A Short History of the WorldWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
A Short History of the World
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World history
These first real human beings we know of in Europe appear already to
have belonged to one or other of at least two very distinct races. One
of these races was of a very high type indeed; it was tall and big
brained. One of the women’s skulls found exceeds in capacity that of
the average man of to-day. One of the men’s skeletons is over six feet
in height. The physical type resembled that of the North American
Indian. From the Cro-Magnon cave in which the first skeletons were
found these people have been called Cro-Magnards. They were savages,
but savages of a high order. The second race, the race of the Grimaldi
cave remains, was distinctly negroid in its characters. Its nearest
living affinities are the Bushmen and Hottentots of South Africa. It
is interesting to find at the very outset of the known human story,
that mankind was already racially divided into at least two main
varieties; and one is tempted to such unwarrantable guesses as that the
former race was probably brownish rather than black and that it came
from the East or North, and that the latter was blackish rather than
brown and came from the equatorial south.
BONE CARVINGS OF THE PALÆOLITHIC PERIOD
BONE CARVINGS OF THE PALÆOLITHIC PERIOD
(1 and 2) Mammoth tusk carved to shape of Reindeer, (3) Dagger Handle
representing Mammoth, and (4) Bone engraved with Horses’ Heads
_Brit. Mus._
And these savages of perhaps forty thousand years ago were so human
that they pierced shells to make necklaces, painted themselves, carved
images of bone and stone, scratched figures on rocks and bones, and
painted rude but often very able sketches of beasts and the like upon
the smooth walls of caves and upon inviting rock surfaces. They made a
great variety of implements, much smaller in scale and finer than those
of the Neanderthal men. We have now in our museums great quantities of
their implements, their statuettes, their rock drawings and the like.
The earliest of them were hunters. Their chief pursuit was the wild
horse, the little bearded pony of that time. They followed it as it
moved after pasture. And also they followed the bison. They knew the
mammoth, because they have left us strikingly effective pictures of
that creature. To judge by one rather ambiguous drawing they trapped
and killed it.
They hunted with spears and throwing stones. They do not seem to have
had the bow, and it is doubtful if they had yet learnt to tame any
animals. They had no dogs. There is one carving of a horse’s head and
one or two drawings that suggest a bridled horse, with a twisted skin
or tendon round it. But the little horses of that age and region could
not have carried a man, and if the horse was domesticated it was used
as a led horse. It is doubtful and improbable that they had yet learnt
the rather unnatural use of animal’s milk as food.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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