A Short History of the World by H.G. Wells - Part I
A Short History of the World by H.G. Wells - Part I
In A Short History of the World, H. G. Wells writes the tale of human history from the early earth to the period immediately after World War I. First published in 1922, the book was intended “to meet the needs of the busy general reader, too driven to study the maps and time charts of that Outline in detail, who wishes to refresh and repair his faded or fragmentary conceptions of the great adventure of mankind.”
The first edition had around 400 pages, with about 200 illustrations, including 21 maps. Later editions were published with updated accounts of world events.
Albert Einstein recommended the book for the study of history as a means of interpreting progress in civilization.
The book summaries the scientific knowledge of the time regarding the history of Earth and life. It starts with its origins, goes on to explain the development of the Earth and life on Earth, reaching primitive thought and the development of humankind from the Cradle of Civilization. The book ends with the outcome of the First World War, the Russian famine of 1921, and the League of Nations in 1922.
NOTE - This material is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions, including negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or culture. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now, however rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it, and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.
This section covers Chapters I. - XXII.
I. 0:10 THE WORLD IN SPACE
II. 4:36 THE WORLD IN TIME
III. 9:08 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE
IV. 13:44 THE AGE OF FISHES
V. 20:04 THE AGE OF THE COAL SWAMPS
VI. 26:31 THE AGE OF REPTILES
VII. 33:00 THE FIRST BIRDS AND THE FIRST MAMMALS
VIII. 39:49 THE AGE OF MAMMALS
IX. 46:06 MONKEYS, APES AND SUB-MEN
X. 52:43 THE NEANDERTHALER AND THE RHODESIAN MAN
XI. 59:07 THE FIRST TRUE MEN
XII. 1:06:08 PRIMITIVE THOUGHT
XIII. 1:13:33 THE BEGINNINGS OF CULTIVATION
XIV. 1:20:46 PRIMITIVE NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATIONS
XV. 1:28:38 SUMERIA, EARLY EGYPT AND WRITING
XVI. 1:35:42 PRIMITIVE NOMADIC PEOPLES
XVII. 1:42:03 THE FIRST SEA-GOING PEOPLES
XVIII. 1:49:46 EGYPT, BABYLON AND ASSYRIA
XIX. 2:00:19 THE PRIMITIVE ARYANS
XX. 2:07:20 THE LAST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF DARIUS I
XXI. 2:13:52 THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE JEWS
XXII. 2:22:20 PRIESTS AND PROPHETS IN JUDEA
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Content
5.12 -> A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
By H. G. WELLS
10.48 -> Chapter I
THE WORLD IN SPACE
14.08 -> The story of our world is a story that is
still very imperfectly known. A couple of
19.28 -> hundred years ago men possessed the history of
little more than the last three thousand years.
24.48 -> What happened before that time was a matter of
legend and speculation. Over a large part of the
29.76 -> civilized world it was believed and taught that
the world had been created suddenly in 4004 B.C.,
35.36 -> though authorities differed as to whether this
had occurred in the spring or autumn of that year.
40.32 -> This fantastically precise misconception was
based upon a too literal interpretation of
44.72 -> the Hebrew Bible, and upon rather arbitrary
theological assumptions connected therewith.
50.16 -> Such ideas have long since been abandoned
by religious teachers, and it is universally
54.48 -> recognized that the universe in which we live has
to all appearances existed for an enormous period
59.12 -> of time and possibly for endless time. Of course
there may be deception in these appearances,
64.72 -> as a room may be made to seem endless by
putting mirrors facing each other at either end.
69.76 -> But that the universe in which we live has
existed only for six or seven thousand years may
74.32 -> be regarded as an altogether exploded idea.
The earth, as everybody knows nowadays, is a
80.16 -> spheroid, a sphere slightly compressed, orange
fashion, with a diameter of nearly 8,000 miles.
86.4 -> Its spherical shape has been known at least to a
limited number of intelligent people for nearly
91.44 -> 2,500 years, but before that time it was
supposed to be flat, and various ideas which
96.08 -> now seem fantastic were entertained about its
relations to the sky and the stars and planets.
101.6 -> We know now that it rotates upon its axis (which
is about 24 miles shorter than its equatorial
106.64 -> diameter) every twenty-four hours, and that this
is the cause of the alternations of day and night,
111.6 -> that it circles about the sun in a slightly
distorted and slowly variable oval path in a year.
117.28 -> Its distance from the sun varies between
ninety-one and a half millions at its nearest
121.6 -> and ninety-four and a half million miles.
About the earth circles a smaller sphere,
126.32 -> the moon, at an average distance of 239,000
miles. Earth and moon are not the only bodies to
133.2 -> travel round the sun. There are also the planets,
Mercury and Venus, at distances of thirty-six and
139.28 -> sixty-seven millions of miles; and beyond the
circle of the earth and disregarding a belt of
143.76 -> numerous smaller bodies, the planetoids, there
are Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
149.2 -> at mean distances of 141, 483, 886, 1,782,
and 1,793 millions of miles respectively.
161.2 -> These figures in millions of miles are very
difficult for the mind to grasp. It may help
166.24 -> the reader’s imagination if we reduce the sun and
planets to a smaller, more conceivable scale.
172.08 -> f, then, we represent our earth as
a little ball of one inch diameter,
175.92 -> the sun would be a big globe nine feet across and
323 yards away, that is about a fifth of a mile,
182 -> four or five minutes’ walking. The moon would be
a small pea two feet and a half from the world.
188.4 -> Between earth and sun there would be the
two inner planets, Mercury and Venus,
192.4 -> at distances of one hundred and twenty-five
and two hundred and fifty yards from the sun.
197.44 -> All round and about these bodies there
would be emptiness until you came to Mars,
201.28 -> a hundred and seventy-five feet beyond the earth;
Jupiter nearly a mile away, a foot in diameter;
206.4 -> Saturn, a little smaller, two miles off; Uranus
four miles off and Neptune six miles off.
212.64 -> Then nothingness and nothingness except for small
particles and drifting scraps of attenuated vapour
217.52 -> for thousands of miles. The nearest star to earth
on this scale would be 40,000 miles away.
224.24 -> These figures will serve perhaps
to give one some conception of
227.2 -> the immense emptiness of space in
which the drama of life goes on.
231.36 -> For in all this enormous vacancy of space we know
certainly of life only upon the surface of our
236.24 -> earth. It does not penetrate much more than three
miles down into the 4,000 miles that separate us
242.24 -> from the centre of our globe, and it does not
reach more than five miles above its surface.
247.44 -> Apparently all the limitlessness of
space is otherwise empty and dead.
251.76 -> The deepest ocean dredgings go down to
five miles. The highest recorded flight
256.88 -> of an aeroplane is little more than four miles.
Men have reached to seven miles up in balloons,
262.56 -> but at a cost of great suffering. No bird can
fly so high as five miles, and small birds and
268.8 -> insects which have been carried up by aeroplanes
drop off insensible far below that level.
