Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/74

62 favorably not only with, the foremost savage races, but with many civilized nations of modern times.

One or two other crania of much lower type, but of less antiquity than this, have been discovered; but they in no way invalidate the conclusion which so highly developed a form at so early a period implies, viz., that we have as yet made a hardly perceptible step toward the discovery of any earlier stage in the development of man.

2. This conclusion is supported and enforced by the nature of many of the works of art found even in the oldest cave-dwellings. The flints are of the old chipped type, but they are formed into a large variety of tools and weapons—such as scrapers, awls, hammers, saws, lances, etc.—implying a variety of purposes for which these were used, and a corresponding degree of mental activity and civilization. Numerous articles of bone have also been found, including well-formed needles, implying that skins were sewn together, and perhaps even textile materials woven into cloth. Still more important are the numerous carvings and drawings representing a variety of animals, including horses, reindeer, and even a mammoth, executed with considerable skill on bone, reindeer horns, and mammoth-tusks. These, taken together, indicate a state of civilization much higher than that of the lowest of our modern savages, while it is quite compatible with a considerable degree of mental advancement, and leads us to believe that the crania of Engis and Cro-Magnon are not exceptional, but fairly represent the characters of the race. If we further remember that these people lived in Europe under the unfavorable conditions of a sub-arctic climate, we shall be inclined to agree with Dr. Daniel Wilson, that it is far easier to produce evidences of deterioration than of progress in instituting a comparison between the contemporaries of the mammoth and later prehistoric races of Europe or savage nations of modern times.

3. Yet another important line of evidence as to the extreme antiquity of the human type has been brought prominently forward by Prof. Mivart. He shows, by careful comparison of all parts of the structure of the body, that man is related, not to any one, but almost equally to many of the existing apes—to the orang, the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and even to the gibbons—in a variety of ways; and these relations and differences are so numerous and so diverse that on the theory of evolution the ancestral form which ultimately developed into man must have diverged from the common stock whence all these various forms and their extinct allies originated. But so far back as the Miocene deposits of Europe, we find the remains of apes allied to these various forms, and especially to the gibbons, so that in all probability the special line of variation which led up to man branched off at a still earlier period. And these early forms, being the initiation of a far higher type, and having to develop by