Prehistoric life

“ We have before us, then, a new culture and a new people. On the one hand is Paleolithic man, with his rude stone implements, merely chipped into shape—surrounded by many animals which have since vanished from the theater of life—inhabiting a country which, at its close at least, was more like Greenland of to-day than England or France. The scene completely changes, when the misty curtain of the past again rises and allows us to continue our investigations into primitive times. ”

“ We trust such of our readers as have followed us in these pages will have clearer ideas of the prehistoric life in North America. They must however regard this knowledge as simply a foundation, a starting-point, or as the shallows along the shore, while the massive building, the long journey, or the great ocean, is still before them. Our scholars are giving their time and attention to these problems. They are learning what they can of the traditions and myths of the tribes still existing. ”

“ It cannot be denied that it departs, perhaps summarily, from the postulates of archæology, as to the life and demeanor and mental compass, or, more particularly, emotional resources of that necessary object who must, to relieve anthropology of its lugubrious alarm over accepting a quicker entrance into the world of our race, have lived in the great Prehistoric Day of Geology. ”

“ Thus within the historic period, as in prior geological eras, the progress of time is recorded by the extinction of races. The advent of man was speedily marked by the disappearance of numerous groups of ancient life which pertain to that transitional era where archæology begins ”

“ In the first place, we must recall the animals that suddenly made their appearance in Europe at the beginning of this age. Though there were a number of species, since become extinct, the majority of animal forms were those still living.53
These are the animals with which man has always been associated. There is therefore no longer any reason to suppose the evolution of animal life had not reached that stage where man was to appear. We need only recall how strongly this point was urged in reference to the preceding geological epoch, to see its important bearings here. ”

“ And the Geologist now unfolds the past age of our world with a variety of detail, and a certainty of conclusion well calculated to inspire us with grateful admiration.
It is no longer a question that many ages must have rolled away, during which our world was totally unfit for life of any kind, either animal or vegetable. ”

“ LIFE IN EARLIEST TIMES
What do we actually know of life in these earliest times? In the glacial gravels, or in the terrace gravels of rivers once swollen by floods of melt water or heavy rains, or on the windswept deserts, we find stone tools. The earliest and coarsest of these are the pebble tools. We do not yet know what the men who made them looked like, although the Sterkfontein australopithecines probably give us a good hint. Then begin the more formal tool preparation traditions of the west—the core-bifaces and the flake tools—and the chopper-chopping tool series of the farther east. ”

“ When once the existence of abundant remains of prehistoric man had been admitted, and their study had received recognition as a branch of science, the evidence supplied by the relics themselves and by their relation to extinct or existing animals would have sufficed to give Value of ethnology.a considerable insight into the conditions of primitive life. ”

“ The visitor to the British Museum passes through galleries containing fossil relics of the secondary and tertiary geological periods—the gigantic evidences of former life, the tropical fauna of the carboniferous system, and all the organic and inorganic proofs by which we are guided in investigating the physical changes, and classifying the extinct beings, that pertained to the older world of which they speak. ”

“ But meanwhile the geologist, without seeking to reanimate these extinct vertebrata, learns much regarding the past from the investigation of their colossal remains, and so too may the archæologist see into the living spirit of the medieval era by the earnest study of its creations, though he hopes better things of his own age than that it should expect perfection in those immature centuries, or seek for life in the beautiful sepulchres wherein they lie entombed. ”

“ The lower forms of animals appear first to be followed in time by the higher. It is true that some forms have survived through all the changes of Geological time to the present: yet, speaking generally, some forms of life are peculiar to each age, and the general phase of animal life is different with each period. ”

“ That the trade was of importance is evidenced by the fact that amber has been found scattered over Europe in the tombs of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.
We have given a passing glance at the religion of each age we have examined. It must be confessed that great uncertainty hangs over the results. From a close examination of their industries, we can gather considerable as to the home life and general enlightenment of prehistoric times. ”

“ We are concerned only with the outlines of Geology, not with its details. It is full of the most interesting facts, but is foreign to our present purpose. We will only say, there is a marked progression in the scale and importance of life forms. ”

“ The conditions of life must have been greatly modified by these geographical changes. The life-forms bear testimony to this changed condition. Old forms die away, and are succeeded by those approaching more nearly our own times. The name of this period is the Mesozoic time, or the period of middle life forms.14 It is instructive to notice the steady advance in the type of life, both animal and vegetable. The abundant flowerless vegetation of the coal formation of the preceding epoch dwindles away. ”

“ This vast period of time, which includes the beginning, is known among geologists as Archean time.
From the close of this age, the history of life properly commences. It might be well to explain the means which the geologist uses to interpret the history of the globe. It is now understood that the forces of nature have always produced the same results as they do now. From the very earliest time to the present, rocks have been forming. ”

