merely in response to painful proddings at the tail-end.
Our remaining task is to take stock of that improvement in the arts of
life whereby man has come gradually to master an environment that
formerly mastered him. For the Early Palaeolithic Period our evidence in
respect of its variety, if not of its gross quantity, is wofully
disappointing. Not to speak of man's first and rudest experiments in the
utilization of stone, which are doubtless scattered about the world in
goodly numbers if only we could recognize them clearly for what they
are, the Chellean industry by its wide distribution leads one to suppose
that mankind in those far-off days was only capable of one idea at a
time--a time, too, that lasted a whole age. Yet the succeeding Acheulean
style of workmanship in flint testifies to the occurrence of progress in
one of its typical forms, namely, in the form of what may be termed
'intensive' progress. The other typical form I might call 'intrusive'
progress, as happens when a stimulating influence is introduced from
without. Now it may be that the Acheulean culture came into being as a
result of contact between an immigrant stock and a previous population
practising the Chellean method of stone-work. We are at present far too
ill-informed to rule out such a guess. But, on the face of it, the
greater refinement of the Acheulean handiwork looks as if it had been
literally hammered out by steadfastly following up the Chellean pattern
into its further possibilities. Explain it as we will, this evolution of
the so-called _coup-de-poing_ affords almost the sole proof that the
human world of that remote epoch was moving at all. If we could see
their work in wood, we might discern a more diversified skill or we
might not. As it is, we can but conclude in the light of our very
imperfect knowledge that in mind no less than in body mankind of Early
Palaeolithic times displayed a fixity of type almost amounting to that
of one of the other animal species.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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