give
the head what the leading authorities call a "bestial" or
"simian" aspect. The frame is heavy, powerful, and of moderate
height (usually from two to four inches over five feet). The thigh-bones
are much more curved than in modern man. We cannot enter here into
finer anatomical details, but all the features are consistent and
indicate a stage in the evolution from ape-man to savage man.
One point only calls for closer inquiry. Until a year or two ago it
was customary to state that in cranial capacity also--that is to say,
in the volume of brain-matter that the skull might contain--the Neanderthal
race was intermediate between the Ape-Man and modern man. We saw above
that the cranial capacity of the highest ape is about 600 cubic centimetres,
and that of the Ape-Man (variously given as 850 and 950) is about
900. It was then added that the capacity of the Neanderthal race was
about 1200, and that of civilised man (on the average) 1600. This
seemed to be an effective and convincing indication of evolution,
but recent writers have seriously criticised it. Sir Edwin Ray Lankester,
Professor Sollas, and Dr. Keith have claimed in recent publications
that the brain of Neanderthal man was as large as, if not larger than,
that of modern man.* Professor Sollas even observes that "the
brain increases in volume as we go backward." This is, apparently,
so serious a reversal of the familiar statement in regard to the evolution
of man that we must consider it carefully.
*See especially an address by Professor Sollas in
the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, Vol. LXVI. (1910).
Largeness of brain in an individual is no indication of intelligence,
and smallness of brain no proof of low mentality. Some of the greatest
thinkers, such as Aristotle and Leibnitz, had abnormally small heads.
Further, the size of the brain is of no significance whatever except
in strict relation to the size and weight of the body. Woman has five
or six ounces less brain-matter than man, but in proportion to her
average size and the weight of the vital tissue of her body (excluding
fat) she has as respectable a brain as man. When, however, these allowances
have been made, it has usually been considered that the average brain
of a race is in proportion to its average intelligence. This is not
strictly true. The rabbit has a larger proportion of brain to body
than the elephant or horse, and the canary a larger proportion than
the chimpanzee. Professor Sollas says that the average cranial capacity
of the Eskimo is 1546 cubic centimetres, or nearly that assigned to
the average Parisian.
Clearly the question is very complex, and some of these recent authorities
conclude that the cranial capacity, or volume of the brain, has no
relation to intelligence, and therefore the size of the Neanderthal
skull neither confirms nor disturbs the theory of evolution. The wise
man will suspend his judgment until the whole question has been fully
reconsidered. But I would point out that some of the recent criticisms
are exaggerated. The Gibraltar skull is estimated by Professor Sollas
himself to have a capacity of about 1260; and his conclusion that
it is an abnormal or feminine skull rests on no positive grounds.
The Chapelle-aux-Saints skull ALONE is proved to have the high capacity
of 1620; and it is as yet not much more than a supposition that the
earlier skulls had been wrongly measured. But, further, the great
French authority, M. Boule, who measured the capacity of the Chapelle-aux
Saints skull, observes* that "the anomaly disappears" on
careful study. He assures us that a modern skull of the same dimensions
would have a capacity of 1800-1900 cubic centimetres, and warns us
that we must take into account the robustness of the body of primitive
man. He concludes that the real volume of the Neanderthal brain (in
this highest known specimen) is "slight in comparison with the
volume of the brain lodged in the large heads of to-day," and
that the "bestial or ape-like characters" of the race are
not neutralised by this gross measurement.
*See his article in Anthropologie, Vol. XX. (1909),
p. 257. As Professor Sollas mainly relies on Boule, it is important
to see that there is a very great difference between the two.
We must therefore hesitate to accept the statement that primitive
man had as large a brain, if not a larger brain, than a modern race.
The basis is slender, and the proportion of brain to body-tissue has
not been taken into account. On the other hand, the remains of this
early race are, Professor Sollas says, "obviously more brutal
than existing men in all the other ascertainable characters by which
they differ from them." Nor are we confined to precarious measurements
of skulls. We have the remains of the culture of this early race,
and in them we have a surer trace of its mental development.
Here again we must proceed with caution, and set aside confused and
exaggerated statements. Some refer us to the artistic work of primitive
man. We will consider his drawings and carvings presently, but they
belong to a later race, not the Neanderthal race. Some lay stress
on the fact, apparently indicated in one or two cases out of a dozen,
that primitive man buried his dead. Professor Sollas says that it
indicates that even Neanderthal man had reached "a comparatively
high stage in the evolution of religious ideas "; but the Australians
bury their dead, and the highest authorities are not agreed whether
they have any idea whatever of a supreme being or of morality. We
must also disallow appeals to the use of fire, the taming of animals,
pottery, or clothing. None of these things are clearly found in conjunction
with the Neanderthal race.
The only certain relic of Neanderthal culture is the implement which
the primitive savage fashioned, by chipping or pressure, of flint
or other hard stone. The fineness of some of these implements is no
indication of great intelligence. The Neanderthal man inherited a
stone culture which was already of great antiquity. At least one,
if not two or three, prolonged phases of the Old Stone Age were already
over when he appeared. On the most modest estimate men had by that
time been chipping flints for several hundred thousand years, and
it is no argument of general intelligence that some skill in the one
industry of the age had been developed. The true measure of Neanderthal
man's capacity is that, a million years or so after passing the anthropoid-age
level, he chipped his stones more finely and gave them a better edge
and contour. There is no evidence that he as yet hefted them. It is
flattering to him to compare him with the Australian aboriginal. The
native art, the shields and spears and boomerangs, and the elaborate
tribal and matrimonial arrangements of the Australian black are not
known to have had any counterpart in his life.
