The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and MankindWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World history
When the Dutch discovered Tasmania, they found a detached human race not
very greatly advanced beyond this Lower Palæolithic stage. But over most
of the world the Lower Palæolithic culture had developed into a more
complicated and higher life twenty or thirty thousand years ago. The
Tasmanians were not racially Neanderthalers;[34] their brain-cases,
their neck-bones, their jaws and teeth, show that; they had no
Neanderthal affinities; they were of the same species as ourselves.
There can be little doubt that throughout the hundreds of centuries
during which the scattered little groups of Neanderthal men were all
that represented men in Europe, real men, of our own species, in some
other part of the world, were working their way along parallel lines
from much the same stage as the Neanderthalers ended at, and which the
Tasmanians preserved, to a higher level of power and achievement. The
Tasmanians, living under unstimulating conditions, remote from any other
human competition or example, lagged behind the rest of the human
brotherhood.[35]
About 200 centuries ago or earlier, real men of our own species, if not
of our own race, came drifting into the European area.
X
THE LATER POSTGLACIAL PALÆOLITHIC MEN, THE FIRST TRUE MEN
(Later Palæolithic Age)
§ 1. _The Coming of Men Like Ourselves._ § 2. _Subdivision of the
Later Palæolithic._ § 3. _The Earliest True Men Were Splendid
Savages._ § 4. _Hunters Give Place to Herdsmen._ § 5. _No Sub-men
in America._
§ 1
The Neanderthal type of man prevailed in Europe at least for tens of
thousands of years. For ages that make all history seem a thing of
yesterday, these nearly human creatures prevailed. If the Heidelberg jaw
was that of a Neanderthaler, and if there is no error in the estimate of
the age of that jaw, then the Neanderthal Race lasted out for more than
200,000 years! Finally, between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago, as the
Fourth Glacial Age softened towards more temperate conditions (see Map
on p. 89), a different human type came upon the scene, and, it would
seem, exterminated _Homo Neanderthalensis_.[36] This new type was
probably developed in South Asia or North Africa, or in lands now
submerged in the Mediterranean basin, and, as more remains are
collected and evidence accumulates, men will learn more of their early
stages. At present we can only guess where and how, through the slow
ages, parallel with the Neanderthal cousin, these first _true men_ arose
out of some more ape-like progenitor. For hundreds of centuries they
were acquiring skill of hand and limb, and power and bulk of brain, in
that still unknown environment. They were already far above the
Neanderthal level of achievement and intelligence, when first they come
into our ken, and they had already split into two or more very
distinctive races.
[Illustration: Cromagnon
Man]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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