The Universal KinshipMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
The Universal Kinship
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Evolution; Human beings; Sociology
6. The evolution of mind in the animal world in general is suggested
by the fact that mind in man has evolved. The rich, luminous
intellect of civilised man, with its art, science, law, literature,
government, and morality, has been evolved from the rude, raw,
demon-haunted mind of the savage. Evidence of this evolution is
furnished by the recorded facts of human history, by the antiquarian
collections of our museums, and by a study of existing savages.
In all our museums there are collections of the relics of
prehistoric peoples. These collections consist of objects upon which
men in distant ages of the world have wrought—their weapons,
ornaments, utensils, implements, and playthings—which have been
saved from the teeth of Time by their durability. The character of
the minds which operated on these objects, which produced and used
them, may be inferred from the character of the objects, just as the
life and surroundings of an ancient animal or plant may be inferred
from its fossil. These relics are of stone, bone, bronze, and iron.
They are found in almost every region of the earth—all over Europe
and its islands, in western and central Asia, in China and Japan, in
Malay, Australia, and New Zealand, in the islands of the Pacific,
and throughout the length and breadth of America. They antedate
human history by thousands of years. They are the ruins of the Stone
Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age of mankind. In all of these
remains there is evidence of a slow but gradual improvement as we
approach the present. There are places on the earth where the
evolution of human implements, from the rudest chipped stones to the
comparatively finished products of historic peoples, is epitomised
in the deposits of a few feet in depth. One of these occurs at
Chelles, a suburb of Paris, and was made the subject of a paper by
Professor Packard in the _Popular Science Monthly_ for May, 1902.
Here three distinct layers, containing human remains entirely
different in character from each other, appear within a depth of 30
feet from the surface. The lowest bed, a layer of pebbles and sand,
and probably preglacial in origin, contains the famous Chellean
‘axes,’ rude almond-shaped implements of chipped flint, and used
by these ancient inhabitants by being held in the hand. In this bed
are also found the bones of the straight-tusked elephant, cave-bear,
big-nosed rhinoceros, and other species now extinct. The next bed is
the interglacial, and contains implements entirely different from
the one below it, among which are skin-scrapers and lance-points.
The animal remains of this bed are also different from those found
in the bed below, and include animals like the musk-ox and the
reindeer, which were probably driven to this southern clime from
more northern regions by the excessive cold of the time. The third
bed, which lies just below the surface soils, contains polished
stone axes and other remains of human industry cotemporaneous with
the Swiss lake-dwellers.
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