It would therefore seem that the precursors of man made singularly
little, if any, progress during the vast span of time between the
Miocene and the Ice-Age, and that then something occurred which quickened
the face of human evolution. From the Neanderthal level man will advance
to the height of modern civilisation in about one-tenth the time that
it took him to advance from the level of the higher ape to that of
the lowest savage. Something has broken into the long lethargy of
his primitive career, and set him upon a progressive path. Let us
see if a careful review of the stages of his culture confirms the
natural supposition that this "something" was the fall in
the earth's temperature, and how it may have affected him.
CHAPTER XX. THE DAWN OF CIVILISATION
The story of man before the discovery of metal and the attainment
of civilisation is notoriously divided into a Palaeolithic (Old Stone)
Age, and a Neolithic (New Stone) Age. Each of these ages is now subdivided
into stages, which we will review in succession. But it is important
to conceive the whole story of man in more correct proportion than
this familiar division suggests. The historical or civilised period
is now computed at about ten thousand years. The Neolithic Age, which
preceded civilisation, is usually believed to be about four or five
times as long, though estimates of its duration vary from about twenty
to a hundred thousand years. The Palaeolithic Age in turn is regarded
as at least three or four times as long as the Neolithic; estimates
of time vary from a hundred to five hundred thousand years. And before
this there is the vast stretch of time in which the ape slowly became
a primitive human.
This long, early period is, as we saw, still wrapped in mist and controversy.
A few bones tell of a race living, in semi-human shape, in the region
of the Indian Ocean; a few crude stones are held by many to indicate
that a more advanced, but very lowly race, wandered over the south
of Europe and north of Africa before the Ice-Age set in. The starting-point
or cradle of the race is not known. The old idea of seeking the patriarchal
home on the plains to the north of India is abandoned, and there is
some tendency to locate it in the land which has partly survived in
the islands of the Indian Ocean. The finding of early remains in Java
is not enough to justify that conclusion, but it obtains a certain
probability when we notice the geographical distribution of the Primates.
The femurs and the apes are found to-day in Africa and Asia alone;
the monkeys have spread eastward to America and westward to Europe
and Africa; the human race has spread north-eastward into Asia and
America, northwestward into Europe, westward into Africa, and southward
to Australia and the islands. This distribution suggests a centre
in the Indian Ocean, where there was much more land in the Tertiary
Era than there is now. We await further exploration in that region
and Africa.
There is nothing improbable in the supposition that man wandered into
Europe in the Tertiary, and has left in the Eoliths the memorials
of his lowly condition. The anthropoid apes certainly reached France.
However that may be, the Ice-Age would restrict all the Primates to
the south. It will be seen, on a glance at the map, that a line of
ice-clad mountains would set a stern barrier to man's advance in the
early Pleistocene, from the Pyrenees to the Himalaya, if not to the
Pacific. He therefore spread westward and southward. One branch wandered
into Australia, and was afterwards pressed by more advanced invaders
(the present blacks of Australia) into Tasmania, which seems to have
been still connected by land. Another branch, or branches, spread
into Africa, to be driven southward, or into the central forests,
by later and better equipped invaders. They survive, little changed
(except by recent contact with Europeans), in the Bushmen and in large
populations of Central Africa which are below the level of tribal
organisation. Others remained in the islands, and we seem to have
remnants of them in the Kalangs, Veddahs, etc. But these islands have
been repeatedly overrun by higher races, and the primitive life has
been modified.
Comparing the most isolated of these relics of early humanity, we
obtain many suggestions about the life of that remote age. The aboriginal
Tasmanians, who died out about forty years ago, were of great evolutionary
interest. It is sometimes said that man is distinguished from all
other animals by the possession of abstract ideas, but the very imperfect
speech of the Tasmanians expressed no abstract ideas. Their mind seems
to have been in an intermediate stage of development. They never made
fire, and, like the other surviving fragments of early humanity, they
had no tribal organisation, and no ideas of religion or morality.
The first effect of the Ice-Age on this primitive humanity would be
to lead to a beginning of the development of racial characters. The
pigment under the skin of the negro is a protection against the actinic
rays of the tropical sun; the white man, with his fair hair and eyes,
is a bleached product of the northern regions; and the yellow or brown
skin seems to be the outcome of living in dry regions with great extremes
of temperature. As the northern hemisphere divided into climatic zones
these physical characters were bound to develop. The men who went
southward developed, especially when fully exposed to the sun on open
plains, the layer of black pigment which marks the negroid type. There
is good reason, as we shall see to think that man did not yet wear
clothing, though he had a fairly conspicuous, if dwindling, coat of
hair. On the other hand the men who lingered further north, in South-western
Asia and North Africa, would lose what pigment they had, and develop
the lighter characters of the northerner. It has been noticed that
even a year in the arctic circle has a tendency to make the eyes of
explorers light blue. We may look for the genesis of the vigorous,
light-complexioned races along the fringe of the great ice-sheet.
It must be remembered that when the limit of the ice-sheet was in
Central Germany and Belgium, the climate even of North Africa would
be very much more temperate than it is to-day.
As the ice-sheet melted, the men who were adapted to living in the
temperate zone to the south of it penetrated into Europe, and the
long story of the Old Stone Age opened. It must not, of course, be
supposed that this stage of human culture only began with the invasion
of Europe. Men would bring their rough art of fashioning implements
with them, but the southern regions are too little explored to inform
us of the earlier stage. But as man enters Europe he begins to drop
his flints on a soil that we have constant occasion to probe--although
the floor on which he trod is now sometimes forty or fifty feet below
the surface--and we obtain a surer glimpse of the fortunes of our
race.
Most European geologists count four distinct extensions of the ice-sheet,
with three interglacial periods. It is now generally believed that
man came north in the third interglacial period; though some high
authorities think that he came in the second. As far as England is
concerned, it has been determined, under the auspices of the British
Association, that our oldest implements (apart from the Eoliths) are
later than the great ice-sheet, but there is some evidence that they
precede the last extension of the ice.
