Passing of the Great Race — Paleolithic Man

II PALEOLITHIC MAN

With the deliberate manufacture of implements from flint nodules, we enter the beginning of Paleolithic time and from here on our way is relatively clear.

The successive stages of the Paleolithic were of great length but are each characterized by some improvement in the manufacture of tools.

During long ages man was merely a tool making and tool using animal and, after all is said, that is about as good a definition as we can find to-day for the primate we call human.

The Paleolithic Period or Old Stone Age lasted from the somewhat indefinite termination of the Eolithic, some 150,000 years ago, to the Neolithic or New Stone Age, which began about 7000 B. C.

The Paleolithic falls naturally into three great subdivisions.

The Lower Paleolithic includes the whole of the last interglacial stage with the subdivisions of the Pre-Chellean, Chellean and Acheulean; the Middle Paleolithic covers the whole of the last glaciation and is co-extensive with the Mousterian Period and the dominance of the Neanderthal species of man.

[1] The Upper Paleolithic embraces all the postglacial stages down to the Neolithic and includes the subdivisions of the Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian and Azilian.

During the entire Upper Paleolithic, except the short closing phase, the Cro-Magnon race flourished.

Footnote 1: The Middle Paleolithic Period is suggested here for the first time.

—EDITOR’S NOTE.

It is not until after the third severe period of great cold, known as the Riss glaciation, nor until we enter, some 150,000 years ago, the third and last interglacial stage of temperate climate, known as the Riss-Würm, that we find a definite and ascending series of culture.

The Pre-Chellean, Chellean and Acheulean divisions of the Lower Paleolithic occupied the whole of this warm or rather temperate interglacial phase, which lasted nearly 100,000 years.

A shattered skull, a jaw and some teeth have been discovered recently in Sussex, England.

These remains were attributed to the same individual, who was named the Piltdown Man.

Owing to the extraordinary thickness of the skull and the simian character of the jaw, a new genus, _Eoanthropus_, the “dawn man,” was created and assigned to Pre-Chellean times.

Some of the tentative restorations of the fragmentary bones make this skull altogether too modern and too capacious for a Pre-Chellean or even a Chellean.

Further study and comparison with the jaws of other primates also indicate that the jaw belonged to a chimpanzee so that the genus _Eoanthropus_ must now be abandoned and the Piltdown Man must be included in the genus _Homo_ as at present constituted.

In any event the Piltdown Man is highly aberrant and, so far as our present knowledge goes, does not appear to be related to any other species of man found during the Lower Paleolithic.

Future discoveries of the Piltdown type and for that matter of Heidelberg Man may, however, raise either or both of them to generic rank.

In later Acheulean times a new human species, very likely descended from the early Heidelberg Man of Eolithic times, appears on the scene and is known as the Neanderthal race.

Many fossil remains of this type have been found.

The Neanderthaloids occupied the European stage exclusively, with the possible exception of the Piltdown Man, from the first appearance of man in Europe to the end of the Middle Paleolithic.

The Neanderthals flourished throughout the entire duration of the last glacial advance known as the Würm glaciation.

This period, known as the Mousterian, began about 50,000 years ago and lasted some 25,000 years.

The Neanderthal species disappears suddenly and completely with the advent of postglacial times, when, about 25,000 years ago, it was apparently supplanted or exterminated by a new and far higher race, the famous Cro-Magnons.

There may well have been during Mousterian times races of man in Europe other than the Neanderthaloids, but of them we have no record.

Among the numerous remains of Neanderthals, however, we do find traces of distinct types showing that this race in Europe was undergoing evolution and was developing marked variations in characters.

Neanderthal Man was an almost purely meat eating hunter, living in caves or rather in their entrances.

He was dolichocephalic and not unlike existing Australoids, although not necessarily of black skin and was, of course, in no sense a Negro.

The skull was characterized by heavy superorbital ridges, a low and receding forehead, protruding and chinless under jaw and the posture was imperfectly erect.

