Evolvement of Human
The question whether an implement-using animal, which nearly all
would agree to regard as in some degree human, wandered over what
is now the South of England (Kent, Essex, Dorsetshire, etc.) as
many hundred thousand years ago as this claim would imply, is
certainly one of great interest. But there would be little use in
discussing here the question of the "Eoliths," as these disputed
implements are called. A very keen controversy is still being
conducted in regard to them, and some of the highest authorities
in England, France, and Germany deny that they show any trace of
human workmanship or usage. Although they have the support of
such high authorities as Sir J. Prestwich, Sir E. Ray Lankester,
Lord Avebury, Dr. Keane, Dr. Blackmore, Professor Schwartz, etc.,
they are one of those controverted testimonies on which it would
be ill-advised to rely in such a work as this.
We must say, then, that we have no undisputed traces of man in
the Tertiary Era. The Tertiary implements which have been at
various times claimed in France, Italy, and Portugal are equally
disputed; the remains which were some years ago claimed as
Tertiary in the United States are generally disallowed; and the
recent claims from South America are under discussion. Yet it is
the general feeling of anthropologists that man was evolved in
the Tertiary Era. On the one hand, the anthropoid apes were
highly developed by the Miocene period, and it would be almost
incredible that the future human stock should linger hundreds of
thousands of years behind them. On the other hand, when we find
the first traces of man in the Pleistocene, this development has
already proceeded so far that its earlier phase evidently goes
back into the Tertiary. Let us pass beyond the Tertiary Era for a
moment, and examine the earliest and most primitive remains we
have of human or semi-human beings.
The first appearance of man in the chronicle of terrestrial life
is a matter of great importance and interest. Even the least
scientific of readers stands, so to say, on tiptoe to catch a
first glimpse of the earliest known representative of our race,
and half a century of discussion of evolution has engendered a
very wide interest in the early history of man.*
* A personal experience may not be without interest in this
connection. Among the many inquiries directed to me in regard to
evolution I received, in one month, a letter from a negro in
British Guiana and an extremely sensible query from an inmate of
an English asylum for the insane! The problem that beset the
latter of the two was whether the Lemuranda preceded the
Lemurogona in Eocene times. He had found a contradiction in the
statements of two scientific writers.
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