Prehistoric Men 4

Prehistoric Men 4

Prehistoric Men THEMSELVES

 

[Illustration]

 

 

DO WE KNOW WHERE MAN ORIGINATED?

 

For a long time some scientists thought the “cradle of mankind” was in

central Asia. Other scientists insisted it was in Africa, and still

others said it might have been in Europe. Actually, we don’t know

where it was. We don’t even know that there was only _one_ “cradle.”

If we had to choose a “cradle” at this moment, we would probably say

Africa. But the southern portions of Asia and Europe may also have been

included in the general area. The scene of the early development of

mankind was certainly the Old World. It is pretty certain men didn’t

reach North or South America until almost the end of the Ice Age--had

they done so earlier we would certainly have found some trace of them

by now.

 

The earliest tools we have yet found come from central and south

Africa. By the dating system I’m using, these tools must be over

500,000 years old. There are now reports that a few such early tools

have been found--at the Sterkfontein cave in South Africa--along with

the bones of small fossil men called “australopithecines.”

 

Not all scientists would agree that the australopithecines were “men,”

or would agree that the tools were made by the australopithecines

themselves. For these sticklers, the earliest bones of men come from

the island of Java. The date would be about 450,000 years ago. So far,

we have not yet found the tools which we suppose these earliest men in

the Far East must have made.

 

Let me say it another way. How old are the earliest traces of men we

now have? Over half a million years. This was a time when the first

alpine glaciation was happening in the north. What has been found so

far? The tools which the men of those times made, in different parts

of Africa. It is now fairly generally agreed that the “men” who made

the tools were the australopithecines. There is also a more “man-like”

jawbone at Kanam in Kenya, but its find-spot has been questioned. The

next earliest bones we have were found in Java, and they may be almost

a hundred thousand years younger than the earliest African finds. We

haven’t yet found the tools of these early Javanese. Our knowledge of

tool-using in Africa spreads quickly as time goes on: soon after the

appearance of tools in the south we shall have them from as far north

as Algeria.

 

Very soon after the earliest Javanese come the bones of slightly more

developed people in Java, and the jawbone of a man who once lived in

what is now Germany. The same general glacial beds which yielded the

later Javanese bones and the German jawbone also include tools. These

finds come from the time of the second alpine glaciation.

 

So this is the situation. By the time of the end of the second alpine

or first continental glaciation (say 400,000 years ago) we have traces

of men from the extremes of the more southerly portions of the Old

World--South Africa, eastern Asia, and western Europe. There are also

some traces of men in the middle ground. In fact, Professor Franz

Weidenreich believed that creatures who were the immediate ancestors

of men had already spread over Europe, Africa, and Asia by the time

the Ice Age began. We certainly have no reason to disbelieve this, but

fortunate accidents of discovery have not yet given us the evidence to

prove it.

 

 

MEN AND APES

 

Many people used to get extremely upset at the ill-formed notion

that “man descended from the apes.” Such words were much more likely

to start fights or “monkey trials” than the correct notion that all

living animals, including man, ascended or evolved from a single-celled

organism which lived in the primeval seas hundreds of millions of years

ago. Men are mammals, of the order called Primates, and man’s living

relatives are the great apes. Men didn’t “descend” from the apes or

apes from men, and mankind must have had much closer relatives who have

since become extinct.

 

Men stand erect. They also walk and run on their two feet. Apes are

happiest in trees, swinging with their arms from branch to branch.

Few branches of trees will hold the mighty gorilla, although he still

manages to sleep in trees. Apes can’t stand really erect in our sense,

and when they have to run on the ground, they use the knuckles of their

hands as well as their feet.

 

A key group of fossil bones here are the south African

australopithecines. These are called the _Australopithecinae_ or

“man-apes” or sometimes even “ape-men.” We do not _know_ that they were

directly ancestral to men but they can hardly have been so to apes.

Presently I’ll describe them a bit more. The reason I mention them

here is that while they had brains no larger than those of apes, their

hipbones were enough like ours so that they must have stood erect.

There is no good reason to think they couldn’t have walked as we do.

