Part 3
During the last eighty years the discovery of a series of fossilized remains of extinct genera and species of the human family and of apes has given us a glimpse of the origin and early history of mankind. Man's ancestors probably parted company with those of the anthropoid apes somewhere in the neighbourhood of Northern India early in the Miocene period; and before the close of the Pliocene period their descendants had gradually acquired the highly developed brain and the intelligence which imply the emergence of the distinctively human characteristics. The most significant token of the attainment of the status of men was the acquisition of the power of speech, which enabled its possessors to hand on the accumulated knowledge and the fruits of experience, and so enormously to increase their powers. The earliest-known representative of the human family was the Ape-man, _Pithecanthropus_, who at the end of the Pliocene period wandered east as far as Java, where the fossilized remains of a skull were found thirty years ago by Professor Eugen Dubois. At a later date a much more highly developed type, one, moreover, that was much closer to the ancestry of modern men than the aberrant Ape-man of Java, wandered as far west as England, where a representative of this extinct genus was discovered by the late Mr. Charles Dawson in 1912 at Piltdown, in Sussex. This very primitive member of the human family has been called the 'Dawn-man' or _Eoanthropus_ by Dr. Smith Woodward. He has a brain which, though poorly developed, is definitely human, but his face (and especially the jaws) retains considerable resemblance to that of an ape. Of the other fossilized remains of extinct varieties of the human family, the most important are those known respectively as Heidelberg man and Neanderthal man. The former is almost as old as the Piltdown man, and its former existence was revealed by the discovery in the Mauer Sands, near Heidelberg, in 1908, of a very massive and chinless jaw. At a much later date Europe was inhabited by a brutal species of mankind, Neanderthal man, which became extinct when in the Neoanthropic Age men of our own species made their way into Europe and completely superseded the less efficient Neanderthal species. The latter were men of vast strength, with short, clumsy, thick-set limbs, a stooping gait, thick neck, and a great flattened head with a coarse face. These people inhabited Europe in the days when the elephant and the woolly rhinoceros lived there; they made the rough stone implements known as Mousterian. But, in spite of their enormous strength, these people were not able to hold their own in competition with the nimbler wits and the more skilled hands of _Homo sapiens_, who introduced into Europe a more finished technique in making implements, and revealed his genius and manual dexterity in the remarkable pictures which he painted on the walls of caves, especially in Southern France and Northern Spain. We have no information concerning the place of origin or the course of the wanderings of these earliest members of our own species.
But an extremely primitive race has survived until the present time to demonstrate the original type of _Homo sapiens_. The aboriginal Australian, like all existing races of men, belongs to the same species as ourselves, but it represents with singularly little modification the original type and colouring of _Homo sapiens_. Fossilized remains of the proto-Australian race have been found in Queensland (at Talgai) and in Java (at Wadjak); but the wandering of the race from its original Asiatic centre of characterization is indicated by the survival of remnants of this people in the pre-Dravidian jungle tribes of India (mainly in the Deccan), the Vedda of Ceylon, the Sakai of the Malay Peninsula, the Toala of Celebes, and other peoples of the Malay Archipelago, whose existence blazes the track from India to Australia.
The Australian race is on the average about 5 feet 2 inches in height; their skin is dark-brown or black; hair black and wavy or curly; skull typically long (dolichocephalic), with a relatively small brain-case; the nose is flat and broad, and the jaws large and prominent. What lowly culture these people now possess has been mainly acquired within relatively recent times by contact with more civilized peoples.
[Illustration: Australian Aborigine, from east side of Lake Eyre.]
Long after the proto-Australians separated from the rest of mankind and wandered east, another group wandered west, and, probably in tropical Africa, became specialized in structure to become the Negro race. The negro, like the Australian, retains many primitive characters, such as the black skin, and the small brain, but in other respects, such, for example, as the extremely flattened and curved hair ('pepper-corns'), he has become highly specialized and sharply differentiated from all other varieties of mankind. At an early period in the history of the race the negro divided into two groups--a pygmy variety or Negrillo, and the ordinary tall negro. One of the branches of the pygmy stock became further specialized in structure (in the course of which the black colour of the skin was lost), and became the Bushman race which has gradually been pushed into the deserts of South Africa (see _Hottentot_).
After the differentiation of the Negro race into pygmy and tall varieties, representatives of both divisions spread along the southern coast of Asia, the former, known in the East as Negritos, reaching the Andaman Islands, the Malay Peninsula (Semangs), the Philippines (Aetas), and New Guinea (Pygmies), and the taller Negroids to Melanesia, New Guinea, and the neighbouring islands of the Malay Archipelago. Many authorities regard the extinct Tasmanian people as a branch of this race.
