[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
are no bones nor other remains of the creature which made these objects,
simply the objects themselves. For all the certainty we have it may have been
some entirely unhuman but intelligent monkey. But at Trinil in Java, in
accumulations of this age, a piece of a skull and various teeth and bones have
been found of a sort of ape man, with a brain case bigger than that of any
living apes, which seems to have walked erect. This creature is now called
Pithecanthropus erectus, the walking ape man, and the little trayful of its
bones is the only help our imaginations have as yet in figuring to ourselves
the makers of the Eoliths.
It is not until we come to sands that are almost a quarter of a million years
old that we find any other particle of a sub-human being. But there are plenty
of implements, and they are steadily improving in quality as we read on
through the record. They are no longer clumsy Eoliths; they are now shapely
instruments made with considerable skill. And they are much bigger than the
similar implements afterwards made by true man. Then, in a sandpit at
Heidelberg, appears a single quasi-human jaw-bone, a clumsy jaw-bone,
absolutely chinless, far heavier than a true human jaw-bone and narrower, so
that it is improbable the creature's tongue could have moved about for
articulate speech. On the strength of this jaw-bone, scientific men suppose
this creature to have been a heavy, almost human monster, possibly with huge
limbs and hands, possibly with a thick felt of hair, and they call it the
Heidelberg Man.
This jaw-bone is, I think, one of the most tormenting objects in the world to
our human curiosity. To see it is like looking through a defective glass into
Page 15
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the past and catching just one blurred and tantalizing glimpse of this Thing,
shambling through the bleak wilderness, clambering to avoid the sabre-toothed
tiger, watching the woolly rhinoceros in the woods. Then before we can
scrutinize the monster, he vanishes. Yet the soil is littered abundantly with
the indestructible implements he chipped out for his uses.
Still more fascinatingly enigmatical are the remains of a creature found at
Piltdown in Sussex in a deposit that may indicate an age between a hundred and
a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, though some authorities would put
these particular remains back in time to before the Heidelberg jaw-bone. Here
there are the remains of a thick sub-human skull much larger than any existing
ape's, and a chimpanzee-like jaw-bone which may or may not belong to it, and,
in addition, a bat-shaped piece of elephant bone evidently carefully
manufactured, through which a hole had apparently been bored. There is also
the thigh-bone of a deer with cuts upon it like a tally. That is all.
What sort of beast was this creature which sat and bored holes in bones?
Scientific men have named him Eoanthropus, the Dawn Man. He stands apart from
his kindred; a very different being either from the Heidelberg creature or
from any living ape. No other vestige like him is known. But the gravels and
deposits of from one hundred thousand years onward are increasingly rich in
implements of flint and similar stone. And these implements are no longer rude
"Eoliths." The archaeologists are presently able to distinguish scrapers,
borers, knives, darts, throwing stones and hand axes’.
We are drawing very near to man. In our next section we shall have to
describe the strangest of all these precursors of humanity, the
Neanderthalers, the men who were almost, but not quite, true men.
But it may be well perhaps to state quite clearly here that no scientific man
supposes either of these creatures, the Heidelberg Man or Eoanthropus, to be
direct ancestors of the men of to-day. These are, at the closest, related
forms.
X. The Neanderthaler and the Rhodesian Man
ABOUT fifty or sixty thousand years ago, before the climax of the Fourth
Glacial Age, there lived a creature on earth so like a man that until a few
years ago its remains were considered to be altogether human. We have skulls
and bones of it and a great accumulation of the large implements it made and
used. It made fires. It sheltered in caves from the cold. It probably dressed
skins roughly and wore them. It was right-handed as men are.
Yet now the ethnologists tell us these creatures were not true men. They were
of a different species of the same genus. They had heavy protruding jaws and
great brow ridges above the eyes and very low foreheads. Their thumbs were not
opposable to the fingers as men's are; their necks were so poised that they
could not turn back their heads and look up to the sky. They probably slouched
along, head down and forward. Their chinless jaw-bones resemble the Heidelberg
jaw-bone and are markedly unlike human jaw-bones. And there were great
differences from the human pattern in their teeth. Their cheek teeth were more
complicated in structure than ours, more complicated and not less so; they had
not the long fangs of our cheek teeth; and also these quasi-men had not the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl aikidobyd.xlx.pl
are no bones nor other remains of the creature which made these objects,
simply the objects themselves. For all the certainty we have it may have been
some entirely unhuman but intelligent monkey. But at Trinil in Java, in
accumulations of this age, a piece of a skull and various teeth and bones have
been found of a sort of ape man, with a brain case bigger than that of any
living apes, which seems to have walked erect. This creature is now called
Pithecanthropus erectus, the walking ape man, and the little trayful of its
bones is the only help our imaginations have as yet in figuring to ourselves
the makers of the Eoliths.
