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Show 456 DARWINISM CIIAP. had diverged from each other. Now, this div~rgence almo~t certainly took place as early as the Miocene penod, ~ecause m the upper Miocene deposits of Western Europe r?mams of two species of ape have been found allied to the gibbon~, ~ne of them, Dryopithecus, nearly as large as a man, ~~d behe' ed by M Lartet to have approached man in its dentitiOn more than th~ existing ape.. vVe seem hardly, therefore, to have reached, in the Upper Miocene, the epoch of the common ancestor of man and the anthropoids. . . The evidence of the antiquity of man himself IS also scanty, and tttkes us but very little wa.y back in.to the past. \V c have clea.r proof of his existence .in ~ur?pe m th~ latter stag?s of the glacial epoch, with m~ny I_l1d1cat1011~ of his presence m interO'lacial or even pre-glacial times; while both the actual remains a.nd the works of man found in the auriferous gmvels of California deep under lava-flows of Pliocene age, sho~v that he existed in the N cw \¥ orld at least as early as m . the Old.l These earliest rema.ins of man ~ave been rec01vcd with doubt, and even with ridicule, as 1f. there. were some extreme improba.bility in them. . But, m pomt of fact, the wonder is tha.t human remams have not been foun<l more frequently in pre- glacia.l depo~its. Referring to tl~e most ancient fossil remains found m Europe-the Eng1s and N eandcrthal crania,-Professor Huxley makes the foll owinO' weiO'hty remark : " In conclusion, I may say, that the fo~sil re~ains of Man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, hy the modification of which he has, probably, become wha.t he is." The Californian remains and works of art, above referrc:l to, give no indication of a specially low form of man ; a~1d. 1t remains an unsolved problem why no tra.ces of the long lme of man's ancestors, back to the remote period when he fi rst branched off from the pithecoid type, have yet been discovered. It has been objected by some writers-notabl:y b:y Pr~fc. ·~or Boyd Dawkins-tha.t man did not probably ~x1st m Phoccnc times because almost all the known mammaha of that epoch are distinct species from those now ~ivin~ on t~e earth, and that the same changes of the enVIronment whiCh led to 1 For a sketch of the evidence of Man's Antiquity in America, see The Nineteenth Cenl1tr-y for November 1887. XV DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 457 the modification of other mammalian species would also have led to a change in man. But this argument overlooks the fa~t that man differs essentially from all other mammals in th1s _r~ poet, that w,here:ts_ any important adaptation to new concht10n · can b~ effected m them only by a change in bodily structure, man I able to adapt himself to much o-reater changes of conditions by a mental development lcadi~g him to the u. e of fire, of tools, of clothing, of improved dwell in rrs of n~ts and snares, and of agriculture. By the help of th~se, WJthout any change whn,tevcr in his bodily structmc he has hccn able to spread over ~nd occupy the whole c:~rth; to elwell sc~urely m forest, plam, or mountain; to inhabit alike t~c burmn~ desert or the arctic wastes; to cope with every k~ncl. of wild beast, and to provide himself ·with food in (h. tr1ct . where, as an animu.l trusting to natures unaided prodnctwns, he would have starvcd.l It follow., therefore, that from the time when the ancestral ~an first \~alked erect, wit~ han~s freed from any active part m locom_ot10n, and ~hen h1s bram-powcr became . ufficicnt to cau e hun to u~e his hn.ncls in making wcnpom; and tools, houses and clothmg, ~o use fire for cooking, and to plant seed or roots to s~pply him. elf with stores of food, the power of natl~ral sclectwn would cease to act in producing modific:ttions of h1 body, but would continuously advance his mind throurrh the development of it. organ, the brain. Hence man m~y ~ave hec~mc truly ~nan-the species, Homo sapicn. -even m the Mwcene penocl; and while all other mammals were becoming modified from age to age under the infiu nee of cvcrchangii~ g physical and biolorrical conditions, he would be advancmg mainly in intelligence, but perhaps also in stature, and by that advance alone would be able to maintain himself as th~ ma::-;ter of all other animals and as the rno t widespread occupier of the earth. It is quite in accordance with this view that we find the most pronounced distinction between mau and. the a,nthropoid apes in the size and complexity of his bram. 'I bu., Profes. or Huxley tells us that "it may be doubted whether a healthy human adult brain ever weighed 1 . This subject was first d_iscuss~d in an article in the A nthropoloyical Reme1?, ~ay 1 64, and repubhshecl 111 my Contn'butions to Natuml Selection chap. IX, m 1870. ' |