This race was widely spread and rather numerous.

Some of its blood may have trickled down to the present time and occasionally one sees a skull apparently of the Neanderthal type.

The best skull of this type ever seen by the writer belonged to a very intellectual professor in London, who was quite unconscious of his value as a museum specimen.

In the old black breed of Scotland the overhanging brows and deep-set eyes are suggestive of this race.

Along with other ancient and primitive racial remnants, ferocious gorilla-like living specimens of Paleolithic man are found not infrequently on the west coast of Ireland and are easily recognized by the great upper lip, bridgeless nose, beetling brow with low growing hair and wild and savage aspect.

The proportions of the skull which give rise to this large upper lip, the low forehead and the superorbital ridges are certainly Neanderthal characters.

The other traits of this Irish type are common to many primitive races.

This is the Irishman of caricature and the type was very frequent in America when the first Irish immigrants came in 1846 and the following years.

It seems, however, to have almost disappeared in this country.

If, as it is claimed, the Neanderthals have left no trace of their blood in living populations, these Firbolgs are derived from some very ancient and primitive race as yet undescribed.

In the Upper Paleolithic, which began after the close of the fourth and last glaciation, about 25,000 years ago, the Neanderthal race was succeeded by men of very modern aspect, known as Cro-Magnons.

The date of the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic is the first we can fix with accuracy and its correctness can be relied on within narrow limits.

The Cro-Magnon race first appears in the Aurignacian subdivision of the Upper Paleolithic.

Like the Neanderthals, they were dolichocephalic but with a cranial capacity superior to the average in existing European populations and a stature of very remarkable size.

It is quite astonishing to find that the predominant race in Europe 25,000 years ago, or more, was not only much taller, but had an absolute cranial capacity in excess of the average of the present population.

The low cranial average of existing populations in Europe can be best explained by the presence of large numbers of individuals of inferior mentality.

These defectives have been carefully preserved by modern charity, whereas in the savage state of society the backward members were allowed to perish and the race was carried on by the vigorous and not by the weaklings.

The high brain capacity of the Cro-Magnons is paralleled by that of the ancient Greeks, who in a single century gave to the world out of their small population much more genius than all the other races of mankind have since succeeded in producing in a similar length of time.

Attica between 530 and 430 B. C.

had an average population of about 90,000 freemen, and yet from this number were born no less than fourteen geniuses of the very highest rank.

This would indicate a general intellectual status as much above that of the Anglo-Saxons as the latter are above the Negroes.

The existence at these early dates of a very high cranial capacity and its later decline shows that there is no upward tendency inherent in mankind of sufficient strength to overcome obstacles placed in its way by stupid social customs.

All historians are familiar with the phenomenon of a rise and decline in civilization such as has occurred time and again in the history of the world but we have here in the disappearance of the Cro-Magnon race the earliest example of the replacement of a very superior race by an inferior one.

There is great danger of a similar replacement of a higher by a lower type here in America unless the native American uses his superior intelligence to protect himself and his children from competition with intrusive peoples drained from the lowest races of eastern Europe and western Asia.

While the skull of the Cro-Magnon was long, the cheek bones were very broad and this combination of broad face with long skull constitutes a peculiar disharmonic type which occurs to-day only among the very highly specialized Esquimaux and one or two other unimportant groups.

Skulls of this particular type, however, are found in small numbers among existing populations in central France, precisely in the district where the fossil remains of this race were first discovered.

These isolated Frenchmen probably represent the last lingering remnant of this splendid race of hunting savages.

The Cro-Magnon culture is found around the basin of the Mediterranean, and this fact, together with the conspicuous absence in eastern Europe of its earliest phases, the lower Aurignacian, indicates that it entered Europe by way of north Africa, as its successors, the Mediterranean race, probably did in Neolithic times.

