Part 7 (1/2)

SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY

1. Evidences of the great antiquity of man.

2. Physical and mental traits of the anthropoid apes.

3. The life and culture of the Neanderthal Race.

4. What are the evidences in favor of the descent of man from a single progenitor?

5. Explain the law of differentiation as applied to plants and animals.

6. Compare in general the arts of man in the Old Stone Age with those of the New Stone Age.

7. What has been the effect of the study of prehistoric man on modern thought as shown in the interpretation of History? Philosophy?

Religion?

[1] See Diagram, p. 59.

[2] See Haeckel, Schmidt, Ward, Robinson, Osborn, Todd.

[3] See Osborn, _Men of the Old Stone Age_.

[4] See Chapter II.

[5] After Osborn. Read from bottom up.

[6] Estimates of Neanderthal vary from 150,000 to 50,000 years ago.

[7] See p. 64.

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CHAPTER V

THE ECONOMIC FACTORS OF PROGRESS

_The Efforts of Man to Satisfy Physical Needs_.--All knowledge of primitive man, whether derived from the records of cultures he has left or a.s.sumed from a.n.a.logy of living tribes of a low order of civilization, discovers him wandering along the streams in the valleys or by the sh.o.r.es of lakes and oceans, searching for food and incidentally seeking protection in caves and trees. The whole earth was his so far as he could appropriate it. He cared nothing for owners.h.i.+p; he only wanted room to search for the food nature had provided. When he failed to find sufficient food as nature left it, he starved. So in his wandering life he adapted himself to nature as he found it. In the different environments he acquired different customs and habits of life. If he came in contact with other tribes, an exchange of knowledge and customs took place, and both tribes were richer thereby. However, the universality of the human mind made it possible for two detached tribes, under similar environment and similar stimuli, to develop the same customs and habits of life, provided they had the same degree of development. Hence, we have independent group development and group borrowing.

When nature failed to provide him with sufficient food, he learned to force her to yield a larger supply. When natural objects were insufficient for his purposes, he made artificial tools to supplement them. Slowly he became an inventor. Slowly he mastered the art of living. Thus physical needs were gradually satisfied, and the foundation for the superstructure of civilization was laid.

_The Attempt to Satisfy Hunger and to Protect from Cold_.--To this statement must be added the fact that struggle with {83} his fellows arose from the attempt to obtain food, and we have practically the whole occupation of man in a state of savagery. At least, the simple activities represent the essential forces at the foundation of human social life. The attempt to preserve life either through instinct, impulse, emotion, or rational selection is fundamental in all animal existence. The other great factor at the foundation of human effort is the desire to perpetuate the species. This, in fact, is the mere projection of the individual life into the next generation, and is fundamentally important to the individual and to the race alike. All modern efforts can be traced to these three fundamental activities.

But in seeking to satisfy the cravings of hunger and to avoid the pain of cold, man has developed a varied and active life. About these two centres cl.u.s.ter all the simple forces of human progress. Indeed, invention and discovery and the advancement of the industrial arts receive their initial impulses from these economic relations.

We have only to turn our attention to the social life around us to observe evidences of the great importance of economic factors. Even now it will be observed that the greater part of economic activities proceeds from the effort to procure food, clothing, and shelter, while a relatively smaller part is engaged in the pursuit of education, culture, and pleasure. The excellence of educational systems, the highest flights of philosophy, the greatest achievement of art, and the best inspiration of religion cannot exist without a wholesome economic life at the foundation. It should not be humiliating to man that this is so, for in the const.i.tution of things, labor of body and mind, the struggle for existence and the acc.u.mulations of the products of industry yield a large return in themselves in discipline and culture; and while we use these economic means to reach higher ideal states, they represent the ladder on which man makes the first rounds of his ascent.

_The Methods of Procuring Food in Primitive Times_.--Judging from the races and tribes that are more nearly in a state of nature than any other, it may be reasonably a.s.sumed that {84} in his first stage of existence, man subsisted almost wholly upon a vegetable diet, and that gradually he gave more and more attention to animal food. His structure and physiology make it possible for him to use both animal and vegetable food. Primarily, with equal satisfaction the procuring of food must have been rather an individual than a social function.

Each individual sought his own breakfast wherever he might find it. It was true then, as now, that people proceeded to the breakfast table in an aggregation, and flocked around the centres of food supply; so we may a.s.sume the picture of man stealing away alone, picking fruits, nuts, berries, gathering clams or fish, was no more common than the fact of present-day man getting his own breakfast alone. The main difference is that in the former condition individuals obtained the food as nature left it, and pa.s.sed it directly from the bush or tree to the mouth, while in modern times thousands of people have been working indirectly to make it possible for a man to wait on himself.

Jack London, in his _Before Adam_, gives a very interesting picture of the tribe going out to the carrot field for its breakfast, each individual helping himself. However, such an aggregation around a common food supply must eventually lead to co-operative economic methods. But we do find even among modern living tribes of low degree of culture the group following the food quest, whether it be to the carrot patch, the nut-bearing trees, the sedgy seash.o.r.e for mussels and clams, the lakes for wild rice, or to the forest and plains where abound wild game.