“ The nice proportion between the parts, the exact circles and coincident angles show considerable advance in mechanical skill. The character of the works indicates that the people had permanent places of abode, and were not subject to the vicissitudes of a hunter’s state of life for subsistence. ”

“ But remote as is the antiquity, according to all human chronology, to which the fauna of these beds of marine detritus belong, the palæontologist detects among their post-tertiary fossils the phoca, balænæ of more than one species, fishes, articulata, and the shells of many mollusca still inhabiting the neighbouring ocean along the northern Atlantic coasts. The period, therefore, which embraces those relics of ancient life is the same to which man belongs ”

“ 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. ”

“ If, as above seen, the study of human origins is largely a geological problem, the investigation of the later developments, during the Metal Ages and prehistoric times, belongs mainly to the field of Archaeology. ”

“ DURING the unlettered youth of the race there were no written records from which the antiquity of man can be read. So the anthropologist on the one hand, and the geologist on the other, have sought to construct an early human history from prehistoric relics, and from the formations in which they are imbedded or the fossils with which they are associated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This geological claim for a vast antiquity of the human race is supported by the similar claims of prehistoric archaeology and the science of culture, the evidence of all three departments of inquiry being intimately connected, and in perfect harmony.
During the last half century, the fact has been established that human bones and objects of human manufacture occur in such geological relation to the remains of fossil species of elephant, rhinoceros, hysena, bear, &c., as to lead to the distinct inference that man already existed during the ancient period of these now extinct mammalia. ”

“ All these things they did, and many more that had never been done before,—and because they were so much more clever than all the beasts of the forest, the Prehistoric Man and his prehistoric wife lived a long time in a little peace and more happiness than you might at first think possible. ”

“ Geology was but just beginning to make good its claim to a place among the sciences. This unfolded to man the physical history of the world as read from the rocks, and deals with times so vast and profound that we speak no longer of years, but of ages. And with the aid of Geology grand secrets were wrung from the past, and new light was thrown on the manners and customs of primitive man. Thus the foundation for still another science was laid, called Archæology, or the science of Human Antiquities. ”

“ According to this theory, then, the Glacial Age commenced about two hundred and twenty thousand years ago. It continued, with one interruption of mild climate, for one hundred and forty thousand years, and finally passed away eighty thousand years ago.
What shall we say to these results? If true, what a wonderful antiquity is here unfolded for the human race, and what a wonderful lapse of time is included in what is known as the Paleolithic Age! How strikingly does it impress upon our minds the slow development of man! ”

“ Nowhere else has the prehistoric, the whole problem of man's antiquity, been studied with such thoroughness and with such happy results. Of the nearly one hundred years since prehistoric archeologv began to take shape and to grow into what is now becoming a real science, no decade has shown a more satisfactory record than the one just closed. ”

“ These closing essays have impressed on us clearly and distinctly the isolation of the Paleolithic Age. When we reflect on its prolonged duration, its remoteness in time, and its complete severance from the Neolithic and succeeding ages, we are almost ready to wonder whether they were indeed human beings. But beginning with the Neolithic Age, we come to our own era. ”

“ As we have now spent some time in tracing out the culture of these early ages, it may be well to see if there are any means at our command to determine the absolute chronology of the various ages. At the very outset of our inquiry, we shall perceive that we have no such class of facts as guided our investigations into the age of the Paleolithic remains. ”

“ Our knowledge of prehistoric man is based naturally upon the study of certain parts of the human skeleton preserved in a fossil state. In addition to these materials, other evidence is available in the form of certain products of human industry. These include such objects as implements of various kinds, owing their preservation to the almost indestructible nature of their material, or again artistic representations, whether pictorial or glyptic. ”

“ The prehistoric existence of Mankind, generically and specifically identical with those now living has been confirmed by his remains found in caves and by Ins tools of flint and bone found there and elsewhere. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It remains here to deal generally with the early conditions of the prehistoric ancient world in their broader aspects, which constitute the starting-place for the archaeologist in various parts of the world at different times, and the foundations of our present understanding of the primitive epochs in the history of man. ”

“ As, however, the truths of geology became gradually formulated into a science, and men's minds got accustomed to apply the new methods of research to the elucidation of the origin and history of the human race, the sphere of prehistoric archæology became equally well defined. ”

“ Whatever antiquity may be attributed to the human race, whatever the initial date to which its first appearance may be relegated, this antiquity is but slight, this date is but modern, if we compare it with the truly incalculable ages of which geology reveals the existence. ”