It is scarcely necessary to pursue this branch of our subject farther. We have reached one end of a line of development, the succeeding course of which is well known. From the earliest rudely chipped stones and flints that are certainly the work of man, we can easily trace his progress upward through better examples of the chipped and later through those of the polished stone implement, until the age of metal began. And with these stones have been found many other indications of the progressing powers of man, in the shaping of bone, the invention and use of a considerable variety of implements and ornaments, and the earliest efforts of art, as stated in a preceding section. There is no occasion to go into the detail of these steps of progress. When they are reached, this section of our work ends. We are concerned here simply with man's ancestor and man in his earliest stage of existence, not with man in his later course of development.
IX
THE FIRST STAGE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
The question has often been asked, if man has descended from an ape ancestor why is it that no traces of this ancestral form have been found in a fossil state? If man has gone through such an extended course of development, why has he left no remains? This question, looked upon as unanswerable by many of those who ask it, is really of minor importance. A half-dozen answers, each of considerable weight, could easily be made to it. In the first place, it may be said that the absence of remains referred to is far from a single instance, but one out of thousands. It is generally admitted that the species of animals found fossil are very far from representing all the species that have existed upon the earth, and probably form but a minute percentage of them. In the second place, the remains of man's ancestor have not been sought for in its native locality, the tropical regions. In the third place, man belongs to the class of animals least likely to be preserved in the fossil state, since they dwell in the depths of forests and at a distance from the lakes and streams in whose muddy bottoms the remains of so many animals have been fossilized. Another answer is, that of the various species of anthropoid apes that probably existed in the past, a few relics only of a single species have been found. If there were this one species alone, its number of individuals must have reached into the millions, yet of those hosts only a few fugitive bones are known to exist. There could not well be a more striking instance of the imperfection of the geological record. The sparse remains of Dryopithecus, the species in question, with some few other fossils of doubtfully anthropoid species, save us from a total blank, and open the vista to a myriad of active arboreal creatures which had their dwelling-place in the old-time European forests, but have almost utterly vanished from human knowledge.
These are not the only answers that can be made to the question propounded. Though the bones of the man-ape have not been found, relics of several stages of developing man exist. Most significant among these, until recently, was the celebrated Neanderthal skull, which in facial aspect departs widely from the ordinary human and approaches the simian type. More significant still is the Pithecanthropus cranium, indicative of an animal that stood midway between man and ape, a creature fully erect in posture, as its thigh bone proves, but with a brain that had attained but the halfway stage of development. In this notable find we seem to see man in the making, the body already fully man-like, the brain advanced much beyond the stage of the ape intellect, but still far below that of man. It is the remnant of a creature significantly on the dividing line between man-ape and man.
So much for the response to the question as hitherto made. As the case stands, we are not obliged to stop at this point. Within the latter section of the nineteenth century discoveries have been made which fit in admirably with our argument. Rediscoveries, perhaps, we should call them, for they were imperfectly known in ancient times, but only recently have they fairly come within human ken. We refer to the Pygmy tribes of the African forests, not definitely offered hitherto as aids to the elucidation of this problem, yet which seem to adapt themselves closely to it, and certainly help essentially in filling the gap between civilized man and his ape-like ancestor.
We have already said that there appear to have been two separate and distinct stages in the evolution of man: one, that of his conflict with the animal world, ending in his mastery of the brute creation; the second that of his conflict with nature, ending in his mastery of the resources of the earth. Overlapping and succeeding the second there has been a third, that of the conflict of man with man, ending in the survival of the fittest of the human race. In the discussion of this problem, as hitherto made, these distinct stages of evolution, with their intermediate resting stages, have not been recognized; argument being based on man as a whole, and no thought directed to the possibility that existing man may represent several separate processes of development, with broad lapses between. The argument we propose to offer is that man as he was at the completion of his first stage, that of the subjugation of the animal world, and before the beginning of the conflict with nature, still exists, the first derivation from the man-ape, living in the location and possessing much of the appearance and many of the habits of this ancestral form.
Late travellers in Africa have found more than trees and streams in the forest depths. They have found there a distinct and peculiar race of men, negro-like in many particulars, yet differing from the negroes in others, and specially marked by their dwarfish stature, which is indicated in the name of Pygmies, usually given them. These diminutive beings were known as long ago as the days of Homer, and their legendary combats with the cranes are spoken of by him in his poems. He was not aware of what is known now, that these [forest] dwarfs would disdain the cranes as antagonists, and are quite capable of overcoming the lordly elephant. In truth, they know no equals in the forest, and, while destitute of any knowledge of agriculture, are the most skilful, considering the primitive character of their weapons, of the hunters of the earth.