There is little doubt that the Cro-Magnons originally developed in Asia and were in their highest stage of physical development at the time of their first appearance in Europe.

Whatever change took place in their stature during their residence there seems to have been in the nature of a decline rather than of a further development.

There is nothing whatever of the Negroid in the Cro-Magnons and they are not in any way related to the Neanderthals, who represent a distinct and, save for the suggestions made above, an extinct species of man.

The Cro-Magnon race persisted through the entire Upper Paleolithic, during the periods known as the Aurignacian, Solutrean and Magdalenian, from 25,000 to 10,000 B. C.

While it is possible that the blood of this race enters somewhat into the composition of the peoples of western Europe, its influence cannot be great and the Cro-Magnons—the Nordics of their day—disappear from view with the advent of the warmer climate of recent times.

It has been suggested that, following the fading ice edge north and eastward through Asia into North America, they became the ancestors of the Esquimaux but certain anatomical objections are fatal to this interesting theory.

No one, however, who is familiar with the culture of the Esquimaux and especially with their wonderful skill in bone and ivory carving, can fail to be struck with the similarity of their technique to that of the Cro-Magnons.

To the Cro-Magnon race the world owes the birth of art.

Caverns and shelters are constantly unearthed in France and Spain, where the walls and ceilings are covered with polychrome paintings or with incised bas-reliefs of animals of the chase.

A few clay models, sometimes of the human form, are also found, together with abundant remains of their chipped but unpolished stone weapons and tools.

Certain facts stand out clearly, namely, that they were purely hunters and clothed themselves in furs and skins.

They knew nothing of agriculture or of domestic animals, even the dog being probably as yet untamed and the horse regarded merely as an object of chase.

The question of their knowledge of the principle of the bow and arrow during the Aurignacian and Solutrean is an open one but there are definite indications of the use of the arrow, or at least the barbed dart, in early Magdalenian times and this weapon was well known in the succeeding Azilian Period.

The presence toward the end of this last period of quantities of very small flints called microliths has given rise to much controversy.

It is possible that some of these microliths represent the tips of small poisoned arrows such as are now in very general use among primitive hunting tribes the world over.

Certain grooves in some of the flint weapons of the Upper Paleolithic may also have been used for the reception of poison.

It is highly probable that the immediate predecessors of the Azilians, the Cro-Magnons, perhaps the greatest hunters that ever lived, not only used poisoned darts but were adepts in trapping game by means of pitfalls and snares, precisely as do some of the hunting tribes of Africa to-day.

Barbed arrowheads of flint or bone, such as were commonly used by the North American Indians, have not been found in Paleolithic deposits.

In the Solutrean Period the Cro-Magnons shared Europe with a new race known as the Brünn-Předmost, found in central Europe.

This race is characterized by a long face as well as a long skull, and was, therefore, harmonic.

This Brünn-Předmost race appears to have been well settled in the Danubian and Hungarian plains and this location indicates an eastern rather than a southern origin.

Good anatomists have seen in this race the last lingering traces of the Neanderthaloids but it is more probable that we have here the first advance wave of the primitive forerunners of one of the modern European dolichocephalic races.

This new race was not artistic, but had great skill in fashioning weapons and possibly is associated with the peculiarities of Solutrean culture and the decline of art which characterizes that period.

The artistic impulse of the Cro-Magnons which flourished so vigorously during the Aurignacian seems to be quite suspended during this Solutrean Period, but reappears in the succeeding Magdalenian times.

This Magdalenian art is clearly the direct descendant of Aurignacian models and in this closing age of the Cro-Magnons all forms of Paleolithic art, carving, engraving, painting and the manufacture of weapons, reach their highest and final culmination.

Nine or ten thousand years may be assigned to the Aurignacian and Solutrean Periods and we may with considerable certainty give the minimum date of 16,000 B. C.

as the beginning of Magdalenian time.

Its entire duration can be safely set down at 6,000 years, thus bringing the final termination of the Magdalenian to 10,000 B. C.

