The view, however, that the Neanderthaloid type had degenerated from a previous higher human type was not at all in accord with the then prevalent opinion that this type was far more ancient than any other. And Dwight himself admitted the force of the “objection ... that the Neanderthal race was an excessively old one and that skeletons of the higher race which, according to the view which I have offered, must have existed at the same time as the degenerate ones, are still to be discovered.” (Op. cit., p. 170.) In fact, the Neanderthal ancestry of the present human race was so generally accepted that, in the very year in which Dwight’s book appeared, Sir Arthur Keith declared: “The Neanderthal type represents the stock from which all modern races have arisen.” Time, however, as Dr. James Walsh remarked (America, Dec. 15, 1917, pp. 230, 231), has triumphantly vindicated the expectations of Professor Dwight. For in his latest book, “The Antiquity of Man” (1916), Sir Arthur Keith has a chapter of Conclusions, in which the following recantation appears: “We were compelled to admit,” he owns, “that men of the modern type had been in existence long before the Neanderthal type.”
But, even if it were true that savagery preceded civilization in Europe, such could not have been the case everywhere; for it is certain that civilization and culture of a comparatively high order were imported into Europe before the close of the Old Stone Age. The Hungarian Lake-dwellings show that culture of a high type existed in the New Stone Age. These two ages are regarded as prehistoric in Europe, though in America the Stone Age belongs to history. It is also possible that in Europe much of the Stone Age was coëval with the history of civilized nations, and that it may be coincident with, instead of prior to, the Bronze Age, which seems to have begun in Egypt, and which belongs unquestionably to history. And here we may be permitted to remark that history gives the lie to the evolutionary conceit that civilized man has arisen from a primitive state of barbarism. History begins almost contemporaneously in many different centers, such as Egypt, Babylonia, Chaldea, China, and Crete, about 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, and, as far back as history goes, we find the record of high civilizations existing side by side with a coëval barbarism. Barbarism is historically a state of degeneration and stagnation, and history knows of no instance of a people sunk in barbarism elevating itself by its own efforts to higher stages of civilization. Always civilization has been imposed upon barbarians from without. Savages, so far as history knows them, have never become civilized, save through the intervention of some contemporary civilized nation. History is one long refutation of the Darwinian theory of constant and inevitable progress. The progress of civilization is not subsequent, but prior, or parallel, to the retrogression of barbarism.
That savagery and barbarism represent a degenerate, rather than a primitive, state, is proved by the fact that savage tribes, in general, despite their brutish degradation, possess languages too perfectly elaborated and systematized to be accounted for by the mental attainments of the men who now use them, languages which testify unmistakably to the superior intellectual and cultural level of their civilized ancestors, to whom the initial construction of such marvelous means of communication was due. “It is indeed one of the paradoxes of linguistic science,” says Dr. Edwin Sapir, in a lecture delivered April 1, 1911, at the University of Pennsylvania, “that some of the most complexly organized languages are spoken by so-called primitive peoples, while, on the other hand, not a few languages of relatively simple structure are found among peoples of considerable advance in culture. Relatively to the modern inhabitants of England, to cite but one instance out of an indefinitely large number, the Eskimos must be considered as rather limited in cultural development. Yet there is just as little doubt that in complexity of form the Eskimo language goes far beyond English. I wish merely to indicate that, however we may indulge in speaking of primitive man, of a primitive language in the true sense of the word we find nowhere a trace.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1912, p. 573.) Pierre Duponceau makes a similar observation with reference to the logical and orderly organization of the Indian languages: “The dialects of the Indian tribes,” he says, “appear to be the work of philosophers rather than of savages.” (Cited by F. A. Tholuck, “Verm. Schr.,” ii, p. 260.)
