Until they came in touch with European travellers the Esquimaux were in precisely the same condition as Drift Man: they were living in the Ice Age. They are but little more advanced now, and the difference between them and prehistoric men is slight. This is a group of young Esquimau women.
“On the other hand,” writes Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, “a large majority of modern anatomists and palæontologists accept the antiquity of such skulls as the Neanderthal specimen, and agree that these point to the existence of a human race inferior to any now existing. This race comprised powerfully-built individuals, with low foreheads, prominent, bony ridges above the eyes, and retreating chins. The radius and ulna were unusually divergent, so that the forearms must have been heavy and clumsy. The thigh-bones were bent and the shin-bones short, so that the race must have been bow-legged and clumsy in gait.”
A Type Between Man and Ape?
“The intermediate position of these primitive types has received extraordinary confirmation by the discovery of what may truly be called the link, no longer missing, between man and the apes. In 1894, Dr. Eugene Dubois discovered in the Island of Java in a bed of volcanic ashes containing the remains of Pliocene animals the roof of a small skull, two grinding-teeth, and a diseased femur. These remains indicate an animal which, when erect, stood not less than 5 ft. 6 in. high. The teeth and thigh-bones were very human, and the skull, although very human, had prominent eyebrow ridges like those of the Neanderthal type, and a capacity of about 1,000 cubic centimetres—that is to say, much greater than that of the largest living apes, and falling short by about 100 cubic centimetres of the largest skull capacities of existing normal human beings. This creature, regarded at first by some anatomists as a degenerate man, by others as a high ape, has now been definitely accepted as a new type of being, intermediate between man and the apes and designated as Pithecanthropus erectus.” There is no doubt that Asia, Europe, North Africa, and North America, so far as their ice-covering allowed of their being inhabited, form one continuous region for the distribution of Palæolithic Man, in which all discoveries give similar results. In this vast region the lowest and oldest prehistoric stratum that serves as the basis of historical civilisation is the homogeneous Palæolithic stratum. In the Drift Period, Palæolithic Man penetrated into South America, as into a new region, with northern Drift animals. In Central and South Africa and Australia, Palæolithic Man does not yet seem to be known. All the more important is it that in Tasmania Palæolithic conditions of civilisation existed until the middle of the last century.
THE HOMES OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE OF THE PRESENT DAY
There are people still living in dwelling-places of prehistoric type. This photograph of Esquimau stone and turf huts, in Greenland, shows exactly the kind of dwellings used by prehistoric men in the Ice Age.
THE GRADUAL EXTINCTION OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES
The Yukaghirs, natives of Siberia, a division of the Mongolic family, were formerly a wide-spread race, and, according to their national tradition, were so numerous that “the birds flying over their camp fires became blackened with smoke.” The Jesup Expedition found them reduced to 700 in number. Hunger had forced some of them to cannibalism and suicide. They are a primitive people, but considerably superior to the Esquimaux.