Joseph McCabe

“ On the other hand, we have already, in discussing the Permian glaciation, discovered two agencies which are very effective in lowering the temperature of the earth. One is the rise of the land; the other is the thinning of the atmosphere. These are closely related agencies, and we found them acting in conjunction to bring about the Permian Ice-Age. Do we find them at work in the Pleistocene?
It is not disputed that there was a very considerable upheaval of the land, especially in Europe and North America, at the end of the Tertiary Era. ”

“ He concludes that the real volume of the Neanderthal brain (in this highest known specimen) is "slight in comparison with the volume of the brain lodged in the large heads of to-day," and that the "bestial or ape-like characters" of the race are not neutralised by this gross measurement.
We must therefore hesitate to accept the statement that primitive man had as large a brain, if not a larger brain, than a modern race. The basis is slender, and the proportion of brain to body-tissue has not been taken into account. ”

“ Now we have a good knowledge of man as he was in the later stage of the Ice-Age—at least a million years later—and may thus institute a useful comparison and form some idea of the advance made.
In the later stages of the Pleistocene a race of men lived in Europe of whom we have a number of skulls and skeletons, besides vast numbers of stone implements. It is usually known as the Neanderthal race, as the first skeleton was found, in 1856, at Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf. ”

“ When we pass the limits of the Tertiary Era, and enter the Quaternary, the refrigeration steadily proceeds, and, from temperate, the aspect of much of Europe and North America becomes arctic. From six to eight million square miles of the northern hemisphere are buried under fields of snow and ice, and even in the southern regions smaller glacial sheets spread from the foot of the higher ranges of mountains.
It is unnecessary to-day to explain at any length the evidences by which geologists trace this enormous glaciation of the northern hemisphere. ”

“ The thigh-bones are much more curved than in modern man. We cannot enter here into finer anatomical details, but all the features are consistent and indicate a stage in the evolution from ape-man to savage man.
One point only calls for closer inquiry. Until a year or two ago it was customary to state that in cranial capacity also—that is to say, in the volume of brain-matter that the skull might contain—the Neanderthal race was intermediate between the Ape-Man and modern man. ”

“ Professor Sollas even observes that "the brain increases in volume as we go backward." This is, apparently, so serious a reversal of the familiar statement in regard to the evolution of man that we must consider it carefully.
Largeness of brain in an individual is no indication of intelligence, and smallness of brain no proof of low mentality. Some of the greatest thinkers, such as Aristotle and Leibnitz, had abnormally small heads. Further, the size of the brain is of no significance whatever except in strict relation to the size and weight of the body. ”

“ Some refer us to the artistic work of primitive man. We will consider his drawings and carvings presently, but they belong to a later race, not the Neanderthal race. Some lay stress on the fact, apparently indicated in one or two cases out of a dozen, that primitive man buried his dead. Professor Sollas says that it indicates that even Neanderthal man had reached "a comparatively high stage in the evolution of religious ideas"; but the Australians bury their dead, and the highest authorities are not agreed whether they have any idea whatever of a supreme being or of morality. ”

“ Other animals which became adapted to the cold—arctic bears, foxes, seals, etc.—have retreated north with the ice, as the sheet melted. For hundreds of thousands of years Europe and North America, with their alternating glacial and interglacial periods, witnessed extraordinary changes and minglings of their animal population. At one time the reindeer, the mammoth, and the glutton penetrate down to the Mediterranean, in the next phase the elephant and hippopotamus again advance nearly to Central Europe. ”

“ The only question into which we may enter with any fullness is that of the relation of human development to this grave perturbation of the condition of the globe. The problem is sometimes wrongly conceived. ”

“ There is now not the least doubt that, where the great Deinosaurs had floundered in semi-tropical swamps, where the figs and magnolias had later flourished, where the most industrious and prosperous hives of men are found to-day, there was, in the Pleistocene period, a country to which no parallel can be found outside the polar circles to-day. ”

“ The chief point to be determined is not whether man did or did not precede the Ice-Age. As it is the general belief that he was evolved in the Tertiary, it is clear that he existed in some part of the earth before the Ice-Age. ”

“ We have then to consider the possibility of a reduction of the quantity of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere The inexpert reader probably has a very exaggerated idea of the fall in temperature that would be required to give Europe an Ice-Age. If our average temperature fell about 5-8 degrees C. below the average temperature of our time it would suffice; and it is further calculated that if the quantity of carbon-dioxide in our atmosphere were reduced by half, we should have this required fall in temperature. ”

“ On the most modest estimate men had by that time been chipping flints for several hundred thousand years, and it is no argument of general intelligence that some skill in the one industry of the age had been developed. The true measure of Neanderthal man's capacity is that, a million years or so after passing the anthropoid-age level, he chipped his stones more finely and gave them a better edge and contour. ”

“ In dismissing the question of climate, however, we should note that a very serious problem remains unsolved. As far as present evidence goes we seem to be free to hold that the ice-ages which have at long intervals invaded the chronicle of the earth were due to rises of the land. ”

“ The most interesting subject for inquiry is the fortune of our human and prehuman forerunners during the Pliocene and Pleistocene periods. It may seem that if we set aside the disputable evidence of the Eoliths and the Java remains we can say nothing whatever on this subject. In reality a fact of very great interest can be established. ”

“ It is certain that a change in the course of the cold and warm currents of the ocean to-day might cause very extensive changes of climate, but there seems to be some confusion of ideas in suggesting that this might have had an equal, or even greater, influence in former times. Our ocean currents differ so much in temperature because the earth is now divided into very pronounced zones of climate. ”

“ On the other hand, the remains of this early race are, Professor Sollas says, "obviously more brutal than existing men in all the other ascertainable characters by which they differ from them." Nor are we confined to precarious measurements of skulls. We have the remains of the culture of this early race, and in them we have a surer trace of its mental development. ”

“ Apart from these special periods of cold, however, we have seen that there has been, in recent geological times, a progressive cooling of the earth, which we have not explained. Winter seems now to be a permanent feature of the earth's life, and polar caps are another recent, and apparently permanent, acquisition. ”

“ But it must be added that a singular circumstance prolonged the glacial regime in the northern hemisphere. Modern geologists speak rather of a series of successive ice-sheets than of one definite Ice-Age. ”

“ Great numbers of species were destroyed, and at length, when the climatic condition of the earth reached a state of comparative stability, the surviving animals settled in the geographical regions in which we find them to-day. ”

“ Croll, and is still entertained by many. The path of the earth round the sun is not circular, but elliptical, and there are times when the gravitational pull of the other planets increases the eccentricity of the orbit. ”