Two stages are distinguished in this first part of the Palaeolithic
Age--the Acheulean and Chellean--but it will suffice for our purpose
to take the two together as the earlier and longer section of the
Old Stone Age. It was a time of temperate, if not genial, climate.
The elephant (an extinct type), the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus,
the hyaena, and many other forms of animal life that have since retired
southward, were neighbours of the first human inhabitant of Europe.
Unfortunately, we have only one bone of this primitive race, the jaw
found at Mauer in 1907, but its massive size and chinless contour
suggest a being midway between the Java man and the Neanderthal race.
His culture confirms the supposition. There is at this stage no clear
trace of fire, clothing, arrows, hefted weapons, spears, or social
life. As the implements are generally found on old river-banks or
the open soil, not in caves, we seem to see a squat and powerful race
wandering, homeless and unclad, by the streams and broad, marshy rivers
of the time. The Thames and the Seine had not yet scooped out the
valleys on the slopes of which London and Paris are built.
This period seems, from the vast number of stone implements referred
to it, to have lasted a considerable time. There is a risk in venturing
to give figures, but it may be said that few authorities would estimate
it at less than a hundred thousand years. Man still advanced with
very slow and uncertain steps, his whole progress in that vast period
being measured by the invention of one or two new forms of stone implements
and a little more skill in chipping them. At its close a great chill
comes over Europe--the last ice-sheet is, it seems, spreading southward--and
we enter the Mousterian period and encounter the Neanderthal race
which we described in the preceding chapter.
It must be borne in mind that the whole culture of primitive times
is crushed into a few feet of earth. The anthropologist is therefore
quite unable to show us the real succession of human stages, and has
to be content with a division of the whole long and gradual evolution
into a few well-marked phases. These phases, however, shade into each
other, and are merely convenient measurements of a continuous story.
The Chellean man has slowly advanced to a high level. There is no
sudden incoming of a higher culture or higher type of man. The most
impressive relics of the Mousterian period, which represent its later
epoch, are merely finely chipped implements. There is no art as yet,
no pottery, and no agriculture; and there is no clear trace of the
use of fire or clothing, though we should bc disposed to put these
inventions in the chilly and damp Mousterian period. There is therefore
no ground for resenting the description, "the primeval savage,"
which has been applied to early man. The human race is already old,
yet, as we saw, it is hardly up to the level of the Australian black.
The skeleton found at Chapelle-aux-Saints is regarded as the highest
known type of the race, yet the greatest authority on it, M. Boule,
says emphatically: "In no actual race do we find the characters
of inferiority--that is to say, the ape-like features--which we find
in the Chapelle-aux-Saints head." The largeness of the head is
in proportion to the robust frame, but in its specifically human part--the
front--it is very low and bestial; while the heavy ridges over the
large eyes, the large flat stumpy nose, the thick bulge of the lips
and teeth, and the almost chinless jaw, show that the traces of his
ancestry cling close to man after some hundreds of thousands of years
of development.
The cold increases as we pass to the last part of the Old Stone Age,
the Solutrean and Magdalenian periods; and nothing is clearer than
that the pace of development increases at the same time. Short as
the period is, in comparison with the preceding, it witnesses a far
greater advance than had been made in all the rest of the Old Stone
Age. Beyond a doubt men now live in caves, in large social groups,
make clothing from the skins of animals, have the use of fire, and
greatly improve the quality of their stone axes, scrapers, knives,
and lance-heads. There is at last some promise of the civilisation
that is coming. In the soil of the caverns in which man lived, especially
in Southern France and the Pyrenean region, we find the debris of
a much larger and fuller life. Even the fine bone needles with which
primitive man sewed his skin garments, probably with sinews for thread,
survive in scores. In other places we find the ashes of the fires
round which he squatted, often associated with the bones of the wild
horses, deer, etc., on which he lived.
But the most remarkable indication of progress in the "cave-man"
is his artistic skill. Exaggerated conclusions are sometimes drawn
from the statuettes, carvings, and drawings which we find among the
remains of Magdalenian life. Most of them are crude, and have the
limitations of a rustic or a child artist. There is no perspective,
no grouping. Animals are jumbled together, and often left unfinished
because the available space was not measured. There are, however,
some drawings--cut on bone or horn or stone with a flint implement--which
evince great skill in line-drawing and, in a few cases, in composition.
Some of the caves also are more or less frescoed; the outlines of
animals, sometimes of life-size and in great numbers, are cut in the
wall, and often filled in with pigment. This skill does not imply
any greater general intelligence than the rest of the culture exhibits.
It implies persistent and traditional concentration upon the new artistic
life. The men who drew the "reindeer of Thayngen" and carved
the remarkable statuettes of women in ivory or stone, were ignorant
of the simplest rudiments of pottery or agriculture, which many savage
tribes possess.
Some writers compare them with the Eskimo of to-day, and even suggest
that the Eskimo are the survivors of the race, retreating northward
with the last ice-sheet, and possibly egged onward by a superior race
from the south. It is, perhaps, not a very extravagant claim that
some hundreds of thousands of years of development--we are now only
a few tens of thousands of years from the dawn of civilisation--had
lifted man to the level of the Eskimo, yet one must hesitate to admit
the comparison. Lord Avebury reproduces an Eskimo drawing, or picture-message,
in his "Prehistoric Times," to which it would be difficult
to find a parallel in Magdalenian remains. I do not mean that the
art is superior, but the complex life represented on the picture-message,
and the intelligence with which it is represented, are beyond anything
that we know of Palaeolithic man. I may add that nearly all the drawings
and statues of men and women which the Palaeolithic artist has left
us are marked by the intense sexual exaggeration--the "obscenity,"
in modern phraseology--which we are apt to find in coarse savages.
Three races are traced in this period. One, identified by skeletons
found at Mentone and by certain statuettes, was negroid in character.