But the vast majority of the Negro race is found in Africa south of the Sahara Desert and the populations sprung from them in the American continent and the West Indies.
The African negro is subdivided into two main groups known respectively as Nilotic and Bantu; but in addition there are the pygmies of the equatorial and Congo regions, and the Bushmen and Hottentots of the Kalahari Desert, Namaqualand, Lake Ngami, and the Orange River. The Nilotic negro ranges across the continent from Somaliland to Nigeria, and is differentiated from the Bantu chiefly from the fact that along this belt there has been a constant passing to and fro of Hamitic and Semitic peoples for many centuries, leading not only to very considerable recent racial admixture, but also to cultural and especially linguistic influences, which have brought about the breaking up of the population into a series of nations of varied speech and customs. Among the Bantus, on the other hand, although their culture is lower than that of the Nilotic negroes, there is more uniformity both of race and customs. In race they are negro mixed in early times with the proto-Hamitic peoples of East Africa, whence the mongrel population moved south, driving the Bushmen and Hottentots before them.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
After the ancestors of the Australian and Negro races had separated from the rest of mankind, which had spread throughout a great part of Asia, North-Eastern Africa, and Europe, the coming of the Glacial epoch created barriers of ice which shut up the various groups each within its own domain. Somewhere in Eastern Asia, possibly in the basin of the Yellow River, the proto-Mongolian race gradually assumed its characteristic traits. In East Africa and the neighbouring tract of Asia the ancestors of the Brown or so-called Mediterranean race were free to roam east and west from India to the African and European coasts of the Atlantic. Farther north, probably in Europe, the Nordic or Blond race (in the map labelled Northern or Teutonic race) assumed its distinctive features; and somewhere in the region between its area of characterization and that of the Yellow race--probably in the region to the north-east of the Caspian--the so-called Alpine (Armenoid) or proto-Slav race developed. It is distinguished from the Brown and Blond races by the broad skull and heavy jaw, no less than by the robustness of build and the great tendency to hairiness; from the Mongolian people the Armenoids are distinguished by the prominence of the nose, the character of the hair, and the colour of the skin. The term Alpine, which is usually applied to this race, is singularly inappropriate; for, although in Europe and Asia Minor the members of this race show a partiality for high mountains, the vast majority of the members of the race dwell in the plains of Russia, which also may have been the original home of the race. In view of the topographical relationship of the area of characterization of this race to the homes of the other races, Nordic, Brown, Negro, Australian, and Mongol, arranged in a great arc around it, it might not be inappropriate to call the so-called Alpine (Armenoid or proto-Slav) race by the non-committal title 'Central'. At the close of the Glacial epoch, when the melting of the ice unlocked the domains of these races, members of the Central race poured into Asia Minor and Syria, and down to the head of the Persian Gulf; they also made their way north of the Caspian and Black Sea into Europe, mingling there with the Nordic people. But they also moved east in Siberia and mingled with the proto-Mongolian race. It was soon after this event that members of the proto-Mongolian stock, possibly with some admixture of people of the Central race, wandered to North-Eastern Asia and crossed the Behring Strait to colonize America for the first time. From the north-west coast of America these immigrants in course of time made their way south and east, until eventually the whole of the New World from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn was inhabited. Many centuries afterward (especially between 300 B.C. and A.D. 1000) there was a great influx of a variety of other peoples from Polynesia and the Old World on to the Pacific coast of the Americas, which profoundly altered the physical type of the population of Central America and the Andean coast.
The members of the proto-Mongolian race who remained in Asia spread over a large area from the Arctic Ocean south to Tibet, China, Indo-China and the Malay Archipelago, the Philippines, Formosa, Nicobar Islands, and Madagascar. Their domain became divided geographically into three minor areas of characterization, of the Northern, Southern, and Oceanic Mongols respectively. In the Northern Mongols are included the Koreans, the Japanese and the people of Liu-Kiu, the Tungus (including the Manchu, Gold, &c.), the Kalmuks, Buriats, Koryaks, Chuckchis, Kamchadales, Gilyaks.
The Central race became differentiated into a considerable number of varieties. Apart from the Slavs, there were several groups which became isolated the one from the other in Asia Minor and Syria. One of these developed in an extreme degree the characteristic features of the race--the brachycephaly, the prominence of the nose and the high-ramus of the jaw. These are the Armenian and kindred people. Another branch gave origin to the Northern Semites, who made their way into Palestine and Mesopotamia. (The Southern Semites belong to another race--the Brown.) Another branch of the Central race preceded these two in making their way to the sea-coasts of the Levant and the Persian Gulf--this may be called the Maritime branch of the Central race.
