Part 16 (1/2)

We have, in fine, a race of hunters, with fine stone knives and javelins. Toward the close of the period we find a single representation of an arrow, which was probably just coming into use, but it is not generally known in the Old Stone Age. One of the drawings seems to represent a kind of bridle on a horse, but we need more evidence than this to convince us that the horse was already tamed, nor is there any reason to suppose that the dog or reindeer had been tamed, or that the ground was tilled even in the most rudimentary way. Artistic skill, the use of clothing and fire, and a finer feeling in the shaping of weapons and implements, are the highest certain indications of the progress made by the end of the Old Stone Age.

But there was probably an advance made which we do not find recorded, or only equivocally recorded, in the memorials of the age. Speech was probably the greatest invention of Magdalenian man. It has been pointed out that the spine in the lower jaw, to which the tongue-muscle is attached, is so poorly developed in Palaeolithic man that we may infer from it the absence of articulate speech. The deduction has been criticised, but a comparison of the Palaeolithic jaw with that of the ape on one hand and modern man on the other gives weight to it. Whatever may have been earlier man's power of expression, the closer social life of the Magdalenian period would lead to a great development of it. Some writers go so far as to suggest that certain obscure marks painted on pebbles or drawn on the cavern-walls by men at the close of the Palaeolithic Age may represent a beginning of written language, or numbers, or conventional signs. The interpretation of these is obscure and doubtful. It is not until ages afterwards that we find the first clear traces of written language, and then they take the form of pictographs (like the Egyptian hieroglyphics or the earliest Chinese characters).

We cannot doubt, however, that articulate speech would be rapidly evolved in the social life of the later Magdalenian period, and the importance of this acquisition can hardly be exaggerated. Imagine even a modern community without the device of articulate language. A very large proportion of the community, who are now maintained at a certain level by the thought of others, communicated to them by speech, would sink below the civilised standard, and the transmission and improvement of ideas would be paralysed. It would not be paradoxical to regard the social life and developing speech of Magdalenian man as the chief cause of the rapid advance toward civilisation which will follow in the next period.

And it is not without interest to notice that a fall in the temperature of the earth is the immediate cause of this social life. The building of homes of any kind seems to be unknown to Magdalenian man. The artist would have left us some sketchy representation of it if there had been anything in the nature of a tent in his surroundings. The rock-shelter and the cave are the homes which men seek from the advancing cold. As these are relatively few in number, fixed in locality, and often of large dimensions, the individualism of the earlier times is replaced by collective life. Sociologists still dispute whether the clan arose by the cohesion of families or the family arose within the clan. Such evidence as is afforded by prehistoric remains is entirely in favour of the opinion of Professor Westermarck, that the family preceded the larger group. Families of common descent would now cling together and occupy a common cavern, and, when the men gathered at night with the women for the roasting and eating of the horse or deer they had hunted, and the work of the artist and the woman was considered, the uncouth muttering and gesticulating was slowly forged into the great instrument of articulate speech. The first condition of more rapid progress was instinctively gained.

Our story of life has so often turned on this periodical lowering of the climate of the earth that it is interesting to find this last and most important advance so closely a.s.sociated with it that we are forced once more to regard it as the effective cause. The same may be said of another fundamental advance of the men of the later Palaeolithic age, the discovery of the art of making fire. It coincides with the oncoming of the cold, either in the Mousterian or the Magdalenian. It was more probably a chance discovery than an invention. Savages so commonly make fire by friction--rubbing sticks, drills, etc.--that one is naturally tempted to regard this as the primitive method. I doubt if this was the case. When, in Neolithic times, men commonly bury the dead, and put some of their personal property in the grave with them, the fire-kindling apparatus we find is a flint and a piece of iron pyrites. Palaeolithic man made his implements of any kind of hard and heavy stone, and it is probable that he occasionally selected iron ore for the purpose.

An attempt to chip it with flint would cause sparks that might fall on inflammable material, and set it alight. Little intelligence would be needed to turn this discovery to account.