Probably there was an occasional immigration from Africa. Another
race (Cro-Magnon) was very tall, and seems to represent an invasion
from some other part of the earth toward the close of the Old Stone
Age. The third race, which is compared to the Eskimo, and had a stature
of about five feet, seem to be the real continuers of the Palaeolithic
man of Europe. Curiously enough, we have less authentic remains of
this race than of its predecessor, and can only say that, as we should
expect, the ape-like features--the low forehead, the heavy frontal
ridges, the bulging teeth, etc.--are moderating. The needles we have
found--round, polished, and pierced splinters of bone, sometimes nearly
as fine as a bodkin--show indisputably that man then had clothing,
but it is curious that the artist nearly always draws him nude. There
is also generally a series of marks round the contour of the body
to indicate that he had a conspicuous coat of hair. Unfortunately,
the faces of the men are merely a few unsatisfactory gashes in the
bone or horn, and do not picture this interesting race to us. The
various statuettes of women generally suggest a type akin to the wife
of the Bushman.
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
hunter!, 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 associated 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, surpassing 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 Derbyshire
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 shivering 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 assume 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 illustrations 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
institutions. 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 grasses.
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 Devonshire 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 shores 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 passage 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 shores 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 passed 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.
CHAPTER XXI. EVOLUTION IN HISTORY
In the preceding chapters I have endeavoured to show how, without
invoking any "definitely directed variations," which we
seem to have little chance of understanding, we may obtain a broad
conception of the way in which the earth and its living inhabitants
came to be what they are. No one is more conscious than the writer
that this account is extremely imperfect. The limits of the volume
have permitted me to use only a part of the material which modern
science affords, but if the whole of our discoveries were described
the sketch would still remain very imperfect. The evolutionary conception
of the world is itself undergoing evolution in the mind of man. Age
by age the bits of fresh discovery are fitted into the great mosaic.
Large areas are still left for the scientific artist of the future
to fill. Yet even in its imperfect state the evolutionary picture
of the world is most illuminating. The questions that have been on
the lips of thoughtful men since they first looked out with adult
eyes on the panorama of nature are partly answered. Whence and Why
are no longer sheer riddles of the sphinx.
It remains to be seen if evolutionary principles will throw at least
an equal light on the progress of humanity in the historical period.
Here again the questions, Whence and Why, have been asked in vain
for countless ages. If man is a progressive animal, why has the progress
been confined to some of the race? If humanity shared at first a common
patrimony, why have the savages remained savages, and the barbarians
barbaric? Why has progress been incarnated so exceptionally in the
white section of the race, the Europeans? We approach these questions
more confidently after surveying the story of terrestrial life in
the light of evolutionary principles. Since the days of the primeval
microbe it has happened that a few were chosen and many were left
behind. There was no progressive element in the advancing few that
was not shared by the stagnant many. The difference lay in the environment.
Let us see if this principle applies to the history of civilisation.
In the last chapter I observed that, with the rise of human intelligence,
the cultural environment becomes more important than the physical.
Since human progress is a progress in ideas and the emotions which
accompany them, this may seem to be a truism. In point of fact it
is assailed by more than one recent historical writer. The scepticism
is partly due to a misunderstanding. No one but a fanatical adherent
of extreme theories of heredity will deny that the physical surroundings
of a race continue to be of great importance. The progress of a particular
people may often be traced in part to its physical environment; especially
to changes of environment, by migration, for instance. Further, it
is not for a moment suggested that a race never evolves its own culture,
but has always to receive it from another. If we said that, we should
be ultimately driven to recognise culture, like the early Chinese,
as a gift of the gods. What is meant is that the chief key to the
progress of certain peoples, the arrest of progress in others, and
the entire absence of progress in others, is the study of their relations
with, or isolation from, other peoples. They make progress chiefly
according to the amount of stimulation they get by contact with a
diverse culture.
Let us see if this furnishes a broad explanation of the position of
the various peoples of the world. The Ethnologist tells us that the
lowest peoples of the earth are the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, the
Hottentots, a number of little-understood peoples in Central Africa,
the wild Veddahs of Ceylon, the (extinct) Tasmanians, the Aetas in
the interior of the Philippines, and certain fragments of peoples
on islands of the Indian Ocean. There is not the least trace of a
common element in the environment of these peoples to explain why
they have remained at the level of primitive humanity. Many of them
lived in the most promising and resourceful surroundings. What is
common to them all is their isolation from the paths of later humanity.
They represent the first wave of human distribution, pressed to the
tips of continents or on islands by later waves, and isolated. The
position of the Veddahs is, to some extent, an exception; and it is
interesting to find that the latest German students of that curious
people think that they have been classed too low by earlier investigators.
We cannot run over all the peoples of the earth in this way, but will
briefly glance at the lower races of the various continents. A branch
of the second phase of developing humanity, the negroid stock, spread
eastward over the Asiatic islands and Australia, and westward into
Africa. The extreme wing of this army, the Australian blacks, too
clearly illustrates the principle to need further reference. It has
retained for ages the culture of the middle Palaeolithic. The negritos
who penetrated to the Philippines are another extreme instance of
isolation. The Melanesians of the islands of the Indian and Pacific
Ocean are less low, because those islands have been slowly crossed
by a much higher race, the Polynesians. The Maoris of New Zealand,
the Tongans, Hawaians, etc., are people of our own (Caucasic) stock,
probably diverging to the south-east while our branch of the stock
pressed westward. This not only explains the higher condition of the
Maoris, etc., but also shows why they have not advanced like their
European cousins. Their environment is one of the finest in the world,
but--it lies far away from the highways of culture.
In much the same way can we interpret the swarming peoples of Africa.