276.08 -> Chapter II
THE WORLD IN TIME
279.52 -> In the last fifty years there has been much
very fine and interesting speculation on the
284 -> part of scientific men upon the age and origin
of our earth. Here we cannot pretend to give
289.36 -> even a summary of such speculations because
they involve the most subtle mathematical and
293.68 -> physical considerations. The truth is that
the physical and astronomical sciences are
298.72 -> still too undeveloped as yet to make anything
of the sort more than an illustrative guesswork.
303.68 -> The general tendency has been to make the
estimated age of our globe longer and longer.
308.8 -> It now seems probable that the earth has had an
independent existence as a spinning planet flying
313.28 -> round and round the sun for a longer period
than 2,000,000,000 years. It may have been
318.32 -> much longer than that. This is a length of time
that absolutely overpowers the imagination.
324.48 -> Before that vast period of separate existence, the
sun and earth and the other planets that circulate
329.36 -> round the sun may have been a great swirl of
diffused matter in space. The telescope reveals to
334.88 -> us in various parts of the heavens luminous spiral
clouds of matter, the spiral nebulæ, which appear
340.08 -> to be in rotation about a centre. It is supposed
by many astronomers that the sun and its planets
345.6 -> were once such a spiral, and that their matter
has undergone concentration into its present form.
351.2 -> Through majestic æons that concentration went
on until in that vast remoteness of the past
355.44 -> for which we have given figures, the world and its
moon were distinguishable. They were spinning then
360.56 -> much faster than they are spinning now; they were
at a lesser distance from the sun; they travelled
364.88 -> round it very much faster, and they were probably
incandescent or molten at the surface. The sun
370.56 -> itself was a much greater blaze in the heavens.
If we could go back through that infinitude of
375.76 -> time and see the earth in this earlier stage of
its history, we should behold a scene more like
380.16 -> the interior of a blast furnace or the surface
of a lava flow before it cools and cakes over
384.96 -> than any other contemporary scene. No water
would be visible because all the water there
389.84 -> was would still be superheated steam in a stormy
atmosphere of sulphurous and metallic vapours.
395.28 -> Beneath this would swirl and boil an ocean of
molten rock substance. Across a sky of fiery
400.88 -> clouds the glare of the hurrying sun and moon
would sweep swiftly like hot breaths of flame.
406.24 -> Slowly by degrees as one million of years followed
another, this fiery scene would lose its eruptive
411.2 -> incandescence. The vapours in the sky would rain
down and become less dense overhead; great slaggy
417.04 -> cakes of solidifying rock would appear upon the
surface of the molten sea, and sink under it,
421.6 -> to be replaced by other floating masses. The sun
and moon growing now each more distant and each
427.28 -> smaller, would rush with diminishing swiftness
across the heavens. The moon now, because of
432.32 -> its smaller size, would be already cooled far
below incandescence, and would be alternately
437.04 -> obstructing and reflecting the sunlight
in a series of eclipses and full moons.
441.84 -> And so with a tremendous slowness through the
vastness of time, the earth would grow more and
446 -> more like the earth on which we live, until at
last an age would come when, in the cooling air,
450.56 -> steam would begin to condense into clouds, and the
first rain would fall hissing upon the first rocks
455.44 -> below. For endless millenia the greater part of
the earth’s water would still be vaporized in the
460.72 -> atmosphere, but there would now be hot streams
running over the crystallizing rocks below and
465.12 -> pools and lakes into which these streams would
be carrying detritus and depositing sediment.
470.32 -> At last a condition of things must have been
attained in which a man might have stood up on
474.16 -> earth and looked about him and lived. If we could
have visited the earth at that time we should have
478.96 -> stood on great lava-like masses of rock without a
trace of soil or touch of living vegetation, under
484.16 -> a storm-rent sky. Hot and violent winds, exceeding
the fiercest tornado that ever blows, and
490.08 -> downpours of rain such as our milder, slower earth
to-day knows nothing of, might have assailed us.
496.08 -> The water of the downpour would have rushed
by us, muddy with the spoils of the rocks,
500 -> coming together into torrents, cutting deep gorges
and canyons as they hurried past to deposit their
504.96 -> sediment in the earliest seas. Through the
clouds we should have glimpsed a great sun
509.44 -> moving visibly across the sky, and in its wake and
in the wake of the moon would have come a diurnal
514 -> tide of earthquake and upheaval. And the moon,
which nowadays keeps one constant face to earth,
519.68 -> would then have been rotating visibly and
showing the side it now hides so inexorably.
524.48 -> The earth aged. One million years
followed another, and the day lengthened,
528.96 -> the sun grew more distant and milder,
the moon’s pace in the sky slackened;
532.88 -> the intensity of rain and storm
diminished and the water in the
535.92 -> first seas increased and ran together into the
ocean garment our planet henceforth wore.
541.04 -> But there was no life as yet upon the earth; the
seas were lifeless, and the rocks were barren.
548.4 -> Chapter III
THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE
552 -> As everybody knows nowadays, the knowledge we
possess of life before the beginnings of human
556.32 -> memory and tradition is derived from the markings
and fossils of living things in the stratified
560.88 -> rocks. We find preserved in shale and slate,
limestone, and sandstone, bones, shells, fibres,
567.84 -> stems, fruits, footmarks, scratchings and the
like, side by side with the ripple marks of the
572.88 -> earliest tides and the pittings of the earliest
rain-falls. It is by the sedulous examination of
578.4 -> this Record of the Rocks that the past history
of the earth’s life has been pieced together.
583.12 -> That much nearly everybody knows to-day. The
sedimentary rocks do not lie neatly stratum
588.48 -> above stratum; they have been crumpled, bent,
thrust about, distorted and mixed together like
593.12 -> the leaves of a library that has been repeatedly
looted and burnt, and it is only as a result of
597.52 -> many devoted lifetimes of work that the record has
been put into order and read. The whole compass of
603.28 -> time represented by the record of the rocks
is now estimated as 1,600,000,000 years.
609.36 -> The earliest rocks in the record are called
by geologists the Azoic rocks, because they
613.6 -> show no traces of life. Great areas of these
Azoic rocks lie uncovered in North America,
619.36 -> and they are of such a thickness that
geologists consider that they represent
622.64 -> a period of at least half of the 1,600,000,000
which they assign to the whole geological record.
628.88 -> Let me repeat this profoundly significant fact.
Half the great interval of time since land and
634.56 -> sea were first distinguishable on earth has
left us no traces of life. There are ripplings
639.92 -> and rain marks still to be found in these rocks,
but no marks nor vestiges of any living thing.
645.6 -> Then, as we come up the record, signs of past
life appear and increase. The age of the world’s
651.28 -> history in which we find these past traces is
called by geologists the Lower Palæozoic age.
657.2 -> The first indications that life was astir are
vestiges of comparatively simple and lowly things:
662.08 -> the shells of small shellfish, the stems and
flowerlike heads of zoophytes, seaweeds and the
666.88 -> tracks and remains of sea worms and crustacea.
Very early appear certain creatures rather like
672.64 -> plant-lice, crawling creatures which could roll
themselves up into balls as the plant-lice do,
677.36 -> the trilobites. Later by a few million
years or so come certain sea scorpions,
682.96 -> more mobile and powerful creatures
than the world had ever seen before.