Apart from these conjectures as to particular features in the life of prehistoric man, it will be seen that we have now a broad and firm conception of its evolution. From the ape-level man very slowly mounts to the stage of human savagery. During long ages he seems to have made almost no progress. There is nothing intrinsically progressive in his nature. Let a group of men be isolated at any stage of human evolution, and placed in an unchanging environment, and they will remain stationary for an indefinite period. When Europeans began to traverse the globe in the last few centuries, they picked up here and there little groups of men who had, in their isolation, remained just where their fathers had been when they quitted the main road of advance in the earlier stages of the Old Stone Age. The evolution of man is guided by the same laws as the evolution of any other species. Thus we can understand the long period of stagnation, or of incalculably slow advance. Thus, too, we can understand why, at length, the pace of man toward his unconscious goal is quickened. He is an inhabitant of the northern hemisphere, and the northern hemisphere is shaken by the last of the great geological revolutions. From its first stress emerges the primeval savage of the early part of the Old Stone Age, still bearing the deep imprint of his origin, surpa.s.sing his fellow-animals only in the use of crude stone implements. Then the stress of conditions relaxes--the great ice-sheet disappears--and again during a vast period he makes very little progress. The stress returns. The genial country is stripped and impoverished, and the reindeer and mammoth spread to the south of Europe. But once more the adversity has its use, and man, stimulated in his hunt for food, invigorated by the cold, driven into social life, advances to the culmination of the Old Stone Age.

We are still very far from civilisation, but the few tens of thousands of years that separate Magdalenian man from it will be traversed with relative speed--though, we should always remember, with a speed far less than the pace at which man is advancing to-day. A new principle now enters into play: a specifically human law of evolution is formulated.

It has no element of mysticism, and is merely an expression of the fact that the previous general agencies of development have created in man an intelligence of a higher grade than that of any other animal. In his larger and more plastic brain the impressions received from the outer world are blended in ideas, and in his articulate speech he has a unique means of entering the idea-world of his fellows. The new principle of evolution, which arises from this superiority, is that man's chief stimulus to advance will now come from his cultural rather than his physical environment. Physical surroundings will continue to affect him. One race will outstrip another because of its advantage in soil, climate, or geographical position. But the chief key to the remaining and more important progress of mankind, which we are about to review, is the stimulating contact of the differing cultures of different races.

This will be seen best in the history of civilisation, but the principle may be recognised in the New Stone Age which leads from primeval savagery to civilisation, or, to be more accurate and just, to the beginning of the historical period. It used to be thought that there was a mysterious blank or gulf between the Old and the New Stone Age.

The Palaeolithic culture seemed to come to an abrupt close, and the Neolithic culture was sharply distinguished from it. It was suspected that some great catastrophe had destroyed the Palaeolithic race in Europe, and a new race entered as the adverse conditions were removed.

This was especially held to be the case in England. The old Palaeolithic race had never reached Ireland, which seems to have been cut oft from the Continent during the Ice-Age, and most of the authorities still believe--in spite of some recent claims--that it never reached Scotland.

England itself was well populated, and the remains found in the caves of Derbys.h.i.+re show that even the artist--or his art--had reached that district. This Palaeolithic race seemed to come to a mysterious end, and Europe was then invaded by the higher Neolithic race. England was probably detached from the Continent about the end of the Magdalenian period. It was thought that some great devastation--the last ice-sheet, a submersion of the land, or a plague--then set in, and men were unable to retreat south.

It is now claimed by many authorities that there are traces of a Middle Stone (Mesolithic) period even in England, and nearly all the authorities admit that such a transitional stage can be identified in the Pyrenean region. This region had been the great centre of the Magdalenian culture. Its large frescoed caverns exhibit the culmination of the Old Stone life, and afford many connecting links with the new.

It is, however, a clearly established and outstanding fact that the characteristic art of Magdalenian man comes to an abrupt and complete close, and it does not seem possible to explain this without supposing that the old race was destroyed or displaced. If we could accept the view that it was the Eskimo-like race of the Palaeolithic that cultivated this art, and that they retreated north with the reindeer and the ice, and survive in our Eskimo, we should have a plausible explanation. In point of fact, we find no trace whatever of this slow migration from the south of Europe to the north. The more probable supposition is that a new race, with more finished stone implements, entered Europe, imposed its culture upon the older race, and gradually exterminated or replaced it. We may leave it open whether a part of the old race retreated to the north, and became the Eskimo.

