Man And His Ancestor: A Study In EvolutionMorris, Charles
Science
Man And His Ancestor: A Study In Evolution
Morris, Charles
Human beings -- Origin
During the warm preceding period he probably wandered as a hunter
through the European forests. But with the gradual coming on of a wintry
chill, as the advance of the ice began, shelter of some kind became
necessary, and he sought refuge in caves. From being a forest wanderer
he became a troglodyte. Everywhere in southwestern Europe we find traces
of this period of man's existence. There is hardly a cave or rock
shelter in that region within which he has not left his marks. He made
his way to England, which was probably then connected by land with
Europe, and dwelt long in its caverns. His period of cave residence,
indeed, appears to have been a very extended one. While it continued,
deposits many feet in depth gradually accumulated on the floors of the
caverns, slowly filling them up. And that, in some cases at least, this
cave residence ended a very long time ago, we are assured, for since
then a great thickness of stalagmite, which is deposited with extreme
slowness, has spread over the lower cave deposits and sealed them in.
It is in these caves that we find, not only the rude stone spearheads,
scrapers, hammers, etc., the bone awls, borers, and other implements of
palæolithic man, but the bones of man himself. And it is significant of
his primitive condition that these earliest relics indicate a man of a
very low grade of development, mentally far above the ape, it is true,
but mentally and physically much below modern man.
The most ape-like of those human remains is the famous Neanderthal
skull, found in 1856 in a limestone cavern of the Neanderthal Valley,
between Düsseldorf and Elberfeld, in Rhenish Prussia. The relics
discovered consist of the brain cap, two femori, two humeri, and other
fragments. The fragment of the skull attracted wide attention by its
bestial aspect, it presenting a low, narrow and receding forehead, and
an enormous thickness of the bony ridges over the eyes, like that seen
in the gorilla. This skull, which was associated with remains of the
cave-bear, hyena, and rhinoceros, is, with one exception, the most
ape-like human relic yet found. Yet its cranial capacity is far above
that of the highest apes, and is assimilated with that of Hottentot and
Polynesian skulls.
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