687.28 -> None of these creatures were of very great
size. Among the largest were certain of the
692.16 -> sea scorpions, which measured nine feet in length.
There are no signs whatever of land life of any
698.08 -> sort, plant or animal; there are no fishes nor any
vertebrated creatures in this part of the record.
704.08 -> Essentially all the plants and creatures
which have left us their traces from this
707.68 -> period of the earth’s history are
shallow-water and intertidal beings.
712 -> If we wished to parallel the flora and fauna of
the Lower Palæozoic rocks on the earth to-day,
716.56 -> we should do it best, except in the matter of
size, by taking a drop of water from a rock
721.28 -> pool or scummy ditch and examining it under
a microscope. The little crustacea, the small
726.72 -> shellfish, the zoophytes and algæ we should find
there would display a quite striking resemblance
731.36 -> to these clumsier, larger prototypes that once
were the crown of life upon our planet.
736.48 -> It is well, however, to bear in mind that the
Lower Palæozoic rocks probably do not give us
741.36 -> anything at all representative of the first
beginnings of life on our planet. Unless a
746.16 -> creature has bones or other hard parts, unless it
wears a shell or is big enough and heavy enough
750.88 -> to make characteristic footprints and trails
in mud, it is unlikely to leave any fossilized
755.36 -> traces of its existence behind. To-day there
are hundreds of thousands of species of small
760.64 -> soft-bodied creatures in our world which it is
inconceivable can ever leave any mark for future
765.28 -> geologists to discover. In the world’s past,
millions of millions of species of such creatures
770.88 -> may have lived and multiplied and flourished
and passed away without a trace remaining.
775.92 -> The waters of the warm and shallow lakes and seas
of the so-called Azoic period may have teemed with
780.64 -> an infinite variety of lowly, jelly-like,
shell-less and boneless creatures, and a
785.04 -> multitude of green scummy plants may have spread
over the sunlit intertidal rocks and beaches.
790.56 -> The Record of the Rocks is no more a
complete record of life in the past
794.08 -> than the books of a bank are a record of the
existence of everybody in the neighbourhood.
798.48 -> It is only when a species begins to secrete
a shell or a spicule or a carapace or a
803.04 -> lime-supported stem, and so put by something
for the future, that it goes upon the Record.
808.48 -> But in rocks of an age prior to those
which bear any fossil traces, graphite,
812.64 -> a form of uncombined carbon, is sometimes found,
and some authorities consider that it may have
817.76 -> been separated out from combination through the
vital activities of unknown living things.
823.44 -> Chapter IV
THE AGE OF FISHES
826.96 -> In the days when the world was supposed to
have endured for only a few thousand years,
831.12 -> it was supposed that the different species
of plants and animals were fixed and final;
835.04 -> they had all been created exactly as
they are to-day, each species by itself.
839.92 -> But as men began to discover and study the
Record of the Rocks this belief gave place
844.08 -> to the suspicion that many species had changed
and developed slowly through the course of ages,
848.56 -> and this again expanded into a belief in what
is called Organic Evolution, a belief that all
853.12 -> species of life upon earth, animal and vegetable
alike, are descended by slow continuous processes
858.48 -> of change from some very simple ancestral form of
life, some almost structureless living substance,
863.92 -> far back in the so-called Azoic seas.
This question of Organic Evolution, like
870.08 -> the question of the age of the earth, has in the
past been the subject of much bitter controversy.
875.2 -> There was a time when a belief in organic
evolution was for rather obscure reasons
879.12 -> supposed to be incompatible with sound Christian,
Jewish and Moslem doctrine. That time has passed,
885.12 -> and the men of the most orthodox Catholic,
Protestant, Jewish and Mohammedan belief are
889.6 -> now free to accept this newer and broader view
of a common origin of all living things. No
894.96 -> life seems to have happened suddenly upon earth.
Life grew and grows. Age by age through gulfs of
901.68 -> time at which imagination reels, life has been
growing from a mere stirring in the intertidal
906.32 -> slime towards freedom, power and consciousness.
Life consists of individuals. These individuals
913.28 -> are definite things, they are not like the lumps
and masses, nor even the limitless and motionless
917.76 -> crystals, of non-living matter, and they have
two characteristics no dead matter possesses.
923.12 -> They can assimilate other matter into themselves
and make it part of themselves, and they can
927.52 -> reproduce themselves. They eat and they breed.
They can give rise to other individuals,
933.6 -> for the most part like themselves, but always
also a little different from themselves.
938.8 -> There is a specific and family resemblance between
an individual and its offspring, and there is an
943.36 -> individual difference between every parent and
every offspring it produces, and this is true
947.92 -> in every species and at every stage of life.
Now scientific men are not able to explain to
953.68 -> us either why offspring should resemble nor
why they should differ from their parents.
958.32 -> But seeing that offspring do at once resemble and
differ, it is a matter rather of common sense than
962.88 -> of scientific knowledge that, if the conditions
under which a species live are changed, the
967.2 -> species should undergo some correlated changes.
Because in any generation of the species there
972.8 -> must be a number of individuals whose individual
differences make them better adapted to the new
977.12 -> conditions under which the species has to live,
and a number whose individuals whose individual
981.76 -> differences make it rather harder for them to
live. And on the whole the former sort will live
986.8 -> longer, bear more offspring, and reproduce
themselves more abundantly than the latter,
990.96 -> and so generation by generation the average of the
species will change in the favourable direction.
996.64 -> This process, which is called Natural
Selection, is not so much a scientific
1000.8 -> theory as a necessary deduction from the facts
of reproduction and individual difference.
1006 -> There may be many forces at work varying,
destroying and preserving species, about which
1010.64 -> science may still be unaware or undecided, but the
man who can deny the operation of this process of
1015.84 -> natural selection upon life since its beginning
must be either ignorant of the elementary facts
1020.32 -> of life or incapable of ordinary thought.
Many scientific men have speculated about the
1025.68 -> first beginning of life and their speculations are
often of great interest, but there is absolutely
1030.32 -> no definite knowledge and no convincing guess yet
of the way in which life began. But nearly all
1036 -> authorities are agreed that it probably began upon
mud or sand in warm sunlit shallow brackish water,
1041.28 -> and that it spread up the beaches to the
intertidal lines and out to the open waters.
1046.32 -> That early world was a world of strong tides
and currents. An incessant destruction of
1051.36 -> individuals must have been going on through
their being swept up the beaches and dried,
1055.36 -> or by their being swept out to sea and sinking
down out of reach of air and sun. Early conditions
1061.12 -> favoured the development of every tendency to
root and hold on, every tendency to form an outer
1065.68 -> skin and casing to protect the stranded individual
from immediate desiccation. From the very earliest
1071.44 -> any tendency to sensitiveness to taste would
turn the individual in the direction of food,
1075.84 -> and any sensitiveness to light would assist it
to struggle back out of the darkness of the sea
1080.08 -> deeps and caverns or to wriggle back out of the
excessive glare of the dangerous shallows.
1085.04 -> Probably the first shells and body armour of
living things were protections against drying
1089.2 -> rather than against active enemies. But tooth
and claw come early into our earthly history.
1095.2 -> We have already noted the size
of the earlier water scorpions.
