Man And His Ancestor: A Study In EvolutionMorris, Charles
Science
Man And His Ancestor: A Study In Evolution
Morris, Charles
Human beings -- Origin
These diminutive people seem to have been not over four feet eight
inches high. They were not alone, however. Men of normal height were in
Europe with them. The northward migration of the Pygmies seems to have
been accompanied or followed by that of a full grown people. Yet the
Pygmies have held their own in Europe as in Africa, with certain
modifications. In Sicily and Sardinia, which form part of a supposed
former land bridge between Africa and Europe, a small people about five
feet high still exist, whom Dr. Kollman looks upon as representing a
distinct race, the predecessors of the tall Europeans. In the Lapps of
northern Europe we possess another small race, possibly the lineal
descendents of the Quaternary Pygmies. Everywhere the small man has
been forced to retire into forests, deserts, and icy barrens before the
taller and stronger man. The folk-lore of Europe is full of traditions
of a race of dwarfs, and its conflict with men of larger mould, and
there are various indications that this race was once widespread.
What has been said here of the migration of man into Europe and his
development in that country is preliminary to a consideration of the
second great stage of human development, that due to the conflict with
nature. The conflict with the animal world appears to have ended in the
production of a dwarfish, forest-dwelling variety of man, in the lowest
human stage of mental evolution. The conflict with nature ended in the
development of a full-sized variety of man, dwelling largely in the open
country and much superior in intellect, as indicated by his higher
powers of thought and advanced degree of organization.
The conflict with nature took several forms, in accordance with the
conditions of the several regions inhabited by man. Its result was to
subdue nature to the use and benefit of mankind, and the methods, in the
tropical localities of original man, consisted in the reduction of
animals to the domestic state and a similar domestication of food
plants. In other words, one of its early stages was the development of
the herding habit, while a far more important one was that of the
appearance of the agricultural industries. In Europe a third and still
more vigorous influence supervened, that of the conflict with cold and
man's gradual adaptation to the conditions of a frigid climate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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