(12) _The Foxhall Man_: This is the earliest known prehistoric man.
He is known to us, however, only through “his flint instruments
partly burned with fire, found near the little hamlet of Foxhall, near
Norwich, on the east coast of England. These flints, discovered in
1921, constitute the first proofs that man of sufficient intelligence
to make a variety of flint implements and to use fire existed in
Britain at the close of the Age of Mammals; this is the first true
Tertiary man ever found.” (Osborn: _Guide-leaflet_ to “The Hall of the
Age of Man,” 2nd ed., 1923, p. 9.) Osborn assigns the twelve kinds
of flint instruments typical of the Foxhallian culture to the Upper
Pliocene epoch. R. A. Macalister, however, denies that the deposits are
Tertiary. Abbé Henri Breuil’s verdict was undecided. In any case, the
Foxhallian culture proves that the earliest of prehistoric men were
intelligent like ourselves.
_Summa summarum_: So far as science knows, only one human species
has ever existed on the earth, and that is _Homo sapiens_. All the
alleged connecting links between men and apes are found, on careful
examination, to be illusory. When not wholly ambiguous in view of their
inadequate preservation and fragmentary character, they are (as regards
both mind and body) distinctly human, like the Neanderthal man, or they
are purely simian, like the Pithecanthropus, or they are heterogeneous
combinations of human and simian bones, like the Eoanthropus
Dawsoni.[18] “With absolute certainty,” says Hugues Obermaier, “we can
only say that man of the Quaternary period differed in no essential
respect from man of the present day. In no way did he go beyond the
limits of variation of the normal human body.” (“The Oldest Remains of
the Human Body, etc.,” Vienna, 1905.) The so-called _Homo primigenius_,
therefore, is not a distinct species of human being, but merely an
ancient race that is, at most, a distinct variety or subspecies of man.
In spite of tireless searching, no traces of a bestial, irrational
man have been discovered. Indeed, man whom nature has left naked,
defenseless, unarmed with natural weapons, and deficient in instinct,
has no other resource than his reason and could never have survived
without it. To imagine primitive man in a condition analogous to that
of the idiot is preposterous. “For other animals,” says St. Thomas of
Aquin, “nature has prepared food, garments of fur, means of defense,
such as teeth, horns, and hoofs, or at least swiftness in flight. But
man is so constituted that, none of these things having been prepared
for him by nature, reason is given him in their stead, reason by which
through his handiwork he is enabled to prepare all these things....
Moreover, in other animals there is inborn a certain natural economy
respecting those things which are useful or hurtful, as the lamb by
nature knows the wolf to be its enemy. Some animals also by natural
instinct are aware of the medicinal properties of herbs and of other
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