1099.36 -> For long ages such creatures
were the supreme lords of life.
1103.36 -> Then in a division of these Palæozoic rocks called
the Silurian division, which many geologists
1108.08 -> now suppose to be as old as five hundred million
years, there appears a new type of being,
1112.56 -> equipped with eyes and teeth and swimming
powers of an altogether more powerful kind.
1117.52 -> These were the first known backboned animals,
the earliest fishes, the first known Vertebrata.
1123.28 -> These fishes increase greatly in the next division
of rocks, the rocks known as the Devonian system.
1128.96 -> They are so prevalent that this period of the
Record of the Rocks has been called the Age
1132.8 -> of Fishes. Fishes of a pattern now gone from
the earth, and fishes allied to the sharks and
1138 -> sturgeons of to-day, rushed through the waters,
leapt in the air, browsed among the seaweeds,
1142.48 -> pursued and preyed upon one another, and gave
a new liveliness to the waters of the world.
1147.68 -> None of these were excessively big by our present
standards. Few of them were more than two or
1152.96 -> three feet long, but there were exceptional
forms which were as long as twenty feet.
1157.84 -> We know nothing from geology of the ancestors of
these fishes. They do not appear to be related
1163.28 -> to any of the forms that preceded them. Zoologists
have the most interesting views of their ancestry,
1169.04 -> but these they derive from the study of the
development of the eggs of their still living
1172.72 -> relations, and from other sources. Apparently the
ancestors of the vertebrata were soft-bodied and
1178.48 -> perhaps quite small swimming creatures who
began first to develop hard parts as teeth
1182.88 -> round and about their mouths. The teeth of a
skate or dogfish cover the roof and floor of
1187.92 -> its mouth and pass at the lip into the flattened
toothlike scales that encase most of its body.
1193.28 -> As the fishes develop these teeth scales in the
geological record, they swim out of the hidden
1197.84 -> darkness of the past into the light, the first
vertebrated animals visible in the record.
1203.28 -> Chapter V
THE AGE OF THE COAL SWAMPS
1207.28 -> The land during this Age of Fishes was apparently
quite lifeless. Crags and uplands of barren rock
1213.04 -> lay under the sun and rain. There was no real
soil—for as yet there were no earthworms which
1218.4 -> help to make a soil, and no plants to break up the
rock particles into mould; there was no trace of
1223.52 -> moss or lichen. Life was still only in the sea.
Over this world of barren rock played great
1229.84 -> changes of climate. The causes of these changes
of climate were very complex and they have still
1235.28 -> to be properly estimated. The changing shape of
the earth’s orbit, the gradual shifting of the
1240.56 -> poles of rotation, changes in the shapes of the
continents, probably even fluctuations in the
1245.44 -> warmth of the sun, now conspired to plunge great
areas of the earth’s surface into long periods of
1250.48 -> cold and ice and now again for millions of years
spread a warm or equable climate over this planet.
1256.32 -> There seem to have been phases of great
internal activity in the world’s history,
1260.16 -> when in the course of a few million years
accumulated upthrusts would break out in lines of
1264.24 -> volcanic eruption and upheaval and rearrange the
mountain and continental outlines of the globe,
1269.2 -> increasing the depth of the sea and the height
of the mountains and exaggerating the extremes
1273.28 -> of climate. And these would be followed by vast
ages of comparative quiescence, when frost, rain
1279.2 -> and river would wear down the mountain heights and
carry great masses of silt to fill and raise the
1283.6 -> sea bottoms and spread the seas, ever shallower
and wider, over more and more of the land.
1289.12 -> There have been “high and deep” ages in the
world’s history and “low and level” ages.
1294.24 -> The reader must dismiss from his mind any idea
that the surface of the earth has been growing
1298.56 -> steadily cooler since its crust grew solid.
After that much cooling had been achieved,
1303.6 -> the internal temperature ceased to affect
surface conditions. There are traces of periods
1308.8 -> of superabundant ice and snow, of “Glacial
Ages,” that is, even in the Azoic period.
1314.64 -> It was only towards the close of the Age of
Fishes, in a period of extensive shallow seas
1319.12 -> and lagoons, that life spread itself out in any
effectual way from the waters on to the land.
1324.72 -> No doubt the earlier types of the forms that
now begin to appear in great abundance had
1328.96 -> already been developing in a rare and obscure
manner for many scores of millions of years.
1334.08 -> But now came their opportunity.
Plants no doubt preceded animal forms in this
1338.88 -> invasion of the land, but the animals probably
followed up the plant emigration very closely.
1344.24 -> The first problem that the plant had to solve was
the problem of some sustaining stiff support to
1348.48 -> hold up its fronds to the sunlight when the
buoyant water was withdrawn; the second was
1352.48 -> the problem of getting water from the swampy
ground below to the tissues of the plant,
1356.4 -> now that it was no longer close at hand. The
two problems were solved by the development of
1361.6 -> woody tissue which both sustained the plant
and acted as water carrier to the leaves.
1366.56 -> The Record of the Rocks is suddenly crowded by
a vast variety of woody swamp plants, many of
1371.28 -> them of great size, big tree mosses, tree ferns,
gigantic horsetails and the like. And with these,
1377.76 -> age by age, there crawled out of the water
a great variety of animal forms. There were
1383.12 -> centipedes and millipedes; there were the first
primitive insects; there were creatures related
1387.52 -> to the ancient king crabs and sea scorpions which
became the earliest spiders and land scorpions,
1392.48 -> and presently there were vertebrated animals.
Some of the earlier insects were very large.
1398.4 -> There were dragon flies in this period with
wings that spread out to twenty-nine inches.
1403.52 -> In various ways these new orders and genera had
adapted themselves to breathing air. Hitherto all
1409.44 -> animals had breathed air dissolved in water, and
that indeed is what all animals still have to do.
1415.12 -> But now in divers fashions the animal kingdom
was acquiring the power of supplying its own
1419.36 -> moisture where it was needed. A man with a
perfectly dry lung would suffocate to-day;
1424.24 -> his lung surfaces must be moist in order that
air may pass through them into his blood.
1429.36 -> The adaptation to air breathing consists in all
cases either in the development of a cover to the
1433.92 -> old-fashioned gills to stop evaporation, or in
the development of tubes or other new breathing
1438.56 -> organs lying deep inside the body and moistened
by a watery secretion. The old gills with which
1444.24 -> the ancestral fish of the vertebrated line had
breathed were inadaptable to breathing upon land,
1448.8 -> and in the case of this division of the animal
kingdom it is the swimming bladder of the fish
1452.64 -> which becomes a new, deep-seated breathing organ,
the lung. The kind of animals known as amphibia,
1458.48 -> the frogs and newts of to-day, begin their
lives in the water and breathe by gills;
1462.8 -> and subsequently the lung, developing in the same
way as the swimming bladder of many fishes do,
1467.52 -> as a baglike outgrowth from the throat,
takes over the business of breathing,
1471.2 -> the animal comes out on land, and the
gills dwindle and the gill slits disappear.
1476 -> (All except an outgrowth of one gill slit, which
becomes the passage of the ear and ear-drum.)