The Slav branch of the Central race was making its way into Europe long before the Neolithic phase of culture there. It passed north of the Black Sea via Poland. But at the end of the Neolithic phase there were two streams of other branches of the race--the true Alpine subdivision passing from Anatolia into the Carpathians and the Alps, to Switzerland, Bavaria, Savoy, and Brittany, and the Maritime division passing round the coasts to the Iberian Peninsula, the British Isles, and Western Europe.
The Brown race spread in East Africa from Somaliland to the Mediterranean and all its coasts, to Western Europe, and the British Isles; in the other direction to Arabia, the shores of the Persian Gulf, and eastward along the coast to India, where it mingled with the pre-Dravidian (proto-Australian) population to give rise to the mongrel Dravidian people. The spread of these Brown people farther east into the Malay Archipelago explains the origin of the Indonesians, who occupied the islands before the coming south of the Mongols, but after the proto-Australians and the proto-Negroes had passed through towards Australia and Melanesia respectively.
From very early times there has been an intermingling of the different races. In East Africa every degree of intermingling of the Hamitic branch of the Brown race has been taking place for more than sixty centuries with negroes, both of the Sudanese and the Bantu stocks. At a later time Arabs poured into Africa and added their quota to the mixture. In India the original pre-Dravidian (proto-Australian) aborigines became diluted with a large influx of the Brown race to form the Dravidian people, who acquired a high civilization from the west. At a later date people of the Central race speaking an Aryan language swarmed through the north-western frontier and introduced their language and culture into India.
Before this happened the Brown race had extended farther east and provided the basis for the population of Indonesia, supplanting to a great extent the earlier proto-Australian and Negroid peoples there. Then the Malays came down from the north and added to the Indonesian mixture a strong Mongolian element. Colonists from the Malay Archipelago settled in Madagascar and added to its mixture of Brown (Semites and Hamites) and Black (Bantu) elements representatives of the Mongolian (Malay) race. In the course of their maritime expeditions the Malay Archipelago gave to Japan a not inconsiderable contribution both of people and culture.
But the area of the most complex admixture of races in ancient times was Siberia. With the melting of the ice barriers at the close of the Glacial epoch the proto-Mongolian and proto-Central peoples came into intimate contact; and to this mixture was added a proto-Nordic element, as well as a not inconsiderable influx of members of the Brown race, who came from the south through Turkestan to exploit the gold and copper of the Yenesei region. The presence of their dolichocephalic skulls in a region where brachycephaly is the rule has been a perpetual puzzle to anthropologists, who at the present time attempt to solve the problem by assuming the presence of an aboriginal race of long-headed people, who were exterminated by the Mongols and the Turks. The greed for the riches of the head-waters of the Yenesei has made Siberia the home of strife for fifty centuries. This has led not only to a puzzling admixture of races in the affected area, but has started raids of Mongols and Turks, which at various times extended as far as Europe (Huns and Avars), India, and China. So mixed are the races in Siberia that it is not easy to determine whether some of them should be classed as mainly Turki or mainly Mongol; and this applies also to the colonies (Bulgars, Magyars, Finns, Lapps, &c.) which at various times the Asiatic invaders left behind them in Europe, each of which has been profoundly altered by admixture since then.
In the great Mongolian domain that occupies so great a part of Northern and Eastern Asia there are certain definitely alien elements. The Yakuts (of the region near the Lena River) are definitely Turki in race, and the curious hairy Ainus (of Yezo, Sakhalin, and some of the Kurile Islands) are certainly members of the Central race.
A peculiar branch of the northern Mongols is clearly differentiated from the rest to form the Eskimo people who occupy Greenland and Arctic America. They present a marked contrast to the American Indians. The American Indian may be regarded essentially as a branch of the proto-Mongolian race mixed to some extent with a proto-Central element. But on the Pacific littoral there has been considerable admixture with a variety of peoples from Eastern Asia and Oceania for several centuries (_c._ 300 B.C. to A.D. 1000). Although the peoples conform on the whole to a definite type as regards the characters of their hair and features, there is a considerable range of variation as regards height, skull-form, and other racial features. The people of the states where a high civilization prevailed ten centuries ago--Mexico, Central America, Peru, and Chile--are clearly differentiated from the rest of the American population by the more obtrusive evidence of admixture with Polynesian and Asiatic peoples. In addition to the peoples of the north-west coast (Haidas and Salish) and of the ancient civilizations (Mayas and Aztecs) of Central America and Mexico, the population of North America can be divided (see map) into the following tribes: (1) Athabascan, (2) Algonquin, (3) Iroquoian, (4) Siouan, (5) Shoshonean (in the map called 'Kiowan'), (6) Muskhogean, and (7) Pueblo (not indicated in the map, but in Arizona, north of Mexico).
