Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/485



In Folk-Lore for March last, p. 106, Mr. Nutt, reviewing Prof. Mair's Hesiod, invites the editor to reconsider his view that "the notion of primitive man going on all fours is, so far as I know, quite un-Greek; there is nothing in Aischylos's account of the state of the primitive men whom Prometheus rescued—who lived like ants in sunless caves—to suggest that they did not walk erect," (Hesiod, p. 103). Mr. Nutt, on the contrary, thinks that the reference to ants in the Prometheus Vinctus (ll. 452 et seq.) "is suggestive of a profound difference between primitive man and man as taught by Prometheus, and contains nothing invalidating the hypothesis that he went on all fours. Indeed it might plausibly be contended that by his parallel with ants Aeschylus did imply as much."

The question whether there is any trace in Greek thought of a primitive quadrupedal man has never, I believe, been thoroughly examined. It would be very interesting if such a trace could be found; for the Greeks would be shown to have anticipated modern views of evolution more nearly than is generally supposed. That they held certain evolutionary ideas is well known, and needs no lengthy discussion here, the subject being fully treated in such books as From the Greeks to Darwin (H. F. Osborn, 1894), A History of Science (H. S. Williams,