1481.2 -> The animal can now live only in the air, but
it must return at least to the edge of the
1485.12 -> water to lay its eggs and reproduce its kind.
All the air-breathing vertebrata of this age of
1490.72 -> swamps and plants belonged to the class amphibia.
They were nearly all of them forms related to the
1496.16 -> newts of to-day, and some of them attained
a considerable size. They were land animals,
1501.2 -> it is true, but they were land animals needing
to live in and near moist and swampy places,
1505.68 -> and all the great trees of this period
were equally amphibious in their habits.
1510.24 -> None of them had yet developed fruits and
seeds of a kind that could fall on land
1513.92 -> and develop with the help only of such
moisture as dew and rain could bring.
1518.24 -> They all had to shed their spores in water,
it would seem, if they were to germinate.
1523.12 -> It is one of the most beautiful interests of that
beautiful science, comparative anatomy, to trace
1528.16 -> the complex and wonderful adaptations of living
things to the necessities of existence in air.
1533.44 -> All living things, plants and animals
alike, are primarily water things.
1538.16 -> For example all the higher vertebrated animals
above the fishes, up to and including man,
1542.64 -> pass through a stage in their development in
the egg or before birth in which they have
1546.48 -> gill slits which are obliterated before the young
emerge. The bare, water-washed eye of the fish is
1551.92 -> protected in the higher forms from drying up
by eyelids and glands which secrete moisture.
1557.2 -> The weaker sound vibrations of
air necessitate an ear-drum.
1561.12 -> In nearly every organ of the body similar
modifications and adaptations are to be detected,
1565.84 -> similar patchings-up to meet aerial conditions.
This Carboniferous age, this age of the amphibia,
1571.76 -> was an age of life in the swamps and lagoons
and on the low banks among these waters.
1576.88 -> Thus far life had now extended. The hills and
high lands were still quite barren and lifeless.
1583.52 -> Life had learnt to breathe air indeed, but
it still had its roots in its native water;
1587.68 -> it still had to return to the
water to reproduce its kind.
1591.36 -> Chapter VI
THE AGE OF REPTILES
1595.12 -> The abundant life of the Carboniferous period was
succeeded by a vast cycle of dry and bitter ages.
1601.12 -> They are represented in the Record of the Rocks
by thick deposits of sandstones and the like,
1605.52 -> in which fossils are comparatively few. The
temperature of the world fluctuated widely,
1610.8 -> and there were long periods of glacial cold.
1613.92 -> Over great areas the former profusion of
swamp vegetation ceased, and, overlaid by
1618.48 -> these newer deposits, it began that process of
compression and mineralization that gave the
1623.04 -> world most of the coal deposits of to-day.
But it is during periods of change that life
1628.08 -> undergoes its most rapid modifications, and under
hardship that it learns its hardest lessons.
1633.76 -> As conditions revert towards warmth and moisture
again we find a new series of animal and plant
1638.64 -> forms established, We find in the record the
remains of vertebrated animals that laid eggs
1642.88 -> which, instead of hatching out tadpoles
which needed to live for a time in water,
1647.04 -> carried on their development before hatching
to a stage so nearly like the adult form that
1651.2 -> the young could live in air from the first
moment of independent existence. Gills had
1656 -> been cut out altogether, and the gill slits
only appeared as an embryonic phase.
1660.8 -> These new creatures without a
tadpole stage were the Reptiles.
1664.88 -> Concurrently there had been a development of
seed-bearing trees, which could spread their seed,
1669.28 -> independently of swamp or lakes. There were
now palmlike cycads and many tropical conifers,
1675.04 -> though as yet there were no
flowering plants and no grasses.
1678.88 -> There was a great number of ferns. And there
was now also an increased variety of insects.
1685.2 -> There were beetles, though bees and butterflies
had yet to come. But all the fundamental forms
1690.48 -> of a new real land fauna and flora had been
laid down during these vast ages of severity.
1696.24 -> This new land life needed only the opportunity of
favourable conditions to flourish and prevail.
1701.84 -> Age by age and with abundant
fluctuations that mitigation came.
1706.08 -> The still incalculable movements of the earth’s
crust, the changes in its orbit, the increase and
1710.88 -> diminution of the mutual inclination of orbit
and pole, worked together to produce a great
1715.2 -> spell of widely diffused warm conditions. The
period lasted altogether, it is now supposed,
1721.12 -> upwards of two hundred million years. It is
called the Mesozoic period, to distinguish it
1726.48 -> from the altogether vaster Palæozoic and Azoic
periods (together fourteen hundred millions)
1731.52 -> that preceded it, and from the Cainozoic or
new life period that intervened between its
1735.84 -> close and the present time, and it is also called
the Age of Reptiles because of the astonishing
1740.32 -> predominance and variety of this form of life. It
came to an end some eighty million years ago.
1746.72 -> In the world to-day the genera of Reptiles are
comparatively few and their distribution is
1751.12 -> very limited. They are more various, it is true,
than are the few surviving members of the order
1756.72 -> of the amphibia which once in the Carboniferous
period ruled the world. We still have the snakes,
1762.24 -> the turtles and tortoises (the Chelonia), the
alligators and crocodiles, and the lizards.
1767.84 -> Without exception they are creatures requiring
warmth all the year round; they cannot stand
1772.4 -> exposure to cold, and it is probable that all the
reptilian beings of the Mesozoic suffered under
1777.04 -> the same limitation. It was a hothouse fauna,
living amidst a hothouse flora. It endured no
1783.68 -> frosts. But the world had at least attained a
real dry land fauna and flora as distinguished
1789.36 -> from the mud and swamp fauna and flora of
the previous heyday of life upon earth.
1794.48 -> All the sorts of reptile we know now were
much more abundantly represented then,
1798.48 -> great turtles and tortoises, big crocodiles and
many lizards and snakes, but in addition there
1803.28 -> was a number of series of wonderful creatures that
have now vanished altogether from the earth. There
1808.48 -> was a vast variety of beings called the Dinosaurs.
Vegetation was now spreading over the lower levels
1814.48 -> of the world, reeds, brakes of fern and the
like; and browsing upon this abundance came a
1819.04 -> multitude of herbivorous reptiles, which increased
in size as the Mesozoic period rose to its climax.
1825.52 -> Some of these beasts exceeded in size any
other land animals that have ever lived;
1829.52 -> they were as large as whales. The Diplodocus
Carnegii for example measured eighty-four feet
1834.96 -> from snout to tail; the Gigantosaurus was
even greater; it measured a hundred feet.
1840.32 -> Living upon these monsters was a swarm of
carnivorous Dinosaurs of a corresponding size.
1845.76 -> One of these, the Tyrannosaurus, is
figured and described in many books
1849.44 -> as the last word in reptilian frightfulness.
While these great creatures pastured and pursued
1854.8 -> amidst the fronds and evergreens of the Mesozoic
jungles, another now vanished tribe of reptiles,
1859.68 -> with a bat-like development of the fore limbs,
pursued insects and one another, first leapt and
1864.32 -> parachuted and presently flew amidst the
fronds and branches of the forest trees.
