John M. Tyler

“ IT is a far cry and long and weary road from the ape descending from the trees and the ape-man shuffling over the ground, keeping close to his arboreal refuge, to the lake-dweller and builder of stone monuments. There was very little in the appearance or structure of the ape-man to encourage great hopes for the future. The sleek, graceful, wiry, well-armed cats were far more attractive, promising, and thrilling actors on the world’s stage. ”

“ Modern revolutions have been more and more uprisings of the people asserting the inalienable rights and privileges of their dignity as men. The trend of popular life and feeling has resembled the flow of a river or the incoming of the tide. It turns or winds as it meets obstacles in its path, but keeps in the main to a fairly clear course and direction. The people may not be against the government, they merely go their way regardless of it. ”

“ There was vastly more vitality in the ancient crude symbols and chaos of conceptions than in the ordered and artistic Olympian hierarchy with its marvellous representations of the gods in human or superhuman form and beauty. Even its art and literature could not save it. It had lost its mysticism. The old Neolithic religion, handed down by peasants and artisans reoccupied the field, transformed sometimes almost beyond recognition, like the Ugly Duckling of the fairy tale. It returned triumphant through sheer power of unlimited vitality and adaptability. ”

“ Is not much of our so-called Occidental progress really an orgy of wasted energy, neurotic excitement, half-camouflaged decadence, which will end in degeneration? We do not know yet. May there some day be a family rather than league of nations to which every one will contribute according to its special ability? If this be granted, will Huxley’s statement concerning the individual be applicable to races and peoples: “Its aim will be not so much the survival of the fittest as the fitting of as many as possible to survive”? ”

“ Up to this time the body has been of great importance; it has been scrupulously preserved, and provision made in the grave for the supply of all bodily needs, though the burial gifts have steadily diminished in number and value. Now the body is burned immediately after death, as if its preservation were no longer of any importance but a clog and hindrance from which the spirit was to be set free as soon as possible. The custom of incineration gains ground in Europe until in the Bronze Age it is the rule and inhumation the exception. ”

“ In plants, and often in men, a long period of silent unnoticeable growth usually precedes the brief season of flowers and fruit. Is this the rule in racial, or internal, development?
Is it true, as some historians tell us, that a dormant period of national history best repays investigation, and that dormant peoples will bear watching? Is the dormant nation often storing up nutriment, strength, vitality, just as the plant is doing in its ugly underground roots and stem? ”

“ The Cro-Magnon brain was anything but dull. In this remote time, more than 20,000 years ago, there sprang up an art never since surpassed in its own field except, perhaps, by that of the Greeks. Their bone implements are adorned with the most lifelike carvings or sculptures. On the walls of caves we find paintings as realistic and alive, and often as finely executed in detail and coloring, as the best animal painters of our day could produce. These people must have had a high and keen appreciation of the beauty of form and proportion. ”

“ Italy could never be safe until its boundary followed the crest of the Alps. Great mountain chains mark limits, and river valleys are thoroughfares. Whoever holds Constantinople controls the trade of a boundless area. If this is true to-day, it must have been far more important in prehistoric times, when man had only begun to gain a certain degree of independence or mastery of nature. Culture was then very largely determined by position and routes of communication. The Alps and Pyrenees formed a long, impassable barrier between northern and southern Europe, broken only by the Rhone valley ”

“ There seems to be a wide-spread opinion that the rise of the Indo-Europeans was the first dawn of day in a benighted world. Their migrations were a missionary movement on a grand scale. They dispelled darkness, ignorance, and superstitions, broke the crust of a stagnant conservatism, overthrew outworn customs, brought an entirely new culture, and revolutionized life and the world. ”

“ City-states are beginning to appear, but their success depends very largely on the wisdom and power of the ruler, who seems at first to be largely irresponsible, a despot in the ancient sense of the word. It is anything but a true democracy, but it is government by the élite of their day and world. The new era or Zeitgeist is putting its stamp on all its peoples. Homer’s description of the Achæans would apply almost equally well to the Celts when they first appear in history; and kindred spirits are marching and fighting in India and Persia. ”

“ The youth of the country have the same habitation, and amidst the trees old age is rocked to rest. Savage as this way of life may seem, they prefer it to the drudgery of the field, the labor of building, and the painful vicissitudes of hope and fear, which always attend the defense and the acquisition of property. ”

“ The existence of our nation evidently depends far more upon the fundamental and essential, nay obvious, old and common human virtues of very common people than upon our art and learning, the shrewdness of our politicians and profiteers, the amount of our wealth and exports, our inventions or luxuries, the winning of an election, or the defeat of any party. ”

“ In the northern ocean we see icebergs moving slowly southward. They are not driven by the winds which to-day are blowing against their broad fronts. The most conspicuous feature of our field of vision is the white foam capping the waves. ”

“ They were no worse than former native rulers, far better watch-dogs of the city, attractive leaders of an admiring crowd, the best possible missionaries of a new culture and language. They turned the old Neolithic world upside down. Evolution had brought revolution: old things passed away and, for a time, all things became new. We cannot easily overestimate the extent and importance of the change. ”