Whence came the new race and its culture? It will be seen on reflection that we have so far been studying the evolution of man in Europe only, because there alone are his remains known with any fullness. But the important region which stretches from Morocco to Persia must have been an equally, if not more, important theatre of development. While Europe was s.h.i.+vering in the last stage of the Ice-Age, and the mammoth and reindeer browsed in the snows down to the south of France, this region would enjoy an excellent climate and a productive soil. We may confidently a.s.sume that there was a large and stirring population of human beings on it during the Magdalenian cold. We may, with many of the authorities, look to this temperate and fertile region for the slight advance made by early Neolithic man beyond his predecessor. As the cold relaxed, and the southern fringe of dreary steppe w as converted once more into genial country, the race would push north. There is evidence that there were still land bridges across the Mediterranean. From Spain and the south of France this early Neolithic race rapidly spread over Europe.

It must not be supposed that the New Stone Age at first goes much beyond the Old in culture. Works on prehistoric man are apt to give as features of ”Neolithic man” all that we know him to have done or discovered during the whole of the New Stone Age. We read that he not only gave a finer finish to, and sometimes polished, his stone weapons, but built houses, put imposing monuments over his dead, and had agriculture, tame cattle, pottery, and weaving. This is misleading, as the more advanced of these accomplishments appear only late in the New Stone Age. The only difference we find at first is that the stone axes, etc., are more finely chipped or flaked, and are frequently polished by rubbing on stone moulds. There is no sudden leap in culture or intelligence in the story of man.

It would be supremely interesting to trace the evolution of human industries and ideas during the few tens of thousands of years of the New Stone Age. During that time moral and religious ideas are largely developed, political or social forms are elaborated, and the arts of civilised man have their first rude inauguration. The foundations of civilisation are laid. Unfortunately, precisely because the period is relatively so short and the advance so rapid, its remains are crushed and mingled in a thin seam of the geological chronicle, and we cannot restore the gradual course of its development with any confidence.

Estimates of its duration vary from 20,000 to 70,000 years; though Sir W. Turner has recently concluded, from an examination of marks on Scottish monuments, that Neolithic man probably came on foot from Scandinavia to Scotland, and most geologists would admit that it must be at least a hundred thousand years since one could cross from Norway to Scotland on foot. As usual, we must leave open the question of chronology, and be content with a modest provisional estimate of 40,000 or 50,000 years.

We dimly perceive the gradual advance of human culture in this important period. During the Old Stone Age man had made more progress than he had made in the preceding million years; during the New Stone Age--at least one-fourth as long as the Old--he made even greater progress; and, we may add, in the historical period, which is one-fourth the length of the Neolithic Age, he will make greater progress still. The pace of advance naturally increases as intelligence grows, but that is not the whole explanation. The spread of the race, the gathering of its members into tribes, and the increasing enterprise of men in hunting and migration, lead to incessant contacts of different cultures and a progressive stimulation.

At first Neolithic man is content with finer weapons. His stone axe is so finely shaped and polished that it sometimes looks like forged or moulded metal. He also drills a clean hole through it--possibly by means of a stick working in wet sand--and gives it a long wooden handle. He digs in the earth for finer flints, and in some of his ancient shafts (Grimes, Graves and Cissbury) we find picks of reindeer horn and hollowed blocks of chalk in which he probably burned fat for illumination underground. But in the later part of the Neolithic--to which much of this finer work also may belong--we find him building huts, rearing large stone monuments, having tame dogs and pigs and oxen, growing corn and barley, and weaving primitive fabrics. He lives in large and strong villages, round which we must imagine his primitive cornfields growing and his cattle grazing, and in which there must have been some political organisation under chiefs.

When we wish to trace the beginning of these inventions we have the same difficulty that we experienced in tracing the first stages of new animal types. The beginning takes place in some restricted region, and our casual scratching of the crust of the earth or the soil may not touch it for ages, if it has survived at all. But for our literature and ill.u.s.trations a future generation would be equally puzzled to know how we got the idea of the aeroplane or the electric light. In some cases we can make a good guess at the origin of Neolithic man's inst.i.tutions. Let us take pottery. Palaeolithic man cooked his joint of horse or reindeer, and, no doubt, scorched it. Suppose that some Palaeolithic Soyer had conceived the idea of protecting the joint, and preserving its juices, by daubing it with a coat of clay. He would accidentally make a clay vessel. This is Mr. Clodd's ingenious theory of the origin of pottery.