All these dates are extremely conservative and the error, if any, is in assigning too late and not too early a period to the end of Magdalenian times.

At the close of the Magdalenian we enter upon the last period of Paleolithic times, the Azilian, which lasted from about 10,000 to 7,000 B.

C.

, when the Upper Paleolithic, the age of chipped flints, definitely and finally ends in Europe.

This period takes its name from the Mas d’Azil, or “House of Refuge,” a huge cavern in the eastern Pyrenees where the local Protestants took shelter during the persecutions.

The extensive deposits in this cave are typical of the Azilian epoch and here certain marked pebbles may be the earliest known traces of symbolic writing, but true writing was probably not developed until the late Neolithic.

With the advent of this Azilian Period art entirely disappears and the splendid physical type of the Cro-Magnons is succeeded by what appear to have been degraded savages, who had lost the force and vigor necessary for the strenuous chase of large game and had turned to the easier life of fishermen.

In the Azilian the bow and arrow are in common use in Spain and it is well within the possibilities that the introduction and development of this new weapon from the South may have played its part in the destruction of the Cro-Magnons; otherwise it is hard to account for the disappearance of this race of large stature and great brain power.

The Azilian, also called the Tardenoisian in the north of France, was evidently a period of racial disturbance and at its close the beginnings of the existing races are found.

From the first appearance of man in Europe and for many tens of thousands of years down to some ten or twelve thousand years ago all known human remains are of dolichocephalic type.

In the Azilian Period appears the first round skull race.

It comes clearly from the East.

Later we shall find that this invasion of the forerunners of the existing Alpine race came from southwestern Asia by way of the Iranian plateau, Asia Minor, the Balkans and the valley of the Danube, and spread over nearly all of Europe.

The earlier round skull invasions may as well have been infiltrations as armed conquests since apparently from that day to this the round skulls have occupied the poorer mountain districts and have seldom ventured down to the rich and fertile plains.

This new brachycephalic race is known as the Furfooz or Grenelle race, so called from the localities in Belgium and France where it was first discovered.

Members of this round skull race have also been found at Ofnet in Bavaria where they occur in association with a dolichocephalic race, our first historic evidence of the mixture of contrasted races.

The descendants of this Furfooz-Grenelle race and of the succeeding waves of invaders of the same brachycephalic type now occupy central Europe as Alpines and form the predominant peasant type in central and eastern Europe.

In this same Azilian Period there appear, coming this time from the South, the first forerunners of the Mediterranean race.

The descendants of this earliest wave of Mediterraneans and their later reinforcements occupy all the coast and islands of the Mediterranean and are spread widely over western Europe.

They can everywhere be identified by their short stature, slight build, long skull and brunet hair and eyes.

While during this Azilian-Tardenoisian Period these ancestors of two of the existing European races are appearing in central and southern Europe, a new culture phase, also distinctly Pre-Neolithic, was developing along the shores of the Baltic.

It is known as Maglemose from its type locality in Denmark.

It is believed to be the work of the first wave of the Nordic race which had followed the retreating glaciers northward over the old land connections between Denmark and Sweden to occupy the Scandinavian Peninsula.

In the remains of this culture we find definite evidence of the domesticated dog.

With the appearance of the Mediterranean race the Azilian-Tardenoisian draws to its close and with it the entire Paleolithic Period.

It is safe to assign for the end of the Paleolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic or Polished Stone Age, the date of 7,000 or 8,000 B. C.

The races of the Paleolithic Period, so far as we can judge from their remains, appear successively on the scene with all their characters fully developed.

The evolution of all these subspecies and races took place somewhere in Asia or eastern Europe.

None of these races appear to be ancestral one to another, although the scanty remains of the Heidelberg Man would indicate that he may have given rise to the later Neanderthals.

Other than this possible affinity, the various races of Paleolithic times are not related one to another.