Prehistoric man

by W. L. H. Duckworth

Fig. 27. (From Cross.)

B. But if in one of the very earliest of those stages, a human form is discovered wherein the characters of the modern higher type are almost if not completely realised, the story of evolution thus set forth receives a tremendous blow. Such has been the effect of the discovery of the Galley Hill skeleton. Time after time its position has been called ‘abnormal’ or ‘isolated,’ because it provides so many contrasts with the skeletons found in deposits regarded perhaps as leading towards but admittedly more recent than the Galley Hill gravel. And the juncture is long past at which its exact relation to that gravel could be so demonstrated as to satisfy the demands raised in a connection so vital to an important theory.

Some authors of great experience have refused to recognise in evidence any claim made on behalf of the Galley Hill skeleton. Yet it is at least pardonable to consider some of the aspects of the situation created by its acceptance.

(i) For instance, the argument is reasonable, which urges that if men of the Galley Hill type preceded in point of time the men of the lower Neanderthal type, the ancestry of the former (Galley Hill) must be sought at a far earlier period than that represented by the Galley Hill gravels. As to this, it may be noted that the extension of the ‘human period,’ suggested by eoliths for which Pliocene, Miocene, and even Oligocene antiquity is claimed, will provide more than this argument demands. The suggestion that a flint-chipping precursor of Man existed in Miocene time was made as long ago as 1878 by Gaudry[48].

(ii) But if this be so, the significance of the Neanderthal type of skeleton is profoundly altered. It is no longer possible to claim only an ‘ancestral’ position for that type in its relation to modern men. It may be regarded as a degenerate form. Should it be regarded as such, a probability exists that it ultimately became extinct, so that we should not expect to identify its descendants through many succeeding stages. That it did become extinct is a view to which the present writer inclines. Attempts have been made to associate with it the aborigines of Australia. But an examination of the evidence will lead (it is believed) to the inference that the appeal to the characters of those aborigines is of an illustrative nature only. Difficulties of a similar kind prevent its recognition either in the Eskimo, or in certain European types, although advocates of such claims are neither absent nor obscure.

Again, it is well to enquire whether any other evidence of degeneration exists in association with the men of the Neanderthal type. The only other possible source is that provided by the implements. This is dangerous ground, but the opinion must be expressed that there is some reason to believe that Mousterian implements (which rather than any other mark the presence of the Neanderthal type of skeleton) do present forms breaking the sequence of implement-evolution. One has but to examine the material, to become impressed with the inferiority of workmanship displayed in some Mousterian implements to that of the earlier Acheulean types. In any case, a line of evidence is indicated here, which is not to be overlooked in such discussions.

(iii) The Galley Hill skeleton has been described as comparatively isolated. Yet if it be accepted as a genuine representative of Man in the age of the gravel-deposits of the high-level terrace, it helps towards an understanding of the characters of some other examples. Thus a number of specimens (rejected by many authors as lacking adequate evidence of such vast antiquity as is here postulated) appear now, in this new light, as so many sign-posts pointing to a greater antiquity of that higher type of human skeleton than is usually recognised. Above all (to mention but a few examples), the cranium of Engis, with those from S. Acheul (discovered in 1861 by Mr H. Duckworth), and Tilbury, the fragment of a human skull from gravel at Bury St Edmunds, and a skeleton discovered near Ipswich beneath the boulder-clay in October 1911, seem to find their claims enhanced by the admission of those proffered on behalf of the Galley Hill specimen. And since Huxley wrote his memoir on the skulls from Engis and the Neanderthal, the significance of the former (Engis), fortified by the characters of the Galley Hill skeleton, has been greatly increased. Consequently it is not surprising to find confident appeals to the characters of a Galley Hill Race or Stock, near associates being the specimens mentioned in a preceding chapter as Brünn (1891) and the Aurignac man next to be considered. The relations of these to the well-known Cro-Magnon type will be mentioned in the next paragraph.

C. The appearance of the higher type of humanity in the period next following the Mousterian, viz. that distinguished by the Aurignacian type of implement, has now to be discussed. As already remarked, the man of Aurignac, as compared with him of the Neanderthal, has less protruding jaws, the lower jaw in particular being provided with the rudiment of a chin, while the limb bones are slender and altogether of the modern type. Upon such contrasts a remarkable theory has been based by Professor Klaatsch[49]. He made a comparison between the anthropoid apes on the one hand, and the two human types on the other (Fig. 28). As a result, he pointed out that the Orang-utan differs from the Gorilla much as the Aurignac does from the Neanderthal man. Assuming this statement to be correct, a hypothesis is elaborated to the effect that two lines of human descent are here in evidence. Of these one includes an ancestor common to the Orang-utan (an Asiatic anthropoid ape) and the Aurignac man; the other is supposed to contain an ancestor common to the Gorilla (of African habitat), and the Neanderthal man.