Progress and History. Various
characters of the pair are regarded as negroid, verging on the Pygmy; but if we could study an adult male of the same stock, it might possibly turn out not to be so very divergent from the Crô-Magnon. Again, a single specimen does duty for the so-called Chancelade race. The skeleton is of comparatively low stature, and is deemed to show close affinities to the type of the modern Eskimo. Without being unduly sceptical, one may once more wonder if the Crô-Magnon stock may not have produced this somewhat aberrant form. Even on such a theory, however—and it is hardly orthodox—diversity of physical structure would seem to be on the increase. On the other hand, there are reasons of considerable cogency for referring to the end of this period skeletons of what Huxley termed the 'River-bed type', the peculiarity of which consists in the fact that they are more or less indistinguishable from the later Neolithic men and indeed from any of those slight-built, shortish, long-headed folk who form the majority in the crowded cities of to-day. Some authorities would ascribe a far greater antiquity to this type, but, I venture to think, on the strength of doubtful evidence. The notorious Galley Hill skeleton, for instance, found more or less intact in an Early Pleistocene bed in which the truly contemporary animals are represented by the merest battered remnants, to my mind reeks of modernity. Be these things as they may, however, when we come to Neolithic times a race of similar physical characters has Europe to itself, though it would seem to display minor variations in a way that suggests that the reign of the mongrel has at length begun. And here we may close our enumeration of the earliest known branches of our family tree, since the coming of the broad-heads pertains to the history of the Bronze Age, and hence falls outside the scope of the present survey.
Now what is the bearing of these somewhat scanty data on the question of progress? It is not easy to extract from them more than the general impression that, as time went on, the breed made persistent headway as regards both the complexity of its organization and the profusion of its forms. After all, we must not expect too much from this department of the subject. For one thing, beyond the limits of North-western Europe the record is almost blank; and yet we can scarcely hope to discover the central breeding-place of man in what is, geographically, little more than a blind alley. In the next place, Physical Anthropology, not only in respect to human palaeontology, but in general, is as barren of explanations as it is fertile in detailed observations. The systematic study of heredity as it bears on the history of the human organism has hardly begun. Hence, it would not befit one who is no expert in relation to such matters to anticipate the verdict of a science that needs only public encouragement in order to come into its own. Suffice it to suggest here that nature as she presides over organic evolution, that is, the unfolding of the germinal powers, may be conceived as a kindly but slow-going and cautious liberator. One by one new powers, hitherto latent, are set free as an appropriate field of exercise is afforded them by the environment. At first divergency is rarely tolerated. A given type is extremely uniform. On the other hand, when divergency is permitted, it counts for a great deal. The wider variations occur nearest the beginning, each for a long time breeding true to itself. Later on, such uncompromising plurality gives way to a more diffused multiplicity begotten of intermixture. Mongrelization has set in. Not but what there may spring up many true-breeding varieties among the mongrels; and these, given suitable conditions, will be allowed to constitute lesser types possessed of fairly uniform characters. Such at least is in barest outline the picture presented by the known facts concerning the physical evolution of man, if one observe it from outside without attempting to explore the hidden causes of the process. Some day, when these causes are better understood, man may take a hand in the game, and become, in regard to the infinite possibilities still sleeping in the transmitted germ, a self-liberator. Nature is but a figurative expression for the chances of life, and the wise man faces no more chances than he needs must. Scientific breeding is no mere application of the multiplication table to a system of items. We must make resolutely for the types that seem healthy and capable, suppressing the defectives in a no less thorough, if decidedly more considerate, way than nature has been left to do in the past. Here, then, along physical lines is one possible path of human progress, none the less real because hitherto pursued, not by the aid of eyes that can look and choose, but merely in response to painful proddings at the tail-end.
Our remaining task is to take stock of that improvement in the arts of life whereby man has come gradually to master an environment that formerly mastered him. For the Early Palaeolithic Period our evidence in respect of its variety, if not of its gross quantity, is wofully disappointing. Not to speak of man's first and rudest experiments in the utilization of stone, which are doubtless scattered about the world in goodly numbers if only we could recognize them clearly for what they are, the Chellean industry by its wide distribution leads one to suppose that mankind in those far-off days was only capable of one idea at a time—a time, too, that lasted a whole age. Yet the succeeding Acheulean style of workmanship in flint testifies to the occurrence of progress in one of its typical forms, namely, in the form of what may be termed 'intensive' progress. The other typical form I might call 'intrusive' progress, as happens when a stimulating influence is introduced from without. Now it may be that the Acheulean culture came into being as a result of contact between an immigrant stock and a previous population practising the Chellean method of stone-work. We are at present far too ill-informed to rule out such a guess. But, on the face of it, the greater refinement of the Acheulean handiwork looks as if it had been literally hammered out by steadfastly following up the Chellean pattern into its further possibilities. Explain it as we will, this evolution of the so-called coup-de-poing affords almost the sole proof that the human world of that remote epoch was moving at all. If we could see their work in wood, we might discern a more diversified skill or we might not. As it is, we can but conclude in the light of our very imperfect knowledge that in mind no less than in body mankind of Early Palaeolithic times displayed a fixity of type almost amounting to that of one of the other animal species.
During Middle Palaeolithic times the Mousterian culture rules without a rival. The cave-period has begun; and, thanks to the preservation of sundry dwelling-places together with a goodly assortment of their less perishable contents, we can frame a fairly adequate notion of the home-life of Neanderthal man. I have already alluded to my excavations in Jersey, and need not enter into fuller details here. But I should like to put on record the opinion borne in upon me by such first-hand experience as I have had that cultural advance in Mousterian days was almost as portentously slow as ever it had been before. The human deposits in the Jersey cave are in some places about ten feet thick, and the fact that they fall into two strata separated by a sterile layer that appears to consist of the dust of centuries points to a very long process of accumulation. Yet though there is one kind of elephant occurring amid the bone refuse at the bottom of the bed, and another and, it would seem, later kind at the top, one and the same type of flint instrument is found at every level alike; and the only development one can detect is a certain gain in elegance as regards the Mousterian 'point', the reigning substitute for the former coup-de-poing. Once more there is intensive progress only, so far at least as most of the Jersey evidence goes. One coup-de-poing, however, and that hardly Acheulean in conception but exactly what a hand accustomed to the fashioning of the Mousterian 'point' would be likely to make by way of an imitation of the once fashionable pattern, lay at lowest floor-level; as if to remind one that during periods of transition the old is likely to survive by the side of the new, and may even survive in it as a modifying element. As a matter of fact, the coup-de-poing is frequent in the earliest Mousterian sites; so that we cannot but ask ourselves how it came to be in the end superseded. Whether the Mousterians were of a different race from the Acheuleans is not known. Certain it is, on the other hand, that the industry that makes its first appearance in their train represents a labour-saving device. The Mousterian had learned how to break up his flint-nodule into flakes, which simply needed to be trimmed on one face to yield a cutting edge. The Acheulean had been content to attain this result more laboriously by pecking a pebble on both faces until what remained was sharp enough for his purpose. Here, then, we are confronted with that supreme condition of progress, the inventor's happy thought. One of those big-brained Neanderthal men, we may suppose, had genius; nature, the liberator, having released some latent power in the racial constitution. Given such a culture-hero, the common herd was capable of carrying on more or less mechanically for an aeon or so. And so it must ever be. The world had better make the most of its geniuses; for they amount to no more than perhaps a single one in a million. Anyway, Neanderthal man never produced a second genius,