1869.12 -> These were the Pterodactyls. These were
the first flying creatures with backbones;
1874 -> they mark a new achievement in the
growing powers of vertebrated life.
1878.16 -> Moreover some of the reptiles
were returning to the sea waters.
1882.08 -> Three groups of big swimming beings had invaded
the sea from which their ancestors had come:
1886.48 -> the Mososaurs, the Plesiosaurs, and Ichthyosaurs.
Some of these again approached the proportions of
1892.32 -> our present whales. The Ichthyosaurs seem to have
been quite seagoing creatures, but the Plesiosaurs
1898.16 -> were a type of animal that has no cognate form
to-day. The body was stout and big with paddles,
1903.68 -> adapted either for swimming or crawling through
marshes, or along the bottom of shallow waters.
1909.12 -> The comparatively small head was poised on a vast
snake of neck, altogether outdoing the neck of the
1913.92 -> swan. Either the Plesiosaur swam and searched for
food under the water and fed as the swan will do,
1920.08 -> or it lurked under water and
snatched at passing fish or beast.
1924.4 -> Such was the predominant land life throughout
the Mesozoic age. It was by our human standards
1930 -> an advance upon anything that had preceded it. It
had produced land animals greater in size, range,
1936.24 -> power and activity, more “vital” as people
say, than anything the world had seen before.
1941.84 -> In the seas there had been no such advance but
a great proliferation of new forms of life.
1947.36 -> An enormous variety of squid-like creatures
with chambered shells, for the most part coiled,
1952.16 -> had appeared in the shallow seas, the Ammonites.
They had had predecessors in the Palæozoic seas,
1958.08 -> but now was their age of glory. To-day
they have left no survivors at all;
1962.72 -> their nearest relation is the pearly
Nautilus, an inhabitant of tropical waters.
1967.68 -> And a new and more prolific type of fish with
lighter, finer scales than the plate-like and
1972 -> tooth-like coverings that had hitherto prevailed,
became and has since remained predominant
1976.08 -> in the seas and rivers.
Chapter VII
1979.84 -> THE FIRST BIRDS AND THE FIRST MAMMALS
In a few paragraphs a picture of the
1984.48 -> lush vegetation and swarming reptiles of that
first great summer of life, the Mesozoic period,
1989.68 -> has been sketched. But while the Dinosaurs lorded
it over the hot selvas and marshy plains and the
1995.44 -> Pterodactyls filled the forests with their
flutterings and possibly with shrieks and
1999.12 -> croakings as they pursued the humming insect
life of the still flowerless shrubs and trees,
2003.52 -> some less conspicuous and less abundant forms upon
the margins of this abounding life were acquiring
2008.32 -> certain powers and learning certain lessons
of endurance, that were to be of the utmost
2012.4 -> value to their race when at last the smiling
generosity of sun and earth began to fade.
2018.72 -> A group of tribes and genera of hopping
reptiles, small creatures of the dinosaur type,
2023.28 -> seem to have been pushed by competition and
the pursuit of their enemies towards the
2026.88 -> alternatives of extinction or adaptation to colder
conditions in the higher hills or by the sea.
2032.56 -> Among these distressed tribes there was developed
a new type of scale—scales that were elongated
2037.44 -> into quill-like forms and that presently
branched into the crude beginnings of feathers.
2042.24 -> These quill-like scales layover one another
and formed a heat-retaining covering more
2046.4 -> efficient than any reptilian covering that
had hitherto existed. So they permitted an
2051.2 -> invasion of colder regions that were otherwise
uninhabited. Perhaps simultaneously with these
2056.56 -> changes there arose in these creatures
a greater solicitude for their eggs.
2061.12 -> Most reptiles are apparently quite careless about
their eggs, which are left for sun and season
2065.68 -> to hatch. But some of the varieties upon this
new branch of the tree of life were acquiring
2070.88 -> a habit of guarding their eggs and keeping
them warm with the warmth of their bodies.
2075.36 -> With these adaptations to cold other
internal modifications were going on that
2079.12 -> made these creatures, the primitive birds,
warm-blooded and independent of basking.
2084.24 -> The very earliest birds seem to have been seabirds
living upon fish, and their fore limbs were not
2089.12 -> wings but paddles rather after the penguin type.
That peculiarly primitive bird, the New Zealand
2094.88 -> Ki-Wi, has feathers of a very simple sort, and
neither flies nor appears to be descended from
2100.08 -> flying ancestors. In the development of the birds,
feathers came before wings. But once the feather
2106.72 -> was developed the possibility of making a light
spread of feathers led inevitably to the wing.
2111.76 -> We know of the fossil remains of one bird
at least which had reptilian teeth in its
2115.6 -> jaw and a long reptilian tail, but which also
had a true bird’s wing and which certainly flew
2120.4 -> and held its own among the pterodactyls of the
Mesozoic time. Nevertheless birds were neither
2125.84 -> varied nor abundant in Mesozoic times. If a
man could go back to typical Mesozoic country,
2131.6 -> he might walk for days and never see or
hear such a thing as a bird, though he
2135.52 -> would see a great abundance of pterodactyls
and insects among the fronds and reeds.
2140.32 -> And another thing he would probably never
see, and that would be any sign of a mammal.
2144.96 -> Probably the first mammals were in existence
millions of years before the first thing one
2149.12 -> could call a bird, but they were altogether too
small and obscure and remote for attention.
2154.32 -> The earliest mammals, like the earliest birds,
were creatures driven by competition and pursuit
2159.12 -> into a life of hardship and adaptation to cold.
With them also the scale became quill-like,
2164.64 -> and was developed into a heat-retaining
covering; and they too underwent modifications,
2168.96 -> similar in kind though different in detail, to
become warm-blooded and independent of basking.
2174.32 -> Instead of feathers they developed hairs, and
instead of guarding and incubating their eggs they
2178.48 -> kept them warm and safe by retaining them inside
their bodies until they were almost mature. Most
2184.24 -> of them became altogether vivaparous and brought
their young into the world alive. And even after
2189.6 -> their young were born they tended to maintain a
protective and nutritive association with them.
2194.8 -> Most but not all mammals to-day have mammæ
and suckle their young. Two mammals still
2199.68 -> live which lay eggs and which have not proper
mammæ, though they nourish their young by a
2203.52 -> nutritive secretion of the under skin; these
are the duck-billed platypus and the echidna.
2208.48 -> The echidna lays leathery eggs and then puts
them into a pouch under its belly, and so carries
2213.04 -> them about warm and safe until they hatch.
But just as a visitor to the Mesozoic world might
2218.32 -> have searched for days and weeks before finding
a bird, so, unless he knew exactly where to go
2223.28 -> and look, he might have searched in vain for
any traces of a mammal. Both birds and mammals
2228.48 -> would have seemed very eccentric and secondary
and unimportant creatures in Mesozoic times.
2233.92 -> The Age of Reptiles lasted, it is now guessed,
eighty million years. Had any quasi-human
2239.84 -> intelligence been watching the world through
that inconceivable length of time, how safe
2243.84 -> and eternal the sunshine and abundance must have
seemed, how assured the wallowing prosperity of
2248.4 -> the dinosaurs and the flapping abundance of the
flying lizards! And then the mysterious rhythms
2253.6 -> and accumulating forces of the universe began
to turn against that quasi-eternal stability.
