Progress and History. Various
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according to the anthropologist, is defined as increase in complexity, with the tacit assumption that this somehow implies betterment, though it is left with the philosopher to justify such an assumption finally and fully. Whereas in most cases man would seem to have succeeded in the struggle for existence by growing more complex, though in some cases survival has been secured by way of simplification, anthropology concentrates its attention on the former set of cases as the more interesting and instructive even from a theoretical point of view. Let biology by all means dispense with the notion of progress, and consider man along with the other forms of life as subject to mere process. But anthropology, though in a way it is a branch of biology, has a right to a special point of view. For it employs special methods involving the use of a self-knowledge that in respect to the other forms of life is inevitably wanting. Anthropology, in short, like charity, begins at home. Because we know in ourselves the will to progress, we go on to seek for evidences of progress in the history of mankind. Nor need we cease to think of progress as something to be willed, something that concerns the inner man, even though for scientific purposes we undertake to recognize it by some external sign, as, for instance, by the sign of an increasing complexity, that is, such differentiation as likewise involves greater cohesion. All history, and more especially the history of early man, must deal primarily with externals. Thence it infers the inner life; and thereby it controls the tendency known as 'the psychologist's fallacy', namely, that of reading one's own mind into that of another man without making due allowance for differences of innate capacity and of acquired outlook. In what follows, then, let us, as anthropologists, be content to judge human progress in prehistoric times primarily by its external and objective manifestations; yet let us at no point in our inquiries forget that these ancient men, some of whom are our actual ancestors, were not only flesh of our flesh, but likewise spirit of our spirit.
A rapid sketch such as this must take for granted on the part of the audience some general acquaintance with that succession of prehistoric epochs which modern research has definitely established. Pre-history, as distinguished from proto-history, may, in reference to Europe as a whole, be made coextensive with the Stone Age. This divides into the Old Stone Age and the New. The Old Stone Age, or Palaeolithic Period, yields three well-marked subdivisions, termed Early, Middle, and Late. The New Stone Age, or Neolithic Period, includes two sub-periods, the Earlier or Transitional, and the Later or Typical. Thus our historical survey will fall naturally into five chapters.
There are reasons, however, why it will be more convenient to move over the whole ground twice. The material on which our judgements must be founded is not all of one kind. Anthropology is the joint work of two departments, which are known as Physical Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology respectively. The former, we may say, deals with man as an organism, the latter with him as an organizer. Here, then, are very different standpoints. For, in a broad way of speaking, nature controls man through his physical organization, whereas through his cultural organization man controls nature. From each of these standpoints in turn, then, let us inquire how far prehistoric man can be shown to have progressed. First, did the breed improve during the long course of the Stone Age in Europe? Secondly, did the arts of life advance, so that by their aid man might establish himself more firmly in his kingdom?
Did the breed improve during prehistoric times? I have said that, broadly speaking, nature controls man as regards his physical endowment. Now in theory one must admit that it might be otherwise. If Eugenics were to mature on its purely scientific side, there is no reason why the legislator of the future should not try to make a practical application of its principles; and the chances are that, of many experiments, some would prove successful. But that conscious breeding was practised in prehistoric times is out of the question. The men of those days were one and all what we are ourselves—nature's mongrels, now broken up into varieties by casual isolation, and now by no less casual intermixture recompounded in a host of relatively unstable forms. Whatever progress, therefore, may have occurred in this respect has been unconscious. Man cannot take the credit for it, except in so far as it is indirectly due to that increase and spread of the race which have been promoted by his achievements in the way of culture.
The barest outline of the facts must suffice. For the Early Pleistocene, apart from the Java fossil, Pithecanthropus erectus, a veritable 'missing link', whom we may here disregard as falling altogether outside our world of Europe, there are only two individuals that can with certainty be referred to this distant period. These are the Piltdown and the Heidelberg specimens. The former consists of a fragmentary brain-case, thick-boned and narrow-fronted, but typically human in its general characters, and of the greater part of a lower jaw, which, as regards both its own elongated and curiously flanged structure, and that of the teeth it contained, including an enormous pointed canine, is conversely more appropriate to an ape-like being than to a man. The latter consists only of a lower jaw, of which the teeth, even the canines, are altogether human, whereas the jaw itself is hardly less simian than that of the Sussex skull. If we add the Java example to the list of very primitive forms, it is remarkable to note how, though differing widely from each other, all alike converge on the ape. Nevertheless, even in Pithecanthropus, the brute is passing into the man. We note the erect attitude, to be inferred from his thigh-bone, and the considerably enlarged, though even so hardly human, brain. The Piltdown individual, on the other hand, has crossed the Rubicon. He has a brain-capacity entitling him to rank as a man and an Englishman. Such a brain, too, implies a cunning hand, which doubtless helped him greatly to procure his food, even if his massive jaw enabled him to dispose of the food in question without recourse to the adventitious aids of knife and fork. For the matter of that, if our knowledge made it possible to correlate these rare finds of bones more exactly with the innumerable flint implements ascribable to this period (and, indeed, not without analogies among the spoil from the Piltdown gravels), it might turn out that even the equivalent of knife and fork was not wanting to the Early Pleistocene supper-party, or, at any rate, that the human hand was already advanced from the status of labourer to the more dignified position of superintendent of the tool.
The Middle Pleistocene Epoch belongs to the men of the Neanderthal type. Some thirty specimens, a few of them more or less complete, have come down to us, and we can form a pretty clear notion of the physical appearance of the race. Speaking generally, we may say that it marks a stage of progress as compared with the Piltdown type; though, if the jaw, heavy and relatively chinless as it is, has become less simian, the protruding brow-ridge lends a monstrous look to the face, while the forehead is markedly receding—a feature which turns out, however, to be not incompatible with a weight of brain closely approaching our own average. Whether this type has disappeared altogether from the earth, or survives in certain much modified descendants, is an open question. The fact remains that during the last throes of the Glacial Epoch this rough-hewn kind of man apparently had Northern Europe as his exclusive province; and it is by no means evident what Homo Sapiens, the supposed highly superior counterpart and rival of Homo Neanderthalensis, was doing with himself in the meantime. Moreover, not only in respect of space does the population of that frozen world show remarkable homogeneity; but also in respect of time must we allow it an undisputed sway extending over thousands of years, during which the race bred true. The rate of progress, whether reckoned in physical terms or otherwise, is so slow as to be almost imperceptible. A type suffices for an age. Whereas in the life-history of an individual there is rapid development during youth, and after maturity a steadying down, it is the other way about in the life-history of the race. Man, so to speak, was born old and accommodated to a jog-trot. We moderns are the juveniles, and it is left for us to go the pace.
Yet Late Pleistocene Period introduces us to more diversity in the way of human types. Only one race, however, that named after the rock-shelter of Crô-Magnon in the Dordogne, is represented by a fair number of specimens, namely, about a dozen. At this point we come suddenly and without previous warning on as pretty a kind of man as ever walked this earth. In his leading characters he is remarkably uniform. Six feet high and long-legged, he likewise possessed a head well stocked with brains and a face that, if rather broad and short, was furnished by way of compensation with a long and narrow nose. If the present world can show nothing quite like him, it at least cannot produce anything more shapely in the way of the 'human form divine'. Apart from the Crô-Magnons, the remains of an old woman and a youth found at the lowest level of the Grotte des Enfants at Mentone are usually held to belong to a distinct stock known as the Grimaldi. The