The more primitive peoples which arrived first, and were driven south
or into the central forests by the later and better equipped invaders
from the central zone, have remained the more primitive. The more
northern peoples, on the fringe of, or liable to invasion from, the
central zone, have made more advance, and have occasionally set up
rudimentary civilisations. But the movements from the north to the
south in early historical times are too obscure to enable us to trace
the action of the principle more clearly. The peoples of the Mediterranean
fringe of Africa, living in the central zone of stimulation, have
proved very progressive. Under the Romans North Africa was at least
as civilised as Britain, and an equally wise and humane European policy
might lead to their revival to-day.
When we turn to Asia we encounter a mass of little-understood peoples
and a few civilisations with obscure histories, but we have a fairly
clear application of the principle. The northern, more isolated peoples,
are the more primitive; the north-eastern, whose isolation is accentuated
by a severe environment, are most primitive of all. The Eskimo, whether
they are the survivors of the Magdalenian race or a regiment thrown
off the Asiatic army as it entered America, remain at the primitive
level. The American peoples in turn accord with this view. Those which
penetrate furthest south remain stagnant or deteriorate; those which
remain in the far north remain below the level of civilisation, because
the land-bridge to Asia breaks down; but those which settle in Central
America evolve a civilisation. A large zone, from Mexico to Peru,
was overspread by this civilisation, and it was advancing steadily
when European invaders destroyed it, and reduced the civilised Peruvians
to the Quichas of to-day.
There remain the civilisations of Asia, and here we have a new and
interesting aspect of the question. How did these civilisations develop
in Asia, and how is it that they have remained stagnant for ages,
while Europe advanced? The origin of the Asiatic civilisations is
obscure. The common idea of their vast antiquity has no serious ground.
The civilisation of Japan cannot be traced back beyond about the eighth
century B.C. Even then the population was probably a mixed flotsam
from neighbouring lands-- Ainus, Koreans, Chinese, and Malays. What
was the character of the primitive civilisation resulting from the
mixture of these different cultures we do not know. But the chief
elements of Japanese civilisation came later from China. Japan had
no written language of any kind until it received one from China about
the sixth century of the Christian Era.
The civilisation of China itself goes back at least to about 2300
B.C., but we cannot carry it further back with any confidence. The
authorities, endeavouring to pick their steps carefully among old
Chinese legends, are now generally agreed that the primitive Chinese
were a nomadic tribe which slowly wandered across Asia from about
the shores of the Caspian Sea. In other words, they started from a
region close to the cradle of western civilisation. Some students,
in fact, make them akin to the Akkadians, who founded civilisation
in Mesopotamia. At all events, they seem to have conveyed a higher
culture to the isolated inhabitants of Western Asia, and a long era
of progress followed their settlement in a new environment. For more
than two thousand years, however, they have been enclosed in their
walls and mountains and seas, while the nations of the remote west
clashed unceasingly against each other. We need no other explanation
of their stagnation. To speak of the "unprogressiveness"
of the Chinese is pure mysticism. The next generation will see.
The civilisation of India is also far later than the civilisation
of the west, and seems to be more clearly due to borrowing from the
west. The primitive peoples who live on the hills about India, or
in the jungles, are fragments, apparently, of the Stone Age inhabitants
of India, or their descendants. Their culture may have degenerated
under the adverse conditions of dislodgement from their home, but
we may fairly conclude that it was never high. On these primitive
inhabitants of the plains of India there fell, somewhere about or
before 1000 B.C., the Asiatic branch of the Aryan race.
A very recent discovery (1908) has strongly confirmed and illumined
this view of the origin of Indian civilisation. Explorers in the ruins
of the ancient capital of the Hittite Empire (in North Syria and Cappadocia)
found certain treaties which had been concluded, about 1300 B.C.,
between the Hittites and the king of the Aryans. The names of the
deities which are mentioned in the treaties seem to show that the
Persian and Indian branches of the Aryan race were not yet separated,
but formed a united kingdom on the banks of the Euphrates. They seem
to have come from Bactria (and possibly beyond), and introduced the
horse (hitherto unknown to the Babylonians) about 1800 B.C. It is
surmised by the experts that the Indian and Persian branches separated
soon after 1300 B.C., possibly on account of religious quarrels, and
the Sanscrit-speaking branch, with its Vedic hymns and its Hinduism,
wandered eastward and northward until it discovered and took possession
of the Indian peninsula. The long isolation of India, since the cessation
of its commerce with Rome until modern times, explains the later stagnation
of its civilisation.
Thus the supposed "non-progressiveness" of the east, after
once establishing civilisation, turns out to be a question of geography
and history. We have now to see if the same intelligible principles
will throw light on the "progressiveness" of the western
branch of the Aryan race, and on the course of western civilisation
generally.*
* In speaking of Europeans as Aryans I am, of course,
allowing for an absorption of the conquered non-Aryans. A European
nation is no more Aryan, in strict truth, than the English are Anglo-Saxon.
The first two centres of civilisation are found in the valley of the
Nile and the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates; the civilisations
of Egypt and Babylon, the oldest in the world. There is, however,
a good deal of evidence by which we may bring these civilisations
nearer to each other in their earliest stages, so that we must not
confidently speak of two quite independent civilisations. The civilisation
which developed on the Euphrates is found first at Susa, on the hills
overlooking the plains of Mesopotamia, about 6000 B.C. A people akin
to the Turkish or Chinese lives among the hills, and makes the vague
advance from higher Neolithic culture to primitive civilisation. About
the same time the historical or dynastic civilisation begins in Egypt,
and some high authorities, such as Mr. Flinders Petrie, believe that
the evidence suggests that the founders of this dynastic civilisation
came from "the mountainous region between Egypt and the Red Sea."
From the northern part of the same region, we saw, the ancestors of
the Chinese set out across Asia.
We have here a very suggestive set of facts in connection with early
civilisation. The Syro-Arabian region seems to have been a thickly
populated centre of advancing tribes, which would be in striking accord
with the view of progress that I am following. But we need not press
the disputed and obscure theory of the origin of the historic Egyptians.