2259.2 -> That run of luck for life was running out. Age
by age, myriad of years after myriad of years,
2264.88 -> with halts no doubt and retrogressions, came a
change towards hardship and extreme conditions,
2269.92 -> came great alterations of level and great
redistributions of mountain and sea.
2274.88 -> We find one thing in the Record of the Rocks
during the decadence of the long Mesozoic age
2279.12 -> of prosperity that is very significant of
steadily sustained changes of condition,
2283.12 -> and that is a violent fluctuation of living forms
and the appearance of new and strange species.
2288.96 -> Under the gathering threat of extinction the
older orders and genera are displaying their
2292.88 -> utmost capacity for variation and adaptation.
The Ammonites for example in these last pages
2298.72 -> of the Mesozoic chapter exhibit a multitude
of fantastic forms. Under settled conditions
2304.32 -> there is no encouragement for novelties;
they do not develop, they are suppressed;
2308.4 -> what is best adapted is already there. Under novel
conditions it is the ordinary type that suffers,
2314.08 -> and the novelty that may have a better
chance to survive and establish itself....
2318.64 -> There comes a break in the Record of the Rocks
that may represent several million years.
2323.44 -> There is a veil here still, over even the outline
of the history of life. When it lifts again,
2329.12 -> the Age of Reptiles is at an end; the
Dinosaurs, the Plesiosaurs and Ichthyosaurs,
2333.68 -> the Pterodactyls, the innumerable genera and
species of Ammonite have all gone absolutely.
2339.2 -> In all their stupendous variety they have died out
and left no descendants. The cold has killed them.
2346 -> All their final variations were insufficient;
they had never hit upon survival conditions.
2351.6 -> The world had passed through a phase of extreme
conditions beyond their powers of endurance,
2355.92 -> a slow and complete massacre of Mesozoic life
has occurred, and we find now a new scene,
2360.72 -> a new and hardier flora, and a new and
hardier fauna in possession of the world.
2365.76 -> It is still a bleak and impoverished scene with
which this new volume of the book of life begins.
2370.96 -> The cycads and tropical conifers have given
place very largely to trees that shed their
2375.12 -> leaves to avoid destruction by the snows of
winter and to flowering plants and shrubs,
2379.44 -> and where there was formerly
a profusion of reptiles,
2382 -> an increasing variety of birds and mammals
is entering into their inheritance.
2386.88 -> Chapter VIII
THE AGE OF MAMMALS
2390.4 -> The opening of the next great period in the
life of the earth, the Cainozoic period,
2394.48 -> was a period of upheaval and extreme volcanic
activity. Now it was that the vast masses of the
2400 -> Alps and Himalayas and the mountain backbone of
the Rockies and Andes were thrust up, and that the
2404.48 -> rude outlines of our present oceans and continents
appeared. The map of the world begins to display a
2410.16 -> first dim resemblance to the map of to-day. It
is estimated now that between forty and eighty
2415.6 -> million years have elapsed from the beginnings
of the Cainozoic period to the present time.
2420.48 -> At the outset of the Cainozoic period
the climate of the world was austere.
2424.96 -> It grew generally warmer until a fresh
phase of great abundance was reached,
2428.8 -> after which conditions grew hard again and
the earth passed into a series of extremely
2433.04 -> cold cycles, the Glacial Ages, from which
apparently it is now slowly emerging.
2438.48 -> But we do not know sufficient of the causes
of climatic change at present to forecast the
2442.8 -> possible fluctuations of climatic conditions that
lie before us. We may be moving towards increasing
2448.96 -> sunshine or lapsing towards another glacial age;
volcanic activity and the upheaval of mountain
2454.16 -> masses may be increasing or diminishing; we
do not know; we lack sufficient science.
2459.6 -> With the opening of this period the
grasses appear; for the first time
2462.88 -> there is pasture in the world; and with the full
development of the once obscure mammalian type,
2467.52 -> appear a number of interesting grazing animals
and of carnivorous types which prey upon these.
2472.88 -> At first these early mammals seem to differ only
in a few characters from the great herbivorous
2477.36 -> and carnivorous reptiles that ages before had
flourished and then vanished from the earth.
2482.4 -> A careless observer might suppose that in
this second long age of warmth and plenty
2486.32 -> that was now beginning, nature was merely
repeating the first, with herbivorous and
2490.24 -> carnivorous mammals to parallel the herbivorous
and carnivorous dinosaurs, with birds replacing
2494.88 -> pterodactyls and so on. But this would
be an altogether superficial comparison.
2500.48 -> The variety of the universe is infinite
and incessant; it progresses eternally;
2504.56 -> history never repeats itself and no parallels
are precisely true. The differences between
2509.92 -> the life of the Cainozoic and Mesozoic periods
are far profounder than the resemblances.
2515.2 -> The most fundamental of all these differences
lies in the mental life of the two periods.
2520.4 -> It arises essentially out of the continuing
contact of parent and offspring which
2524.24 -> distinguishes mammalian and in a lesser degree
bird life, from the life of the reptile. With
2529.68 -> very few exceptions the reptile abandons its egg
to hatch alone. The young reptile has no knowledge
2535.52 -> whatever of its parent; its mental life, such as
it is, begins and ends with its own experiences.
2541.76 -> It may tolerate the existence of its fellows
but it has no communication with them;
2545.76 -> it never imitates, never learns from them,
is incapable of concerted action with them.
2550.8 -> Its life is that of an isolated individual.
But with the suckling and cherishing of young
2555.84 -> which was distinctive of the new mammalian
and avian strains arose the possibility of
2559.92 -> learning by imitation, of communication, by
warning cries and other concerted action,
2564.56 -> of mutual control and instruction. A teachable
type of life had come into the world.
2570.64 -> The earliest mammals of the Cainozoic period are
but little superior in brain size to the more
2575.36 -> active carnivorous dinosaurs, but as we read on
through the record towards modern times we find,
2580.48 -> in every tribe and race of the mammalian animals,
a steady universal increase in brain capacity.
2586.4 -> For instance we find at a comparatively early
stage that rhinoceros-like beasts appear.
2591.68 -> There is a creature, the Titanotherium, which
lived in the earliest division of this period.
2596.96 -> It was probably very like a modern rhinoceros in
its habits and needs. But its brain capacity was
2602.8 -> not one tenth that of its living successor.
The earlier mammals probably parted from their
2607.84 -> offspring as soon as suckling was over, but, once
the capacity for mutual understanding has arisen,
2612.88 -> the advantages of continuing the association
are very great; and we presently find a number
2617.52 -> of mammalian species displaying the beginnings of
a true social life and keeping together in herds,
2622.4 -> packs and flocks, watching each other, imitating
each other, taking warning from each other’s acts
2627.2 -> and cries. This is something that the world
had not seen before among vertebrated animals.
2633.44 -> Reptiles and fish may no doubt be found in
swarms and shoals; they have been hatched
2637.68 -> in quantities and similar conditions have kept
them together, but in the case of the social
2641.68 -> and gregarious mammals the association arises
not simply from a community of external forces,
2646.72 -> it is sustained by an inner impulse. They are
not merely like one another and so found in the
2652 -> same places at the same times; they like
one another and so they keep together.
