties until a new contest began, that between man and nature, supplemented by a still more vital struggle, that between man and man.

To return to the point from which we set out, it may be said that, as the man-ape gained facility in walking in the erect attitude, and its hands and arms became fully adapted to the use of weapons, its standing in the animal kingdom changed essentially from that before held. Fear and flight ended, retreat ceased, attack began, pursuit succeeded flight, and the great battle for mastery entered upon its long course. An element which aided materially in the victory was the social habit of the animal in question, and the mutual aid which the members of any group gave one another. Educative influences also naturally follow association, every invention or improvement devised by one becomes the property of the whole, and nothing of importance once gained is lost.

The stages of this progress were, undoubtedly, in their outer aspect, stages of improvement in weapons. We seem to see ancestral man, in his early career as a carnivorous animal, seizing the stones and sticks that came readily to hand, and flinging them with some little skill at his prey, in the same manner as we can perceive the baboon doing the same thing. In like manner we observe him breaking off branches from the trees and using them as clubs. One of the first steps of development from this crude stage in the use of weapons would be the selection of stones suited by size and shape for throwing, and the choice of clubs of suitable length and thickness, the latter being stripped of their twigs.

For a long time fresh weapons, those immediately at hand, would be seized and used for every new conflict; but as the idea of the superiority of some weapons to others arose, a second stage of evolution must have begun. The selected club, broken from the tree and prepared for use with some care, and thus embodying a degree of choice and labor, would be too valuable to fling idly away, and might be retained for future use, the first personal possession of inchoate man. Similarly, stones carefully chosen for their suitability for throwing would be probably kept, and a small store of them collected. In short, we may conceive of the man-ape thus gathering a magazine of weapons,—clubs and stones,—sought or shaped during hours of leisure for use in hours of conflict. In this way our animal ancestor doubtless slowly became a skilful hunter, carrying his weapons with him in the chase, and using them efficiently in the conquest of prey.

A third stage in this progress was reached when to some wise-headed old man-ape came the idea of combining the two forms of weapon in use, of fastening in some way the stone to the club in order that a more effective blow might be struck. The vegetable kingdom furnishes natural cords, flat stones with more or less cutting edges could be chosen and bound to the end of the club, and the earliest form of the battle-axe would be produced. With its formation the man-ape made another important step of progress and added greatly to his powers of offence. Stage by stage he was bringing his animal competitors under his control.

The formation of an axe or hatchet, however crude it may have been, would naturally lead to another step in advance. With it the ancestral man had passed beyond the possession of a weapon into the possession of a tool. The shaping of his clubs previously had been done by a rude tearing or hammering off of their twigs. These could now be cut off, and in addition the club might be wrought into a better shape. Manufacture had begun. Our ancestor stood at one end of a long line, at the other end of which we behold the steam-engine, the electric motor, and an interminable variety of other instruments.

Primitive manufacture was not confined to the shaping of wood. The shaping of stone followed in due time. If a tree branch could be made more suitable for its purpose by cutting it into shape with a rude stone axe or hatchet, a stone of better shape might be obtained by hammering. Doubtless the chipping effect of striking stone upon stone had been often observed before the idea arose that this could be made useful, and that where stones of the desired shape were not to be found, the shape of those at hand might in this way be improved.

If we seek for some turning-point, some stage of progress, in which the man-ape fairly emerged into man, perhaps it would be well to select that which we have now reached, that in which the animal in question, which had hitherto used the objects of nature in their natural form, first gained the idea of manufacture and began to shape these objects by the use of tools. In truth, the dividing line between man-ape and man was imperceptibly fine. Various points of demarcation might be chosen, each founded on some important step in evolution. But among them all that in which the effort to convert the objects of nature into better weapons by the use of tools is perhaps the best, as it was probably the first step in that long process of manufacture to which man owes his wonderful advance.

With this early effort at manufacture, man had reached a stage in which he was first able to make a permanent record of his existence upon the earth—aside from that of the very infrequent preservation of his bones as fossil remains. A chipped stone is a permanent object. Even a very rudely shaped one bears some indications of its origin upon its surface, some marks pointing back to man in his early days. Unfortunately for anthropologists, natural agencies sometimes produce effects resembling those achieved by man's hands, and some degree of skill in manufacture and well-marked design is necessary before one can be sure that a seeming stone weapon has not been shaped by nature instead of man. Within a recent period research for the evidence of early man in the shape of chipped stones has been diligently made, with an abundance of undoubted and a number of doubtful results. Some of these reach very far back in time, and if actually the work of man he must have lived upon the earth as a manufacturing animal for years that may be numbered by the million. Seemingly chipped stones have been found that belong to the remote Miocene geological age. With the latter are some scratches upon bones that also seem the work of tools. But these Miocene relics are questionable. They do not seem to surpass the shaping power of nature herself. Unless some more indubitable relics are found, we must place the advent of man as a tool-using animal at a much later date. How far back he may have existed as a man-like biped is another question, which we are not likely soon to solve.