The remains are said to show that the lower valley of the Nile, which
must have been but recently formed by the river's annual deposit of
mud, was a theatre of contending tribes from about 8000 to 6000 B.C.
The fertile lands that had thus been provided attracted tribes from
east, west, and south, and there is a great confusion of primitive
cultures on its soil.
It is not certain that the race which eventually conquered and founded
the historical dynasties came from the mountainous lands to the east.
It is enough for us to know that the whole region fermented with jostling
peoples. Why it did so the previous chapters will explain. It is the
temperate zone into which men had been pressed by the northern ice-sheet,
and from Egypt to the Indian Ocean it remained a fertile breeding-ground
of nations.
These early civilisations are merely the highest point of Neolithic
culture. The Egyptian remains show a very gradual development of pottery,
ornamentation, etc., into which copper articles are introduced in
time. The dawn of civilisation is as gradual as the dawn of the day.
The whole gamut of culture--Eolithic, Palaeolithic, Neolithic, and
civilised--is struck in the successive layers of Egyptian remains.
But to give even a summary of its historical development is neither
necessary nor possible here. The maintenance of its progress is as
intelligible as its initial advance. Unlike China, it lay in the main
region of human development, and we find that even before 6000 B.C.
it developed a system of shipping and commerce which kept it in touch
with other peoples over the entire region, and helped to promote development
both in them and itself.
Equally intelligible is the development of civilisation in Mesopotamia.
The long and fertile valley which lies between the mountainous region
and the southern desert is, like the valley of the Nile, a quite recent
formation. The rivers have gradually formed it with their deposit
in the course of the last ten thousand years. As this rich soil became
covered with vegetation, it attracted the mountaineers from the north.
As I said, the earliest centre of the civilisation which was to culminate
in Babylon and Nineveh is traced at Susa, on the hills to the north,
about 6000 B.C. The Akkadians (highlanders) or Sumerians, the Turanian
people who established this civilisation, descended upon the rivers,
and, about 5000 B.C., set up the early cities of Mesopotamia. As in
the case of Egypt, again, more tribes were attracted to the fertile
region, and by about 4000 B.C. we find that Semitic tribes from the
north have superseded the Sumerians, and taken over their civilisation.
In these ancient civilisations, developing in touch with each other,
and surrounded by great numbers of peoples at the high Neolithic level
from which they had themselves started, culture advanced rapidly.
Not only science, art, literature, commerce, law, and social forms
were developed, but moral idealism reached a height that compares
well even with that of modern times. The recovery in our time of the
actual remains of Egypt and Babylon has corrected much of the libellous
legend, which found its way into Greek and European literature, concerning
those ancient civilisations. But, as culture advances, human development
becomes so complex that we must refrain from attempting to pursue,
even in summary, its many outgrowths. The evolution of morality, of
art, of religion, of polity, and of literature would each require
a whole volume for satisfactory treatment. All that we can do here
is to show how the modern world and its progressive culture are related
to these ancient empires.
The aphorism that "all light comes from the east" may at
times be pressed too literally. To suggest that western peoples have
done no more than receive and develop the culture of the older east
would be at once unscientific and unhistorical. By the close of the
Neolithic age a great number of peoples had reached the threshold
of civilisation, and it would be extremely improbable that in only
two parts of the world the conditions would be found of further progress.
That the culture of these older empires has enriched Europe and had
a great share in its civilisation, is one of the most obvious of historical
truths. But we must not seek to confine the action of later peoples
to a mere borrowing of arts or institutions.
Yet some recent historical writers, in their eagerness to set up indigenous
civilisations apart from those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, pass to the
opposite extreme. We are prepared to find civilisation developing
wherever the situation of a people exposes it to sufficient stimulation,
and we do find advance made among many peoples apart from contact
with the great southern empires. It is uncertain whether the use of
bronze is due first to the southern nations or to some European people,
but the invention of iron weapons is most probably due to European
initiative. Again, it is now not believed that the alphabets of Europe
are derived from the hieroglyphics of Egypt, though it is an open
question whether they were not derived, through Phoenicia, from certain
signs which we find on ancient Egyptian pottery.
If we take first a broad view of the later course of civilisation
we see at a glance the general relation of east and west. Some difficulty
would arise, if we pressed, as to the exact stage in which a nation
may be said to become "civilised," but we may follow the
general usage of archaeologists and historians. They tell us, then,
that civilisation first appears in Egypt about 8000 B.C. (settled
civilisation about 6000 B.C.), and in the Mesopotamian region about
6000 B.C. We next find Neolithic culture passing into what may be
called civilisation in Crete and the neighbouring islands some time
between 4000 and 3000 B.C., or two thousand years after the development
of Egyptian commerce in that region. We cannot say whether this civilisation
in the AEgean sea preceded others which we afterwards find on the
Asiatic mainland. The beginning of the Hittite Empire in Asia Minor,
and of Phoenician culture, is as yet unknown. But we can say that
there was as yet no civilisation in Europe. It is not until after
1600 that civilisation is established in Greece (Mycenae and Tiryns)
as an offshoot of AEgean culture. Later still it appears among the
Etruscans of Italy--to which, as we know, both Egyptian and AEgean
vessels sailed. In other words, the course of civilisation is very
plainly from east to west.
But we must be careful not to imagine that this represents a mere
transplantation of southern culture on a rude northern stock. The
whole region to the east of the Mediterranean was just as fitted to
develop a civilisation as the valley of the Nile. It swarmed with
peoples having the latest Neolithic culture, and, as they advanced,
and developed navigation, the territory of many of them became the
high road of more advanced peoples. A glance at the map will show
that the easiest line of expansion for a growing people was westward.
