That Primitive Man, endowed with speech, handling tools, aiming weapons and using fire, originally improved himself out of an animal akin to the great apes is certain. That he existed tens of thousands of years ago with a brain capacity which distinguished him as Man from any ape is also certain; his bones are found preserved from an age which unquestionably preceded the last Glacial period when Europe was an Arctic region. He achieved his mastery over nature and over the rest of the animal creation, in spite of inferior physical strength and endurance, by discovering that he could use tools and could use fire, which no other animal ever did. The rest of the animals, it may be said, have never made anything except shelters for themselves and for their winter provisions. But man discovered that he could make fire his servant, and that he could do things with a stone or a stick in his hand which otherwise were much more difficult to accomplish.

The first differentiating step had been made when he grasped that fact, and the next came when man found that he could improve upon the stone or stick which he picked up and increase its utility. The weaving and plastering which other animals as well as himself had used for housebuilding provided him with a basis for the development of other arts, especially when he found that clay could be baked hard. Man became a potter. His sticks and stones became hatchets and javelins, and he became a hunter. He found that he could plant things and make them grow where he wanted them instead of having to seek for them, and became an agriculturist. He found that there were animals which he could tame and keep within reach to provide him with food and clothing, and he became a herdsman. Whether he was still in the animal stage when he discovered the advantage of co-operation and became a dweller in communities, fighting their enemies and capturing prey with weapons, adapting nature to their own use by means of tools, keeping herds and growing cereals, they were well on the way to acquiring civilization.

When and how Man acquired the most distinctive of all human attributes--articulate speech, as opposed to mere variety of intonation which accompanied that power, and the vast increase of experience which he gained by it must have given him an enormous immediate advantage over his competitors in the struggle for livelihood while he was still only a jungle-dweller.

When desiring to break things, Man used the stone as a hammer, a thing with which he struck instead of only a thing on which he struck, he had perhaps become definite by Man; certainly he had done so when he first began to use fire and when he first began to use edged stones for cutting and shaping things as well as for breaking them. Fire, the flint chisel or axe, and the flint weapon, made him an embryo manufacturer, able to fight at an advantage against beasts stronger and swifter than himself. He had started on his career as conqueror; he had crossed the line which distinguishes him from the beasts; he was indubitably primitive Man. In whatever stratum of the earth's surface we can find indubitably human bones, or shaped flints, or things made by shaped flints, or things made with fire, we know that in that place primitive Man existed at a time when that particular stratum was the top stratum; though geologists may differ on the question of how many tens of thousands of years have elapsed since that time. But what we do know in consequence is that primitive Man was in existence in different parts of Europe and in the Indian Archipelago tens of thousands of years ago; and there are portions of the earth's surface where primitive Man--Man who has no tools except such as are made of stone and bone and wood--still exists, regions where he has not discovered the use of metal. In the first stone-tool stage he was "paleolithic," in the second improved stage he was "neolithic."

Man when he has discovered the use of metal is primitive Man no longer; till then his progress has been limited by the inefficiency of his tools. The metal-using race is definitely better armed for the conflict both with human competitors and with nature, and the conquering races are those which can turn metal to the best account. Man, in short, progresses not only by adapting himself to his environment, but by adapting his environment to himself; and metal provides him with a means to that end infinitely superior to any which he possessed before he learnt to use it. The use of metal carries him out of the really primitive stage; his communities become permanent settlements with a continuous development. We are well within what may be properly called the historic period before another discovery gives immediate superiority to the peoples who have improved upon the use of the earlier known softer metals, copper and bronze, and have learnt to use weapons and tools of iron.

Primitive Man has no history, because he leaves no conscious record of his doings. History begins only when man has progressed sufficiently to erect permanent buildings and to decorate them with pictorial representations of his doings; more difinitely when he has begun to use the pictorial art not only to represent events or portraits but to symbolize sounds, when fiures stand for words--that is to say, when writing has been invented. Mural pictures or inscriptions are the earliest historical documents. With the movable records engraved on tablet cylinder the era of Books has begun. But it is not till a later stage that the enquirer sits down to compile from oral tradition and the dubious interpretation of ancient records a story of the past.

We may confidently anticipate that the still very youthful science of anthropology will presently enable us to arrive at very much more certain conclusions than has been possible as yet as to the nature of primitive societies. But it may be taken as proved, or at least as a probable working hypothesis, that every community regarded its members as of one kin having a common ancestor, and counted certain other communities as being also akin, the common rule being that husband and wife must not be born members of the same community, but that mating was confined to the single group of communities. There does not appear to be anywhere a trace of sexual community, though plenty of polygamy, which allowed one man many wives, and some of polyandry, which allowed one woman many husbands.

 

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