Paleoanthropology

“ Merely, however, collecting fossils for collecting's sake is useless. The aim of geology is to enable us to understand how this world was made—how form followed form, how type after type took life and then passed away, and the higher organization ever succeeded the lower. The Middle-Eocene ought to be to us particularly interesting, separating us, on the one hand, from those monsters which had filled the previous Age, and, on the other, presenting the first appearances of those higher mammals which should serve the future wants of man. ”

“ In making such determinations the general character of the fauna as a whole, rather than any single species, is to be relied on. Those phases of paleontology which involve the study of fossils for determining the age of formations or for determining the relations of land and water at successive periods or for the determination of geologic conditions of any sort are sometimes called paleontologic geology. Paleontologic geology, therefore, involves the study of fossils for the light they may throw on earth history. ”

“ Is paleontology able to succeed where physical geology fails? Standard writers on paleontology, as has been seen, assume that she can. They take it for granted, that deposits containing similar organic remains are synchronous—at any rate in a broad sense ”

“ Paleontology, therefore, is not a mere branch of geology, but the foundation on which that science mainly rests. This fact is a sufficient excuse, if one were wanting, for noting the early opinions in regard to the changes of the earth's surface, as these changes were first studied to explain the position of fossils. The investigation of the latter first led to theories of the earth's formation, and thus to geology. When speculation replaced observation, fossils were discarded, and for a time the mineral characters of strata were thought to be the key to their position and age. ”

“ In a zoological point of view they include man and the existing races of animals, as well as extinct races which appear to have been contemporaneous with indigenous species. To the archæologist they are rich in records of that primeval transition in which the beginnings of history lie. How early in that closing geological epoch man appeared, or how late into that archæological era the extinct fossil mammals survived, are the two independent propositions which the sister sciences have to establish and reconcile. ”

“ In that primeval transition of the ethnologist in which geology draws to a close, and archæology has its beginning, amid all the rudeness of palæolithic art, we may still recognise the rational lord of creation, the being endowed, not with physical but moral supremacy; in whom intelligence and accumulated experience were to prove more than a match for all the brute force of those gigantic mammalia so familiar to us now in fossil disclosures of the drift-gravels and cave-earth. ”

“ Following the Palæolithic era, or rude stone age, is the Neolithic, or new stone, age; and now we find man using polished weapons, making pottery, using fire to warm himself with, and developing social manners. Instead of living in caves, he lived in lake dwellings, with others of his species, and gradually developed agricultural tastes. This metamorphosis, we know from the fossil remains found deposited in various strata, occupied a long period of time, probably thousands of years; and even then we are left thousands of years before the historical era, which followed the bronze and iron ages. ”

“ Paleontology as the history of life takes its place in the background of recorded history and archeology, and simply from the standpoint of the human pedigree is of transcendent interest. Although it has progressed far beyond the dreams of Darwin and Huxley, the first general statement which must be made is that the actual points of contact between the grand divisions of the animal and plant kingdom, as well as between the lesser and even many of the minor divisions, have yet to be discovered. ”

“ Now we can easily see how the remains of organic bodies, growing at the time of the formation of these beds, should be preserved in a fossil form. Limestone rocks are thickly studded in places with all sorts of marine formations. Coal fields reveal wonders of early vegetative growth. From sandstone rocks, and shaly beds, we learn strange stories of animal life at the time they were forming. From a careful study of these remains together with the formation in which they occur, not only in one locality but all over the earth, geologists have gradually unfolded the history of life on the globe. ”

“ Such an achievement as the reconstruction of a continent would be impossible in paleontology pursued as geology or as a logical subdivision of geology. The importance of the services which paleontology may render geology as time-keeper of the rocks, or which geology may render paleontology, are so familiar that we need not stop to enumerate them. ”

“ But aside from the fact that geology points out that a long time went by after the close of the Glacial Age before Neolithic man arrived on the scene, we are largely deprived of its aid in our investigations; for all the various implements and specimens of the household industries, from which we derive our knowledge of these latter ages, are found only in surface deposits; that is, in the modern alluvia and silt of river bottoms, in superficial deposits, in caves, and in peat-bogs ”

“ It will be preferable to turn to the positive facts of paleontology, and to inquire what they tell us.
We are all accustomed to speak of the number and the extent of the changes in the living population of the globe during geological time as something enormous: and indeed they are so, if we regard only the negative differences which separate the older rocks from the more modern, and if we look upon specific and generic changes as great changes, which from one point of view, they truly are. ”

“ First in order, as the most definite and unquestionable of all the results of paleontology, must be mentioned the immense extension and impulse given to botany, zoology, and comparative anatomy, by the investigation of fossil remains. Indeed, the mass of biological facts has been so greatly increased, and the range of biological speculation has been so vastly widened, by the researches of the geologist and paleontologist, that it is to be feared there are naturalists in existence who look upon geology as Brindley regarded rivers. ”

“ In looking over the records of paleontology, its history may conveniently be divided into four periods, well marked by prominent features, but, like all stages of intellectual growth, without definite boundaries.
The first period, dating back to the time when men first noticed fossil remains in the rocks, and queried as to their nature, is of special historic interest. ”