The ocean lay to the right of the Babylonians, and the country north
and south was not inviting. The calmer Mediterranean with its fertile
shores was the appointed field of expansion. The land route from Egypt
lay, not to the dreary west in Africa, but along the eastern shore
of the Mediterranean, through Syria and Asia Minor. The land route
from Babylon lay across northern Syria and Asia Minor. The sea route
had Crete for its first and most conspicuous station. Hence the gradual
appearance of civilisation in Phoenicia, Cappadocia, Lydia, and the
Greek islands is a normal and natural outcome of the geographical
conditions.
But we must dismiss the later Asiatic civilisations, whose remains
are fast coming to light, very briefly. Phoenicia probably had less
part in the general advance than was formerly supposed. Now that we
have discovered a powerful civilisation in the Greek islands themselves,
we see that it would keep Tyre and Sidon in check until it fell into
decay about 1000 B.C. After that date, for a few centuries, Phoenicia
had a great influence on the development of Europe. The Hittites,
on the other hand, are as yet imperfectly known. Their main region
was Cappadocia, where, at least as far back as 1500 B.C., they developed
so characteristic a civilisation, that its documents or inscriptions
are almost undecipherable. They at one time overran the whole of Asia
Minor. Other peoples such as the Elamites, represent similar offshoots
of the fermenting culture of the region. The Hebrews were probably
a small and unimportant group, settled close round Jerusalem, until
a few centuries before the Christian Era. They then assimilated the
culture of the more powerful nations which crossed and recrossed their
territory. The Persians were, as we saw, a branch of the Aryan family
which slowly advanced between 1500 and 700 B.C., and then inherited
the empire of dying Babylon.
The most interesting, and one of the most recently discovered, of
these older civilisations, was the AEgean. Its chief centre was Crete,
but it spread over many of the neighbouring islands. Its art and its
script are so distinctive that we must recognise it as a native development,
not a transplantation of Egyptian culture. Its ruins show it gradually
emerging from the Neolithic stage about 4000 B.C., when Egyptian commerce
was well developed in its seas. Somewhere about 2500 B.C. the whole
of the islands seem to have been brought under the Cretan monarchy,
and the concentration of wealth and power led to a remarkable artistic
development, on native lines. We find in Crete the remains of splendid
palaces, with advanced sanitary systems and a great luxuriance of
ornamentation. It was this civilisation which founded the centre at
Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, about the middle of the second millennium
B.C.
But our inquiry into the origin of European civilisation does not
demand any extensive description of the AEgean culture and its Mycenaean
offshoot. It was utterly destroyed between 1500 and 1000 B.C., and
this was probably done by the Aryan ancestors of the later Greeks
or Hellenes. About the time when one branch of the Aryans was descending
upon India and another preparing to rival decaying Babylonia, the
third branch overran Europe. It seems to have been a branch of these
that swept down the Greek peninsula, and crossed the sea to sack and
destroy the centres of AEgean culture. Another branch poured down
the Italian peninsula; another settled in the region of the Baltic,
and would prove the source of the Germanic nations; another, the Celtic,
advanced to the west of Europe. The mingling of this semi-barbaric
population with the earlier inhabitants provided the material of the
nations of modern Europe. Our last page in the story of the earth
must be a short account of its civilisation.
The first branch to become civilised, and to carry culture to a greater
height than the older nations had ever done, was the Hellenes. There
is no need for us to speculate on the "genius" of the Hellenes,
or even to enlarge on the natural advantages of the lower part of
the peninsula which they occupied. A glance at the map will explain
why European civilisation began in Greece. The Hellenes had penetrated
the region in which there was constant contact with all the varied
cultures of the older world. Although they destroyed the AEgean culture,
they could not live amidst its ruins without receiving some influence.
Then the traders of Phoenicia, triumphing in the fall of their AEgean
rivals, brought the great pacific cultural influence of commerce to
bear on them. After some hundreds of years of internal trouble, barbaric
quarrels, and fresh arrivals from the north, Greece began to wear
an aspect of civilisation. Many of the Greeks passed to Asia Minor,
as they increased, and, freed from the despotism of tradition, in
living contact with the luxury and culture of Persia, which had advanced
as far as Europe, they evolved the fine civilisation of the Greek
colonies, and reacted on the motherland. Finally, there came the heroic
struggle against the Persian invaders, and from the ashes of their
early civilisation arose the marble city which will never die in the
memory of Europe.
The Romans had meantime been advancing. We may neglect the older Italian
culture, as it had far less to do with the making of Italy and Europe
than the influence of the east. By about 500 B.C. Rome was a small
kingdom with a primitive civilisation, busy in subduing the neighbouring
tribes who threatened its security, and unconsciously gathering the
seeds of culture which some of them contained. By about 300 B.C. the
vigour of the Romans had united all the tribes of Italy in a powerful
republic, and wealth began to accumulate at Rome. Not far to the east
was the glittering civilisation of Greece; to the south was Carthage,
a busy centre of commerce, navigation, and art; and from the Mediterranean
came processions of ships bringing stimulating fragments and stories
of the hoary culture of the east. Within another two hundred years
Rome annihilated Carthage, paralysed and overran Greece, and sent
its legions over the Asiatic provinces of the older empires. By the
beginning of the Christian Era all that remained of the culture of
the old world was gathered in Rome. All the philosophies of Greece,
all the religions of Persia and Judea and Egypt, all the luxuries
and vices of the east, found a home in it. Every stream of culture
that had started from the later and higher Neolithic age had ended
in Rome.
And in the meantime Rome had begun to disseminate its heritage over
Europe. Its legions poured over Spain and Gaul and Germany and Britain.
Its administrators and judges and teachers followed the eagles, and
set up schools and law-courts and theatres and baths and temples.
