Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 25 - A-AUS.pdf/512

 A N T H R O p o L o G Y Development of Civilization. — In recent years no lectual organ, the brain. Comparison of the brains of vertebrate animals brings into view the immense difference such fundamental alteration has taken place in scientific between the small, smooth brain of a fish or bird and views as to man’s age on the earth, as had been brought the large and convoluted organ in man. In man, both about previously by the extension of his antiquity back size and complexity contribute to the increased area of from history into geology. It was an immense change in the cortex or outer layer of the brain, which within the current opinion to substitute for a chronology of centuries last few years has been fully ascertained to be the seat of a vague computation of hundreds of thousands of years. the mysterious processes by which sensation furnishes the The new views, however, met with comparatively little groundwork of thought. Schafer (Texthooh of Physiology, opposition, partly because the way had been already vol. ii. p. 697) thus defines it: “ The cerebral cortex is broken by geology assigning to the strata of the earth an the seat of the intellectual functions, of intelligent sensa- incalculable antiquity, and still more because the extension tion or consciousness, of ideation, of volition, and of of the human period was no merely speculative doctrine, memory.” Not to enter into the difficult details of com- but rested on visible fact. It was an object-lesson on the parison of the extent of this thinking layer in the higher largest scale to look across a valley like that of the apes and man, it may suffice to compare the absolute Thames, and to imagine the vast time required for its quantity of brain in the gorilla and average man, which excavation by the waters since the river drift-gravels has been estimated as 1 to 2. So evident is the pre- were left high on the slopes, containing rude stone ponderance, that it is plainly seen in the present series implements lying with the bones of the mammoth and of skeletons which have already served so many purposes, rhinoceros, which plainly showed man to have been their and where the outside of the brainpan in each gives a contemporary. These stone implements in the Quaternary drift-gravels, and other relics of human art in the cave rough measure of the brain contained within. The wide acceptance of the Darwinian theory, as applied deposits, while furnishing the main proof of man’s high to the descent of man, has naturally roused anticipation antiquity, contain also evidence of his then state of that geological research, which provides evidence of the culture. His drawings on bone or tusk found in the animal life of incalculably greater antiquity, would furnish caves show no mean artistic power, as appears by the three fossil remains of some comparatively recent being inter- specimens copied in the Plate. That representing two mediate between the anthropomorphic and the anthropic deer (Fig. 6) was found so early as 1852 in the breccia types. This expectation has hardly been fulfilled, but of of a limestone cave on the Charente, and its importance late years the notion of a variety of the human race, recognized in a remarkable letter by Prosper Merimee, geologically ancient, differing from any known in historic as at once historically ancient and geologically modern times, and with characters approaching the simian, has {Congres d'Anthropologie et d'Archeologie Prehistoriques, been supported by further discoveries. To bring this Copenhagen, 1869, p. 128). The other two are the famous to the reader’s notice, top and side views of three skulls, as mammoth from the cave of La Madelaine, on which the placed together in the human development series in the woolly mane and huge tusks of Elephas primigenius are Oxford University Museum, are represented in the Plate, boldly drawn (Fig. 7); and the group of man and horses for the purpose of showing the great size of the orbital (Fig. 8). There has been found one other contemporary porridges, which the reader may contrast with his own by a trait of man, where a hunter is shown stalking an aurochs. That the men of the Quaternary period knew the savage touch with his fingers on his forehead. The first (Fig. 3) is the famous Neanderthal skull from near Diisseldorf, de- art of producing fire by friction, and roasted the flesh on scribed by Schaafhausen in Muller’s Archiv, 1858 ; Huxley which they mainly subsisted, is proved by the fragments in Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 86, and in Man's Place in of charcoal found in the cave deposits, where also occur Nature. The second (Fig. 4) is the skull from the cavern bone awls and needles, which indicate the wearing of of Spy in Belgium (De Puydt and Lohest, Compte Rendu skin clothing, like that of the modem Australians and du Congres de Namur, 1886). The foreheads of these Fuegians. Their bone lance-heads and dart-points were two skulls have an ape like form, obvious on comparison comparable to those of northern and southern savages. with the simian skulls of the gorilla and other apes, Particular attention has to be given to the stone impleand visible even in the small-scale figures in the Plate, ments used by these earliest known of mankind. The Fig. 2. Among inodern tribes of mankind the forehead division of tribes in the stone implement stage into two of the Australian aborigines makes the nearest approach to classes, according to their proficiency in this most this type, as was pointed out by. Huxley. This brief important art, furnishes in some respects the best means description will serve to show the importance of a later of determining their rank in general culture. In order to discovery. At Trinil, in Java, in an equatorial region put this argument clearly before the reader, a few selected where, if anywhere, a being intermediate between the implements are figured in the Plate. The group in Fig. 9 higher apes and man would seem likely to be found, Dr contains tools and weapons of the Neolithic or New Stone Dubois in 1891-92 excavated from a bed, considered by Age, such as are dug up on European soil; they are evident him to be of Sivalik formation (Pliocene), a thighbone relics of ancient populations who used them till replaced which competent anatomists decide to be human, and a by metal. The stone hatchets are symmetrically shaped remarkably depressed calvaria or skull-cap (Fig. 5), bearing and edged by grinding, while the cutting flakes, scrapers, a certain resemblance in its proportions to the correspond- spear and arrow heads, are of high finish. Direct knowledge ing part of the simian skull. These remains were referred of the tribes who made them is scanty, but implements so by their discoverer to an animal intermediate between man similar in make and design having been in use in North and ape, to which he gave the name of Pithecanthropus and South America until modern times, it may be assumed erectus, but the interesting discussions on the subject for purposes of classification that the Neolithic peoples of showed divergence of opinion among leading anatomists. the New World were at a similar barbarous level in - At any rate, classing the Trinil skull as human, it may industrial arts, social organization, moral and religious be described as tending towards the simian type more ideas. Such comparison, though needing caution and than any other known (Eug. Dubois, Pithecanthropus reserve, at once proved of great value to anthropology. erectus, Batavia, 1894; Trans, of Royal Dublin Soc. vol. When, however, there came to light from the drift-gravels vi. 1898; Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. xxv. p. and limestone caves of Europe the Palaeolithic imple240; Nature, vol. li. 1895). ments, of which some types are shown in the group (Fig. 466