“ We ought not to forget in our comfort that everybody could not live in a lake-dwelling, that all over Europe there were other settlements or dwellings, more lonely or isolated, where food was never abundant and sometimes very scarce, where labor was unremitting and the reward scanty. But even in those less civilized regions there was probably usually much rude comfort; and if there were times of scarcity and want, there were also times of feasting and abundance. All over Europe there were, even in Neolithic time, children, boys and girls playing around the houses ”

“ It offered far less to people in the collecting stage than the well-watered parklands of Asia Minor. The steppe offers to the hunter few means of concealment or approach to the game. The animals are swift and wary. In any migration of peoples toward the frontier, the hunters lead the advance and spread out like an army of scouts. Every river which crossed the steppe would offer to them a tempting by-road leading off into the forests of Siberia or Russia. How deeply they would penetrate into the primeval forest or away from the river valleys is still a question. ”

“ During the Neolithic period everybody, except perhaps certain priests and elders, belonged to the common people. But accumulation of wealth, the rise of leaders, the conquest of new lands developed a distinct aristocracy of birth, wealth, prowess, leadership, and genius. The common people of to-day, whom, as Mr. Lincoln said, “God must have loved or he never would have made so many of them,” seem to [Pg 284] be the whole population minus the uncommon aristocracy. It is not easy to see just where we ought to draw the line between mass and class. ”

“ All that we know of Neolithic religion, far more dominant in tribal life and action than the very feebly developed political or social organization, the cult of the goddess, and the accompanying mother-right, suggest peace. The great invasions of the Bronze and Iron periods introduced or stimulated the cult of war gods and patriarchal family life and kinship. But these were still in the future. The picture of Europe at this time as a great arena of roving savages, thirsting for blood and always at war, seems to be a caricature. ”

“ Perhaps our ancestors were wise in their caution. Perhaps a change has become advisable. We are asking how far government changes or modifies the people; how far governmental action, change of President or controlling party, their legislation and policies, affect the deeper currents of character and life. The people seem to me to be still continuing to go their own way and to follow quietly but firmly their own line of development, largely regardless of the votes of national Congress or State legislature, perhaps sometimes with a slight sigh of relief at their adjournment. ”

“ So we find ourselves faced with a fundamental contrast between what is called fiction and what is called folk-lore. The one exhibits an abnormal degree of dexterity, operating within our daily limitations; the other exhibits quite normal desires extended beyond those limitations. Fiction means the common things as seen by the uncommon people. Fairy-tales mean the uncommon things as seen by the common people.
“As our world advances through history toward its present epoch, its becomes more specialist, less democratic, and folk-lore turns gradually into fiction. ”

“ In Egypt and Greece a far more precocious culture made it possible to replace them by pyramids and “treasure-houses.” We find them in Palestine and farther eastward, along the Black Sea, and in India. In Europe they follow the coast lines, and do not seem to have been erected by the dwellers in the valley of the Danube. Their distribution is very similar to that of the great Mediterranean race and its extensions, but they extend far beyond the boundaries of any one tribe or people. They are the expression of a certain thought or conception which spread widely. ”

“ One historic event of great importance had its growth and rise during the Neolithic period out of Neolithic life, conditions, and culture. This was the Aryan culture of Persia and India, of Greece and Rome, and of our northern ancestors. No one seems to deny its importance and value. We must glance at its origin and growth, and see if it supports at all the tentative and often conjectural conclusions at which we have arrived. ”

“ As the climate became moister, if the temperature did not fall too low, steppe finally gave way to the meadow and forest of modern Europe. Tundra, steppe, and forest had each its special types of animal as well as plant life. The characteristic tundra animal is the reindeer, though musk-ox, woolly mammoth, and others were wide-spread at this time. The peculiar steppe animal is the horse. The characteristic forest and meadow animals are the deer and their allies; the wolf and bear; the wild boar and cattle seem to be at home in forest and glade and along the streams. ”

“ Is our whole estimate and valuation of Neolithic life, work, and progress extreme and practically worthless? Were they, in spite of all our arguments, a mob of crude, worthless barbarians, undeserving of any gratitude or sympathy, much less of respect? Do we really owe anything to them? ”

“ This fact has led some good authorities to declare that the Germans received their Indo-European language from the Celts.
The homeland of the Indo-Europeans must have supported a large population to send out all the tribes which went out from it. Only such a region can satisfy our requirements, and such was Germany, an Officina gentium, some 2,000 years later. But we notice that the migrations of peoples have always set westward into Europe, not in the reverse direction. Similarly the new discovery or idea has come westward or northward from western Asia or from the Mediterranean region. ”

“ MEGALITHS, those great stone monuments of prehistoric time, have always excited the wonder and interest of all observers.86 Under the name of dolmens or stone chambers, cromlechs or stone circles, tumuli or mounds, they form a striking contrast to the insignificant and ephemeral thatched huts of wood and clay which formed the homes of the living. ”