It flung broad roads to the north of Britain and the banks of the
Rhine and Danube. Under the shelter of the "Roman Peace"
the peoples of Europe could spare men from the plough and the sword
for the cultivation of art and letters. The civilisations of Britain,
France, Germany, Spain, North Africa, and Italy were ushered into
the calendar of mankind, and were ready to bear the burden when the
mighty city on the Tiber let the sceptre fall from its enfeebled hands.
Rome fell. The more accurate historians of our time correct the old
legend of death from senile decay or from the effect of dissipation.
Races of men, like races of animals, do not die; they are killed.
The physical deterioration of the citizens of Rome was a small matter
in its fall. Fiscal and imperial blunders loosed the frame of its
empire. The resources were still there, but there was none to organise
and unify them. The imperial system--or chaos--ruined Rome. And just
when the demoralisation was greatest, and the Teutonic tribes at the
frontiers were most numerous and powerful, an accident shook the system.
A fierce and numerous people from Asia, the Huns, wandered into Europe,
threw themselves on the Teutonic tribes, and precipitated these tribes
upon the Empire. A Diocletian might still have saved the Empire, but
there was none to guide it. The northern barbarians trod its civilisation
underfoot, and Europe passed into the Dark Ages.
One more application of the evolutionary principle, and we close the
story. The "barbarians"--the Goths and Vandals and their
Germanic cousins--were barbaric only in comparison with the art and
letters of Rome. They had law, polity, and ideals. European civilisation
owes elements to them, as well as to Rome. To say simply that the
barbarians destroyed the institutions of Rome is no adequate explanation
of the Dark Ages. Let us see rather how the Dark Ages were enlightened.
It is now fully recognised that the reawakening of Europe in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries was very largely due to a fresh culture-contact
with the older civilisations. The Arabs had, on becoming civilised,
learned from the Nestorians, who had been driven out of the Greek
world for their heresies, the ancient culture of Greece. They enshrined
it in a brilliant civilisation which it inspired them to establish.
By the ninth century this civilisation was exhibited in Spain by its
Moorish conquerors, and, as its splendour increased, it attracted
the attention of Europe. Some Christian scholars visited Spain, as
time went on, but the Jews were the great intermediaries in disseminating
its culture in Europe. There is now no question about the fact that
the rebirth of positive learning, especially of science, in Europe
was very largely due to the literature of the Moors, and their luxury
and splendour gave an impulse to European art. Europe entered upon
the remarkable intellectual period known as Scholasticism. Besides
this stimulus, it must be remembered, the scholars of Europe had at
least a certain number of old Latin writers whose works had survived
the general wreck of culture.
In the fifteenth century the awakening of Europe was completed. The
Turks took Constantinople, and drove large numbers of Greek scholars
to Italy. Out of this catastrophe issued the great Renaissance, or
rebirth, of art, science, and letters in Italy, and then in France,
Germany, and England. In the new intellectual ferment there appeared
the great artists, great thinkers and inventors, and great navigators
who led the race to fresh heights. The invention of printing alone
would almost have changed the face of Europe. But it was accompanied
by a hundred other inventions and discoveries, by great liberating
and stimulating movements like the Reformation, by the growth of free
and wealthy cities, and by the extension of peace over larger areas,
and the concentration of wealth and encouragement of art which the
growth and settlement of the chief European powers involved. Europe
entered upon the phase of evolution which we call modern times.
. . . . . .
The future of humanity cannot be seen even darkly, as in a glass.
No forecast that aspires beyond the immediate future is worth considering
seriously. If it be a forecast of material progress, it is rendered
worthless by the obvious consideration that if we knew what the future
will do, we would do it ourselves. If it is a forecast of intellectual
and social evolution, it is inevitably coloured by the intellectual
or social convictions of the prophet. I therefore abstain wholly from
carrying the story of evolution beyond realities. But I would add
two general considerations which may enable a reflective reader to
answer certain questions that will arise in his mind at the close
of this survey of the story of evolution.
Are we evolving to-day? Is man the last word of evolution? These are
amongst the commonest questions put to me. Whether man is or is not
the last word of evolution is merely a verbal quibble. Now that language
is invented, and things have names, one may say that the name "man"
will cling to the highest and most progressive animal on earth, no
matter how much he may rise above the man of to-day. But if the question
is whether he WILL rise far above the civilisation of to-day, we can,
in my opinion, give a confident answer. There is no law of evolution,
but there is a fact of evolution. Ten million years ago the highest
animal on the earth was a reptile, or, at the most, a low, rat-like
marsupial. The authorities tell us that, unless some cosmic accident
intervene, the earth will remain habitable by man for at least ten
million years. It is safe to conclude that the man of that remote
age will be lifted above the man of to-day as much as we transcend
the reptile in intelligence and emotion. It is most probable that
this is a quite inadequate expression of the future advance. We are
not only evolving, but evolving more rapidly than living thing ever
did before. The pace increases every century. A calm and critical
review of our development inspires a conviction that a few centuries
will bring about the realisation of the highest dream that ever haunted
the mind of the prophet. What splendours lie beyond that, the most
soaring imagination cannot have the dimmest perception.
And the last word must meet an anxiety that arises out of this very
confidence. Darwin was right. It is--not exclusively, but mainly--the
struggle for life that has begotten higher types. Must every step
of future progress be won by fresh and sustained struggle? At least
we may say that the notion that progress in the future depends, as
in the past, upon the pitting of flesh against flesh, and tooth against
tooth, is a deplorable illusion. Such physical struggle is indeed
necessary to evolve and maintain a type fit for the struggle. But
a new thing has come into the story of the earth--wisdom and fine
emotion. The processes which begot animal types in the past may be
superseded; perhaps must be superseded. The battle of the future lies
between wit and wit, art and art, generosity and generosity; and a
great struggle and rivalry may proceed that will carry the distinctive
powers of man to undreamed-of heights, yet be wholly innocent of the
passion-lit, blood-stained conflict that has hitherto been the instrument
of progress.
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