It was considerations of this sort which led the great philologist Max Müller to ridicule Darwin’s conception of primitive man as a savage. “As far as we can trace the footsteps of man,” he writes, “even on the lowest strata of history, we see that the Divine gift of a sound and sober intellect belonged to him from the very first; and the idea of humanity emerging slowly from the depths of an animal brutality can never be maintained again in our century. The earliest work of art wrought by the human mind—more ancient than any literary document, and prior even to the first whisperings of tradition—the human language, forms one uninterrupted chain, from the first dawn of history down to our own times. We still speak the language of the first ancestors of our race; and this language with its wonderful structures, bears witness against such gratuitous theories. The formation of language, the composition of roots, the gradual discrimination of meanings, the systematic elaboration of grammatic forms—all this working which we can see under the surface of our own speech attests from the very first the presence of a rational mind, of an artist as great at least as his work.” (“Essays,” vol. I, p. 306.) History and philology are far more solid and certain as a basis for inference than are “index fossils” and prehistoric archæology; and the lesson taught by history and philology is that primitive man was not a savage, but a cultured being endowed with an intellect equal, if not superior, to our own.
But, even if we grant the priority, which evolutionists claim for the Old Stone Age, there are not absent even from that cultural level evident tokens of artistic genius and high intellectual gifts. Speaking of the pictures in the caves of Altamira, of Marsoulas in the Haute Garonne, and of Fonte de Gaume in the Dordogne, the archæologist Sir Arthur Evans says: “These primeval frescoes display not only consummate mastery of natural design, but an extraordinary technical resource. Apart from the charcoal used in certain outlines, the chief coloring matter was red and yellow ochre, mortars and palettes for the preparation of which have come to light. In single animals the tints varied from black to dark and ruddy brown or brilliant orange, and so, by fine gradations, to paler nuances, obtained by scraping and washing. Outlines and details are brought out by white incised lines, and the artists availed themselves with great skill of the reliefs afforded by convexities of the rock surface. But the greatest marvel of all is that such polychrome masterpieces as the bisons, standing and couchant, or with limbs huddled together, of the Altamira Cave, were executed on the ceilings of inner vaults and galleries where the light of day has never penetrated. Nowhere is there any trace of smoke, and it is clear that great progress in the art of artificial illumination had already been made. We know that stone lamps, decorated in one case with the engraved head of an ibex, were already in existence. Such was the level of artistic attainment in southwestern Europe, at a modest estimate, some 10,000 years earlier than the most ancient monuments of Egypt or Chaldæa!” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1916, pp. 429, 430.) While reaffirming our distrust of the undocumented chronology of “prehistory,” we cite these examples of palæolithic art as a proof of the fact that everywhere the manifestation of man’s physical presence coincides with the manifestation of his intelligence, and that neither in history nor in prehistory have we any evidence of the existence of a bestial or irrational man preceding Homo sapiens, as we know him today. It is interesting to note in this connection that a certain J. Taylor claims to have found a prehistoric engraving of a mastodon on a bone found in a rock shelter known as Jacobs’ Cavern in Missouri (cf. Science, Oct. 14, 1921, p. 357). Incidents of this sort must needs dampen the enthusiasm of those who are overeager to believe in the enormous antiquity of the Old Stone Age in Europe.
(11) The Rhodesian Man: In 1921 a human skull was found by miners in the “Bone Cave” of the Broken Hill Mine in southern Rhodesia. It was associated with human and animal bones, as well as very crude instruments (knives and scrapers) in flint and quartz. It was found at a depth of 60 feet below the surface. The lower jaw was missing, and has not been recovered. It was sent to the British Museum, South Kensington, where it is now preserved. Doctor Smith-Woodward has examined and described it. “The skull is in some features the most primitive one that has ever been found; at the same time it has many points of resemblance to (or even identity with) that of modern man.” (Science, Feb. 3, 1922, p. 129.) The face is intact. The forehead is low, and the brow ridges are more pronounced than in any known fossil human skull. The prognathism of the upper jaw is very accentuated. The cranium is very flat on top and broad in the back. “Its total capacity is surprisingly large. At least one prominent authority thinks that this man had quite as much gray matter as the average modern man.” (Loc. cit., pp. 129, 130.) Woodward, however, estimates the cranial capacity of this skull as 1280 c.cm. The neck must have had powerful muscles. The nasal bone is prominent and Neanderthaloid in character. “The wisdom tooth is reduced in size—another point in common with modern man and never found before in a fossil skull.” (Ibidem.) The palate and the teeth in general are like those of existing men. The femur is not curved like that of the Neanderthal man—“In contrast to the Neanderthal man who is supposed to have walked in a crouching position (because of the rather curved femur and other bits of evidence), this man is believed to have maintained the upright position, because the femur is relatively straight and when fitted to the tibia (which was also found) presents a perfectly good, straight leg.” (Ibidem.) According to the writer we have quoted, Dr. Elliot Smith entertained hopes that the Rhodesian man might represent the “missing link” in man’s ancestry, leaving the Neanderthal man as an offshoot from the main ancestral trunk. No comment is necessary. The skull may be a pathological specimen, but, in any case, it is evidently human as regards its cranial capacity. The remains, moreover, serve to emphasize the fluctuational character of the so-called Homo primigenius type, being a mixture of modern and Neanderthaloid features. They are not fossilized and present a recent appearance. Hence, as B. Windle suggests, they may have fallen into the cave through a crack, and may be modern rather than prehistoric.