 

 

BRAINS, HANDS, AND TOOLS

 

Whether the australopithecines were our ancestors or not, the proper

ancestors of men must have been able to stand erect and to walk on

their two feet. Three further important things probably were involved,

next, before they could become men proper. These are:

 

1. The increasing size and development of the brain.

 

2. The increasing usefulness (specialization) of the thumb and hand.

 

3. The use of tools.

 

Nobody knows which of these three is most important, or which came

first. Most probably the growth of all three things was very much

blended together. If you think about each of the things, you will see

what I mean. Unless your hand is more flexible than a paw, and your

thumb will work against (or oppose) your fingers, you can’t hold a tool

very well. But you wouldn’t get the idea of using a tool unless you had

enough brain to help you see cause and effect. And it is rather hard to

see how your hand and brain would develop unless they had something to

practice on--like using tools. In Professor Krogman’s words, “the hand

must become the obedient servant of the eye and the brain.” It is the

_co-ordination_ of these things that counts.

 

Many other things must have been happening to the bodies of the

creatures who were the ancestors of men. Our ancestors had to develop

organs of speech. More than that, they had to get the idea of letting

_certain sounds_ made with these speech organs have _certain meanings_.

 

All this must have gone very slowly. Probably everything was developing

little by little, all together. Men became men very slowly.

 

 

WHEN SHALL WE CALL MEN MEN?

 

What do I mean when I say “men”? People who looked pretty much as we

do, and who used different tools to do different things, are men to me.

We’ll probably never know whether the earliest ones talked or not. They

probably had vocal cords, so they could make sounds, but did they know

how to make sounds work as symbols to carry meanings? But if the fossil

bones look like our skeletons, and if we find tools which we’ll agree

couldn’t have been made by nature or by animals, then I’d say we had

traces of _men_.

 

The australopithecine finds of the Transvaal and Bechuanaland, in

south Africa, are bound to come into the discussion here. I’ve already

told you that the australopithecines could have stood upright and

walked on their two hind legs. They come from the very base of the

Pleistocene or Ice Age, and a few coarse stone tools have been found

with the australopithecine fossils. But there are three varieties

of the australopithecines and they last on until a time equal to

that of the second alpine glaciation. They are the best suggestion

we have yet as to what the ancestors of men _may_ have looked like.

They were certainly closer to men than to apes. Although their brain

size was no larger than the brains of modern apes their body size and

stature were quite small; hence, relative to their small size, their

brains were large. We have not been able to prove without doubt that

the australopithecines were _tool-making_ creatures, even though the

recent news has it that tools have been found with australopithecine

bones. The doubt as to whether the australopithecines used the tools

themselves goes like this--just suppose some man-like creature (whose

bones we have not yet found) made the tools and used them to kill

and butcher australopithecines. Hence a few experts tend to let

australopithecines still hang in limbo as “man-apes.”

 

 

THE EARLIEST MEN WE KNOW

 

I’ll postpone talking about the tools of early men until the next

chapter. The men whose bones were the earliest of the Java lot have

been given the name _Meganthropus_. The bones are very fragmentary. We

would not understand them very well unless we had the somewhat later

Javanese lot--the more commonly known _Pithecanthropus_ or “Java

man”--against which to refer them for study. One of the less well-known

and earliest fragments, a piece of lower jaw and some teeth, rather

strongly resembles the lower jaws and teeth of the australopithecine

type. Was _Meganthropus_ a sort of half-way point between the

australopithecines and _Pithecanthropus_? It is still too early to say.

We shall need more finds before we can be definite one way or the other.

 

Java man, _Pithecanthropus_, comes from geological beds equal in age

to the latter part of the second alpine glaciation; the _Meganthropus_

finds refer to beds of the beginning of this glaciation. The first

finds of Java man were made in 1891-92 by Dr. Eugene Dubois, a Dutch

doctor in the colonial service. Finds have continued to be made. There

are now bones enough to account for four skulls. There are also four

jaws and some odd teeth and thigh bones. Java man, generally speaking,

was about five feet six inches tall, and didn’t hold his head very

erect. His skull was very thick and heavy and had room for little more

than two-thirds as large a brain as we have. He had big teeth and a big

jaw and enormous eyebrow ridges.