In South America the centre of the ancient civilization was in the region of the Quichua (Inca) and Aymara peoples. The semi-civilized Chibcha people occupied the table-land of Bogota. To the south of Peru the coastal people (Araucanians) were to some extent influenced by the more highly civilized Incas to their north. The presence of gold in the Matto Grosso region of Brazil attracted men from Peru, and set in motion migrations of people towards the Rio de la Plata in the south and towards Venezuela in the north. Among the linguistically distinct peoples found in the latter area are the Tupi, Arawaks, and Caribs. A very primitive people, the Botocudo, occupy the eastern coast of Brazil south of the River San Francisco.
From the beginning man was a maker of implements of stone and bone: but for a vast number of centuries he was merely a hunter who did not attempt anything more in the way of industry. Civilization probably originated in the Nile Valley when men found barley growing there naturally, and discovered that it provided them with a supply of food which could maintain them throughout the year. When the population in the valley increased, so that the natural supply of barley became inadequate, men learned to imitate the inundation, and by scraping channels in the sand to render the desert fertile. Thus was agriculture and irrigation invented, and thus were men led to organize the labour of the community under the direction of a leader who was primarily an irrigation engineer, but eventually became a king and the god Osiris, the dead king, whose reputation as the bestower of life-giving water became apotheosized as the giver of life and immortality.
Pottery was probably invented as an outcome of the mode of life and the needs of these early agriculturists, and the domestication of cattle and the use of their milk for food helped to neutralize the ill-effects of a too exclusively cereal diet. Other events followed in the train of this first adoption of a settled mode of life. The disposal of the dead in the sands that fringed the area of cultivation, and the natural preservation of the corpse that often resulted, shaped the beliefs of the people with reference to the fate of the dead. Incidentally it led to the invention of the arts of the carpenter, the stone-mason, and the embalmer; and as an outcome of these practices architecture, as well as the ritual of the temple, had its origin.
Long before these events primitive man had begun to ponder over the meaning of death. At first he associated it with such injuries as he had learned by experience killed animals that he hunted; and as the escape of blood caused unconsciousness and death, he framed the belief that blood was the substance of consciousness and of life. To exchange blood was to share knowledge; to give blood was to confer fresh vital substance, i.e. to minimize the risk of extinction or prolong the existence of living or dead. This is the fundamental idea underlying all religious belief and ritual--the giving of life and immortality.
But the act of birth is also a process of life-giving. The cowrie-shell (and subsequently other shells and the pearls contained in them) came to be regarded as a symbol of this life-giving power, and an amulet which could protect both the living and the dead from the risk of extinction. The demand for these precious elixirs of life became so intense that they acquired a fictitious value as currency, and models of them were made to serve as amulets in their stead. The beauty and the lightness of the models of such shells made of the soft useless plastic metal found in the Egyptian and Nubian deserts was probably the means by which gold first acquired any value, and afterwards by confusion came to be credited with the same life-giving attributes as were at first bestowed merely upon the form of the amulets made from it. Thus gold came to be regarded as an elixir of life, and men began to search for the precious substance far and wide, incidentally spreading abroad the germs of the arts and crafts, the beliefs and practices of our common civilization. The use of malachite as a cosmetic provided the circumstances that eventually led men to discover how a gold-like substance, copper, could be obtained from the green ore; and in course of time it came to be realized that the metal was useful for other purposes than the mere making of amulets and jewellery. When the full value of copper as a material for making tools and weapons was fully appreciated, the ore became of tremendous economic importance, and men sought for it far and wide, as they had previously prospected for flint and gold.
The people who introduced the Neolithic culture into Europe brought with them from Egypt a knowledge of agriculture, of pottery-making, of domestication of animals, of linen, and of the characteristic burial customs and religious beliefs. But these rudiments of civilization were also diffused to Crete and Cyprus, to Syria and Asia Minor, to Elam and Sumer by prospectors searching for the things which the growth of civilization was making valuable, the incense and the timber, the gold and precious stones, the copper and other metals. It is probable that the germs of Egyptian civilization were first planted in Elam by men prospecting for copper, and that Sumerian and Babylonian civilization received their initial inspiration in this way. Crete was inoculated with the germs of civilization by Egypt directly, as well as indirectly, from Asia Minor, which was subjected to the double influence of Egyptian and Sumerian culture. In the Age of Copper, Elamite culture was diffused abroad by miners to Turkestan and Baluchistan, thence respectively to Siberia and China (Shensi province), and to India. In the neighbourhood of the south-eastern corner of the Caspian the alloy bronze was probably invented soon after 3000 B.C. by mixing tin and copper; and the influence of this epoch-making event rapidly spread to Babylonia, to Crete, and to Europe, where it inaugurated the Age of Bronze. It also spread to China, to India, and many centuries later across the Pacific to Central America.