(12) The Foxhall Man: This is the earliest known prehistoric man. He is known to us, however, only through “his flint instruments partly burned with fire, found near the little hamlet of Foxhall, near Norwich, on the east coast of England. These flints, discovered in 1921, constitute the first proofs that man of sufficient intelligence to make a variety of flint implements and to use fire existed in Britain at the close of the Age of Mammals; this is the first true Tertiary man ever found.” (Osborn: Guide-leaflet to “The Hall of the Age of Man,” 2nd ed., 1923, p. 9.) Osborn assigns the twelve kinds of flint instruments typical of the Foxhallian culture to the Upper Pliocene epoch. R. A. Macalister, however, denies that the deposits are Tertiary. Abbé Henri Breuil’s verdict was undecided. In any case, the Foxhallian culture proves that the earliest of prehistoric men were intelligent like ourselves.
Summa summarum: So far as science knows, only one human species has ever existed on the earth, and that is Homo sapiens. All the alleged connecting links between men and apes are found, on careful examination, to be illusory. When not wholly ambiguous in view of their inadequate preservation and fragmentary character, they are (as regards both mind and body) distinctly human, like the Neanderthal man, or they are purely simian, like the Pithecanthropus, or they are heterogeneous combinations of human and simian bones, like the Eoanthropus Dawsoni.[18] “With absolute certainty,” says Hugues Obermaier, “we can only say that man of the Quaternary period differed in no essential respect from man of the present day. In no way did he go beyond the limits of variation of the normal human body.” (“The Oldest Remains of the Human Body, etc.,” Vienna, 1905.) The so-called Homo primigenius, therefore, is not a distinct species of human being, but merely an ancient race that is, at most, a distinct variety or subspecies of man. In spite of tireless searching, no traces of a bestial, irrational man have been discovered. Indeed, man whom nature has left naked, defenseless, unarmed with natural weapons, and deficient in instinct, has no other resource than his reason and could never have survived without it. To imagine primitive man in a condition analogous to that of the idiot is preposterous. “For other animals,” says St. Thomas of Aquin, “nature has prepared food, garments of fur, means of defense, such as teeth, horns, and hoofs, or at least swiftness in flight. But man is so constituted that, none of these things having been prepared for him by nature, reason is given him in their stead, reason by which through his handiwork he is enabled to prepare all these things.... Moreover, in other animals there is inborn a certain natural economy respecting those things which are useful or hurtful, as the lamb by nature knows the wolf to be its enemy. Some animals also by natural instinct are aware of the medicinal properties of herbs and of other things which are necessary for life. Man, however, has a natural knowledge of these things which are necessary for life only in general, as being able to arrive at the knowledge of the particular necessities of human life by way of inference from general principles.” (“De regim. princ.,” l. I, c. I.) As a matter of fact, man is never found apart from evidences of his intelligence. The Neanderthaloid race, with their solemn burials and implements of bone and stone, exemplify this truth no less than the palæolithic artists of the Cave of Altamira.
§ 5. The Edict of the American Association
In the Cincinnati meeting (1923-1924) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a number of resolutions were passed regarding the subject of evolution. True, the session in which these resolutions were passed was but sparsely attended, and packed, for the most part, with the ultra-partisans of transformism. Nevertheless, it is to be regretted that the dignity of this eminent and distinguished body was so unfittingly compromised by the fulmination of rhetorical anathemas against W. J. Bryan and his Round Head adherents. Among the resolutions, of which we have spoken, the following dictatorial proclamation occurs: “The evidences in favor of the evolution of man are sufficient to convince every scientist in the world.”