“It was the more extraordinary because here before me, in Mr. Wells’s own book, were reproductions of these cave paintings, with the bow and the arrow appearing all over them! Even if he did not take the trouble to look at the pictures that were to illustrate his book, and left that department (as he probably did) to hack work, he ought, as an ordinary educated man, to have known the ultimate facts of the case.
“Palæolithic man was an archer, and an archer with an efficient weapon.
“The thing is a commonplace; only gross ignorance can have overlooked it; but, as I have said, there is a cause behind that ignorance. Mr. Wells would not have made this enormous error if he had not been possessed with the necessity of making facts fit in with his theology.”
The Chasing of Mr. Belloc Begins
There is a real splendour in these three almost consecutive passages. And note incidentally how this facile controversialist bespatters also my helpers and assistants. They do “hack work.” Palæolithic man, speaking generally, was not an archer. Only the later Palæolithic men, dealing with a smaller quarry than the reindeer, seem to have used the bow. Manifestly it is not I who am fitting my facts with my theology here, but Mr. Belloc. He is inventing an error which is incredible even to himself as he invents it, and he is filling up space as hard as he can with indignation at my imaginary offence.
Why is he going on like this? In the interests of that Catholic soul in danger? Possibly. But his pen is running so fast here, it seems to me, not so much to get to something as to get away from something. The Catholic soul most in danger in these papers of Mr. Belloc’s is Mr. Belloc’s, and the thing he is running away from through these six long disputations is a grisly beast, neither ape nor true man, called the Neanderthaler, Homo Neanderthalensis. This Homo Neanderthalensis is the real “palæolithic” man. For three-quarters of the “palæolithic” age he was the only sort of man. The Reindeer men, the Capsian men, are “modern” beside him. He was no more an archer than he was an electrical engineer. He was no more an artist than Mr. Belloc is a man of science.
Instead of bothering with any more of the poor little bits of argey-bargey about this or that detail in my account of the earlier true men that Mr. Belloc sees fit to make—instead of discussing whether these first human savages, who drew and painted like Bushmen and hunted like Labrador Indians, did or did not progress in the arts of life before they passed out of history, let me note now the far more important matters that he refuses to look at.
Mr. Belloc makes a vast pother about Eoanthropus, which is no more than a few bits of bone; he says nothing of the other creature to whom I have devoted a whole chapter: the man that was not a man. Loud headlines, challenging section headings, appeal in vain to Mr. Belloc’s averted mind. Of this Neanderthal man we have plentiful evidence, and the collection increases every year. Always in sufficiently old deposits, and always with consistent characteristics. Here is a creature which not only made implements but fires, which gathered together ornamental stones, which buried its dead. Mr. Belloc says burying the dead is a proof of a belief in immortality. And this creature had strange teeth, differing widely from the human, more elaborate and less bestial; it had a differently hung head; it was chinless, it had a non-opposable thumb. Says M. Boule, the one anthropologist known to Mr. Belloc: “In its absence of forehead the Neanderthal type strikingly resembles the anthropoid apes.” And he adds that it “must have possessed only a rudimentary psychic nature ... markedly inferior to that of any modern race.” When I heard that Mr. Belloc was going to explain and answer the Outline of History, my thought went at once to this creature. What would Mr. Belloc say of it? Would he put it before or after the Fall? Would he correct its anatomy by wonderful new science out of his safe? Would he treat it like a brother and say it held by the most exalted monotheism, or treat it as a monster made to mislead wicked men?
He says nothing! He just walks away whenever it comes near him.
But I am sure it does not leave him. In the night, if not by day, it must be asking him: “Have I a soul to save, Mr. Belloc? Is that Heidelberg jawbone one of us, Mr. Belloc, or not? You’ve forgotten me, Mr. Belloc. For four-fifths of the Palæolithic age I was ‘man.’ There was no other. I shamble and I cannot walk erect and look up at heaven as you do, Mr. Belloc, but dare you cast me to the dogs?”