The development of agriculture is not very puzzling. The seed of corn would easily be discovered to have a food-value, and the discovery of the growth of the plant from the seed would not require a very high intelligence. Some ants, we may recall, have their fungus-beds. It would be added by many that the ant gives us another parallel in its keeping of droves of aphides, which it ”milks.” But it is now doubted if the ant deliberately cultivates the aphides with this aim. Early weaving might arise from the plaiting of gra.s.ses. If wild flax were used, it might be noticed that part of it remained strong when the rest decayed, and so the threads might be selected and woven.

The building of houses, after living for ages in stone caverns, would not be a very profound invention. The early houses were--as may be gathered from the many remains in Devons.h.i.+re and Cornwall--mere rings of heaped stones, over which, most probably, was put a roof of branches or reeds, plastered with mud. They belong to the last part of the New Stone Age. In other places, chiefly Switzerland, Neolithic man lived in wooden huts built on piles in the shallow sh.o.r.es of lakes. It is an evidence that life on land is becoming as stimulating as we find it in the age of Deinosaurs or early mammals. These pile-villages of Switzerland lasted until the historical period, and the numerous remains in the mud of the lake show the gradual pa.s.sage into the age of metal.

Before the metal age opened, however, there seem to have been fresh invasions of Europe and changes of its culture. The movements of the various early races of men are very obscure, and it would be useless to give here even an outline of the controversy. Anthropologists have generally taken the relative length and width of the skull as a standard feature of a race, and distinguished long-headed (dolichocephalic), short-headed (brachycephalic), and middle-headed (mesaticephalic) races.

Even on this test the most divergent conclusions were reached in regard to early races, and now the test itself is seriously disputed. Some authorities believe that there is no unchanging type of skull in a particular race, but that, for instance, a long-headed race may become short-headed by going to live in an elevated region.

It may be said, in a few words, that it is generally believed that two races invaded Europe and displaced the first Neolithic race. The race which chiefly settled in the Swiss region is generally believed to have come from Asia, and advanced across Europe by way of the valley of the Danube. The native home of the wheat and barley and millet, which, as we know, the lake-dwellers cultivated, is said to be Asia. On the other hand, the Neolithic men who have left stone monuments on our soil are said to be a different race, coming, by way of North Africa, from Asia, and advancing along the west of Europe to Scandinavia. A map of the earth, on which the distribution of these stone monuments--all probably connected with the burial of the dead--is indicated, suggests such a line of advance from India, with a slighter branch eastward. But the whole question of these invasions is disputed, and there are many who regard the various branches of the population of Europe as sections of one race which spread upward from the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean.

It is clear at least that there were great movements of population, much mingling of types and commercial interchange of products, so that we have the constant conditions of advance. A last invasion seems to have taken place some two or three thousand years before the Christian era, when the Aryans overspread Europe. After all the controversy about the Aryans it seems clear that a powerful race, representing the ancestors of most of the actual peoples of Europe and speaking the dialects which have been modified into the related languages of the Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts, Lithuanians, etc., imposed its speech on nearly the whole of the continent. Only in the Basques and Picts do we seem to find some remnants of the earlier non-Aryan tongues. But whether these Aryans really came from Asia, as it used to be thought, or developed in the east of Europe, is uncertain. We seem justified in thinking that a very robust race had been growing in numbers and power during the Neolithic Age, somewhere in the region of South-east Europe and Southwest Asia, and that a few thousand years before the Christian Era one branch of it descended upon India, another upon the Persian region, and another overspread Europe. We will return to the point later. Instead of being the bearers of a higher civilisation, these primitive Aryans seem to have been lower in culture than the peoples on whom they fell.

The Neolithic Age had meantime pa.s.sed into the Age of Metal. Copper was probably the first metal to be used. It is easily worked, and is found in nature. But the few copper implements we possess do not suggest a ”Copper Age” of any length or extent. It was soon found, apparently, that an admixture of tin hardened the copper, and the Bronze Age followed. The use of bronze was known in Egypt about 4800 B.C. (Flinders Petrie), but little used until about 2000 B.C. By that time (or a few centuries later) it had spread as far as Scandinavia and Britain. The region of invention is not known, but we have large numbers of beautiful specimens of bronze work--including brooches and hair-pins--in all parts of Europe. Finally, about the thirteenth century B.C., we find the first traces of the use of iron. The first great centre for the making of iron weapons seems to have been Hallstatt, in the Austrian Alps, whence it spread slowly over Europe, reaching Scandinavia and Britain between 500 and 300 B.C. But the story of man had long before this entered the historical period, to which we now turn.