Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/33

 CHAPTER I

order to form an unbiassed opinion on Man's place in the organic world, it is essential to be more or less conversant with the principles and laws which govern the phenomena of the environment in which he lives, moves, and has his being. So long as human beings were believed to occupy a higher platform in organic life than other animals by virtue of some special creative endowments, no one apparently thought of looking for evidence of their origin and history in the obscure vista of prehistoric times. The long-cherished traditions and myths which had gathered around the inquiry left little room for any other hypothesis than that the apparition of Man on the field of life was the last and crowning achievement of a long series of creative fiats which brought the present world-drama into existence. In the cosmogony thus conjured up the multitudinous phenomena of the material world—animals and plants, the distribution of land and water, the recurrence of the seasons, etc.—were regarded as having been specially designed and arranged to administer to the life-functions of this new being. Nurtured in an environment so full of legendary romance, we need not be surprised to find that the philosophic schools of modern times continued to teach some such theory of Man's origin up to about half a century ago, when the doctrine of organic evolution captured the scientific mind of the day. But, notwithstanding the far-reaching significance of the evolution theory, the evolutionary stages of Man's career on the globe