Man, Past and PresentKeane, A. H. (Augustus Henry)
History
Man, Past and Present
Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry)
Anthropology; Ethnology
After referring to the identity of certain objects from the Hastings
kitchen-middens and a barrow near Sevenoaks, W. J. L. Abbot proceeds:
"The first thing that would strike one in looking over a few trays of
these implements is the remarkable likeness which they bear to those of
Dordogne. Indeed many of the figures in the magnificent 'Reliquiae
Aquitanicae' might almost have been produced from these specimens[20]."
And Sir J. Evans, extending his glance over a wider horizon, discovers
implements in other distant lands "so identical in form and character
with British specimens that they might have been manufactured by the
same hands.... On the banks of the Nile, many hundreds of feet above its
present level, implements of the European types have been discovered,
while in Somaliland, in an ancient river valley, at a great elevation
above the sea, Seton-Karr has collected a large number of implements
formed of flint and quartzite, which, judging from their form and
character, might have been dug out of the drift-deposits of the Somme
and the Seine, the Thames or the ancient Solent[21]."
It was formerly held that man himself showed a similar uniformity, and
all palaeolithic skulls were referred to one long-headed type, called,
from the most famous example, the Neandertal, which was regarded as
having close affinities with the present Australians. But this
resemblance is shown by Boule[22] and others to be purely superficial,
and recent archaeological finds indicate that more than one racial type
was in existence in the Palaeolithic Age.
W. L. H. Duckworth on anatomical evidence constructs the following
table[23].
Group I. Early ancestral forms.
_Ex. gr. H. heidelbergensis._
Group II. _Subdivision A. H. primigenius._
_Ex. gr. La Chapelle._
_Subdivision B. H. recens_; with varieties
{ _H. fossilis. Ex. gr. Galley Hill._
{ _H. sapiens._
H. Obermaier[24] argues as follows: _Homo primigenius_ is neither the
representative of an intermediate species between ape and man, nor a
lower or distinct type than _Homo sapiens_, but an older primitive
variety (race) of the latter, which survives in exceptional cases down
to the present day[25]. Clearly then, according to the rules of
zoological classification, we must term the two, _Homo sapiens var.
primigenius_, as compared with _Homo sapiens var. recens_.
Whatever classification or nomenclature may be adopted the dual division
in palaeolithic times is now generally recognised. The more primitive
type is commonly called Neandertal man, from the famous cranium found
in the Neandertal cave in 1857, or Mousterian man, from the culture
associations. To this group belong the Gibraltar skull[26], and the
skeletons from Spy[27], and Krapina, Croatia[28], together with the
later discoveries (1908-11) at La Chapelle[29] (Correze), Le
Moustier[30], La Ferassie[31] (Dordogne) and many others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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