“ In truth, discoveries have been made which are claimed to carry man back beyond the Quaternary and into the Tertiary Period of geology, since cut and scratched bones have been found in Pliocene deposits, which some geologists of experience believe to have been the work of human hands. Still more remote are some seemingly chipped flints and bones cut in a way that suggests human action, which have been found in deposits of the very far-distant Miocene Age. ”

“ In the generation that has elapsed since the first drawing of the cave-dweller artist was discovered, evidences of the wide-spread existence of man in an early epoch have multiplied indefinitely, and to-day the paleontologist traces the history of our race back beyond the iron and bronze ages, through a neolithic or polished-stone age, to a paleolithic or rough-stone age, with confidence born of unequivocal knowledge. ”

“ Geology, then, teaches us that the physical features which now distinguish the earth's surface have been produced as the ultimate result of an almost endless succession of precedent changes. Palæontology teaches us, though not yet in such assured accents, the same lesson. Our present animals and plants have not been produced, in their innumerable forms, each as we now know it, as the sudden, collective, and simultaneous birth of a renovated world. ”

“ By the other method, fossil animals are regarded principally as so many landmarks in the ancient records of the world, and are studied historically and as regards their relations to the chronological succession of the strata in which they are entombed. ”

“ It draws on petrography, because the form of the surface is often affected by the character of the rock beneath. Paleontologic geology is that phase of the subject which deals with fossils. The objective point of paleontologic geology is to determine the character of the life of successive ages and the changes which it underwent from time to time. Historic geology is that phase of the subject which deals with the application of all other phases of geology to the task of making out the history of the earth, as shown in the rock formations. ”

“ But even the scanty facts which have been set forth faithfully, we trust, though perhaps feebly, in these pages, are sufficient to satisfy all reasonable minds that the bones, the skeletons, the trunks and branches of trees, which have been exhumed from the Stratified Rocks are really the remains of Organic Life that once flourished on the earth, or in the waters of the ancient seas. Obvious, however, as this fact must appear to all who have fully realized the character and appearance of Fossil Remains, it has been often vigorously assailed and vehemently denounced. ”

“ The relative ages of Paleolithic human bones and implements are best determined by the associated fossil animals. Thus the most ancient truly human fossils are found directly associated with bones of very old types of elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses which are definitely known to have lived during middle or early middle Glacial (Quaternary) time corresponding to early Paleolithic time. A very conservative estimate would make the age of such very old human remains at least 150,000 to 250,000 years because the Ice Age was at least 500,000 years long. ”

“ Shall we here again assume that animals and plants originated from another centre, or from the same centre as those of former periods, to migrate over those different parts of the world, through the sea as well as over land? It is impossible to arrive at such a conclusion, when we consider the distribution of fossil remains in the more recent geological deposits, or in those strata which were formed during the latest geological periods, immediately before the present creation. ”

“ Those with the remains of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and other extinct species, or with paleolithic man (see Archaeology) , are termed Pleistocene. These are sometimes called Quaternary, under the mistaken idea that they belong to an age succeeding the Tertiary period. (3) Those which contain the remains of the domestic animals in association with the remains of man either in the Neolithic, Bronze or Iron stages of civilization are termed Prehistoric. ”

“ And he looks confidently to the future explorer of the earth's fossil records to extend the history back into vastly more remote epochs, for it is little doubted that paleolithic man, the most ancient of our recognized progenitors, is a modern compared to those generations that represented the real childhood of our race. ”

“ The preservation of the relics, even of aquatic tribes of animals, is an exception to the general rule, although time may so multiply exceptional cases that they may seem to constitute the rule; and may thus impose upon the imagination, leading us to infer the non-existence of creatures of which no monuments are extant. Hitherto our acquaintance with the birds, and even the Mammalia, of the Eocene period has depended, almost everywhere, on single specimens, or on a few individuals found in one spot. ”

“ In order to illustrate the grateful services which palaeontology through restoration may render to the related earth sciences let us imagine a vast continent of the past wholly unknown in its physical features, elevation, climate, configuration, but richly represented by fossil remains. All the fossil plants and animals of every kind are brought from this continent into a great museum ”

“ With the rise of the land out of the Glacial sea indications of man are believed to appear, along with remains of several mammalian species now his contemporaries. Archæology and geology thus meet somewhere in the pre-historic period of the former, and in the Post-glacial of the latter. Wherever, therefore, human history extends farthest back, and geological formations of the most modern periods exist and have been explored, we may expect best to define their junctions. ”

“ The science of archeology has contributed to our knowledge some of the most fascinating chapters in culture history, for it has brought to light, from the night of the past, periods of human development hitherto unrecorded. As the paleontologist through his method has revealed faunas whose like were formerly unknown to the naturalist, the archeologist by the use of the same method of research has resurrected extinct phases of culture that have attained a high development and declined before recorded history began. ”

“ Geological evidence establishes the great antiquity of man, but up to the present time little systematic exploration has been carried on with a view to discover all possible traces of fossil man. From time to time since 1840 there have been discovered in caverns and river-gravels bones which, taken together, constitute an interesting series. ”