Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/144

90 efforts as a tool-maker, I am not prepared to deny, more especially as we have no other class of worked objects recognised as the product of his hands to fill the gap which evidently exists between them and the well-formed implements of the drift-gravels of Europe. The coup-de-poing is clearly "something more than the first efforts of an unpractised hand." It was, indeed, the result of long experience at a time when progress in mechanical skill was necessarily slow; and hence for ages it remained the finished tool of the then civilised world. The crux of the Eolithic problem lies in the difficulty of deciding between natural products and the works of man. No doubt sticks and stones, without any manipulation, were used as weapons before mechanical skill came into requisition.

The only fact bearing on the probable origin of man in the Tertiary period which strikes me as worth mentioning, in the present state of knowledge on the subject, is that the simian races of to-day appear to have made no advance in cranial development on those of the Pliocene period. This has been shown by the facial and cranial characters of Mesopithecris pentelici found at Pikermi, at the foot of Mount Pentelicus, in Greece. The lower jaw of Dryopithecus fontani, according to M. Albert Gaudry (Les Enchainements du Monde animal dans les temps géologiques, p. 236), also approaches nearer to that of man than the jaws of the present anthropoid apes. This is what might be expected, as between man and the higher apes there is no room for the existence of an intermediate animal. Such a being must have competed for his life either on brute principles or on those evolved by human ingenuity. Since man discovered, and rapidly utilised, the principles of intelligence and mechanical appliances, there was only one platform for the successful struggle of life. During that period not only had apes remained stationary, or perhaps retrograded, but many of the less progressive human races which sprung into being had also fallen into the background and died out. The law of the survival of the fittest applies to all living organisms, and dominates life in all ages, more especially in the field of existence selected by Homo sapiens, where advancement depends on mechanical skill and intelligence.