It is not until we come to sands that are almost a quarter of a million years
old that we find any other particle of a sub-human being. But there are plenty
of implements, and they are steadily improving in quality as we read on
through the record. They are no longer clumsy Eoliths; they are now shapely
instruments made with considerable skill. And they are much bigger than the
similar implements afterwards made by true man. Then, in a sandpit at
Heidelberg, appears a single quasi-human jaw-bone, a clumsy jaw-bone,
absolutely chinless, far heavier than a true human jaw-bone and narrower, so
that it is improbable the creature's tongue could have moved about for
articulate speech. On the strength of this jaw-bone, scientific men suppose
this creature to have been a heavy, almost human monster, possibly with huge
limbs and hands, possibly with a thick felt of hair, and they call it the
Heidelberg Man.
This jaw-bone is, I think, one of the most tormenting objects in the world to
our human curiosity. To see it is like looking through a defective glass into
Page 15
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the past and catching just one blurred and tantalizing glimpse of this Thing,
shambling through the bleak wilderness, clambering to avoid the sabre-toothed
tiger, watching the woolly rhinoceros in the woods. Then before we can
scrutinize the monster, he vanishes. Yet the soil is littered abundantly with
the indestructible implements he chipped out for his uses.
Still more fascinatingly enigmatical are the remains of a creature found at
Piltdown in Sussex in a deposit that may indicate an age between a hundred and
a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, though some authorities would put
these particular remains back in time to before the Heidelberg jaw-bone. Here
there are the remains of a thick sub-human skull much larger than any existing
ape's, and a chimpanzee-like jaw-bone which may or may not belong to it, and,
in addition, a bat-shaped piece of elephant bone evidently carefully
manufactured, through which a hole had apparently been bored. There is also
the thigh-bone of a deer with cuts upon it like a tally. That is all.
What sort of beast was this creature which sat and bored holes in bones?
Scientific men have named him Eoanthropus, the Dawn Man. He stands apart from
his kindred; a very different being either from the Heidelberg creature or
from any living ape. No other vestige like him is known. But the gravels and
deposits of from one hundred thousand years onward are increasingly rich in
implements of flint and similar stone. And these implements are no longer rude
"Eoliths." The archaeologists are presently able to distinguish scrapers,
borers, knives, darts, throwing stones and hand axes’.
We are drawing very near to man. In our next section we shall have to
describe the strangest of all these precursors of humanity, the
Neanderthalers, the men who were almost, but not quite, true men.
But it may be well perhaps to state quite clearly here that no scientific man
supposes either of these creatures, the Heidelberg Man or Eoanthropus, to be
direct ancestors of the men of to-day. These are, at the closest, related
forms.
X. The Neanderthaler and the Rhodesian Man
ABOUT fifty or sixty thousand years ago, before the climax of the Fourth
Glacial Age, there lived a creature on earth so like a man that until a few
years ago its remains were considered to be altogether human. We have skulls
and bones of it and a great accumulation of the large implements it made and
used. It made fires. It sheltered in caves from the cold. It probably dressed
skins roughly and wore them. It was right-handed as men are.
Yet now the ethnologists tell us these creatures were not true men. They were
of a different species of the same genus. They had heavy protruding jaws and
great brow ridges above the eyes and very low foreheads. Their thumbs were not
opposable to the fingers as men's are; their necks were so poised that they
could not turn back their heads and look up to the sky. They probably slouched
along, head down and forward. Their chinless jaw-bones resemble the Heidelberg
jaw-bone and are markedly unlike human jaw-bones. And there were great
differences from the human pattern in their teeth. Their cheek teeth were more
complicated in structure than ours, more complicated and not less so; they had
not the long fangs of our cheek teeth; and also these quasi-men had not the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]