2656.8 -> This difference between the reptile world
and the world of our human minds is one our
2660.96 -> sympathies seem unable to pass. We cannot conceive
in ourselves the swift uncomplicated urgency of a
2667.12 -> reptile’s instinctive motives, its appetites,
fears and hates. We cannot understand them in
2672.96 -> their simplicity because all our motives are
complicated; our’s are balances and resultants
2677.6 -> and not simple urgencies. But the mammals and
birds have self-restraint and consideration
2682.72 -> for other individuals, a social appeal, a
self- control that is, at its lower level,
2687.6 -> after our own fashion. We can in consequence
establish relations with almost all sorts of them.
2694.16 -> When they suffer they utter cries and make
movements that rouse our feelings. We can
2699.04 -> make understanding pets of them with a mutual
recognition. They can be tamed to self-restraint
2704.16 -> towards us, domesticated and taught.
That unusual growth of brain which is
2709.04 -> the central fact of Cainozoic times marks a new
communication and interdependence of individuals.
2714.96 -> It foreshadows the development of human
societies of which we shall soon be telling.
2719.84 -> As the Cainozoic period unrolled, the resemblance
of its flora and fauna to the plants and animals
2724.96 -> that inhabit the world to-day increased.
The big clumsy Uintatheres and Titanotheres,
2730.32 -> the Entelodonts and Hyracodons, big clumsy
brutes like nothing living, disappeared.
2735.6 -> On the other hand a series of forms led up
by steady degrees from grotesque and clumsy
2739.84 -> predecessors to the giraffes, camels, horses,
elephants, deer, dogs and lions and tigers of
2745.28 -> the existing world. The evolution of the horse is
particularly legible upon the geological record.
2752.08 -> We have a fairly complete series of forms from a
small tapir-like ancestor in the early Cainozoic.
2758 -> Another line of development that has now been
2759.92 -> pieced together with some precision
is that of the llamas and camels.
2763.92 -> Chapter IX
MONKEYS, APES AND SUB-MEN
2768.08 -> Naturalists divide the class Mammalia into a
number of orders. At the head of these is the
2773.2 -> order Primates, which includes the lemurs, the
monkeys, apes and man. Their classification was
2779.04 -> based originally upon anatomical resemblances
and took no account of any mental qualities.
2784.64 -> Now the past history of the Primates is one very
difficult to decipher in the geological record.
2790.24 -> They are for the most part animals which live
in forests like the lemurs and monkeys or in
2794.56 -> bare rocky places like the baboons. They are
rarely drowned and covered up by sediment,
2799.68 -> nor are most of them very numerous species, and so
they do not figure so largely among the fossils as
2804.96 -> the ancestors of the horses, camels and so forth
do. But we know that quite early in the Cainozoic
2811.04 -> period, that is to say some forty million
years ago or so, primitive monkeys and lemuroid
2816 -> creatures had appeared, poorer in brain and not
so specialized as their later successors.
2821.44 -> The great world summer of the middle
Cainozoic period drew at last to an end.
2826.24 -> It was to follow those other two great summers in
the history of life, the summer of the Coal Swamps
2831.04 -> and the vast summer of the Age of Reptiles.
Once more the earth spun towards an ice age.
2837.28 -> The world chilled, grew milder for a time and
chilled again. In the warm past hippopotami had
2843.04 -> wallowed through a lush sub-tropical vegetation,
and a tremendous tiger with fangs like sabres,
2847.76 -> the sabre-toothed tiger, had hunted its prey where
now the journalists of Fleet Street go to and fro.
2853.52 -> Now came a bleaker age and still bleaker ages. A
great weeding and extinction of species occurred.
2860.32 -> A woolly rhinoceros, adapted to
a cold climate, and the mammoth,
2863.92 -> a big woolly cousin of the elephants, the Arctic
musk ox and the reindeer passed across the scene.
2869.36 -> Then century by century the Arctic ice
cap, the wintry death of the great Ice Age,
2873.76 -> crept southward. In England it came almost
down to the Thames, in America it reached Ohio.
2880.24 -> There would be warmer spells of a few thousand
years and relapses towards a bitterer cold.
2885.52 -> Geologists talk of these wintry phases as the
First, Second, Third and Fourth Glacial Ages,
2890.8 -> and of the interludes as Interglacial periods. We
live to-day in a world that is still impoverished
2896.4 -> and scarred by that terrible winter. The First
Glacial Age was coming on 600,000 years ago;
2902.64 -> the Fourth Glacial Age reached its bitterest
some fifty thousand years ago. And it was amidst
2907.92 -> the snows of this long universal winter that the
first man-like beings lived upon our planet.
2913.28 -> By the middle Cainozoic period there have appeared
various apes with many quasi-human attributes of
2918.08 -> the jaws and leg bones, but it is only as we
approach these Glacial Ages that we find traces
2923.04 -> of creatures that we can speak of as “almost
human.” These traces are not bones but implements.
2929.6 -> In Europe, in deposits of this period, between
half a million and a million years old,
2934 -> we find flints and stones that have evidently
been chipped intentionally by some handy creature
2938.56 -> desirous of hammering, scraping or fighting with
the sharpened edge. These things have been called
2944.16 -> “Eoliths” (dawn stones). In Europe there are no
bones nor other remains of the creature which made
2950 -> these objects, simply the objects themselves.
For all the certainty we have it may have been
2955.44 -> some entirely un-human but intelligent monkey. But
at Trinil in Java, in accumulations of this age,
2961.92 -> a piece of a skull and various teeth and bones
have been found of a sort of ape man, with a brain
2966.56 -> case bigger than that of any living apes, which
seems to have walked erect. This creature is now
2971.84 -> called Pithecanthropus erectus, the walking ape
man, and the little trayful of its bones is the
2976.4 -> only help our imaginations have as yet in figuring
to, ourselves the makers of the Eoliths.
2981.92 -> It is not until we come to sands that are
almost a quarter of a million years old that
2986 -> we find any other particle of a sub- human
being. But there are plenty of implements,
2990.96 -> and they are steadily improving in
quality as we read on through the record.
2995.36 -> They are no longer clumsy Eoliths; they are now
shapely instruments made with considerable skill.
3000.96 -> And they are much bigger than the similar
implements afterwards made by true man.
3005.6 -> Then, in a sandpit at Heidelberg,
appears a single quasi-human jaw-bone,
3009.52 -> a clumsy jaw-bone, absolutely chinless, far
heavier than a true human jaw-bone and narrower,
3014.64 -> so that it is improbable the creature’s tongue
could have moved about for articulate speech.
3019.52 -> On the strength of this jaw-bone, scientific
men suppose this creature to have been a heavy,
3024 -> almost human monster, possibly with huge limbs
and hands, possibly with a thick felt of hair,
3028.96 -> and they call it the Heidelberg Man.
This jaw-bone is, I think, one of the most
3033.84 -> tormenting objects in the world to our human
curiosity. To see it is like looking through
3038.96 -> a defective glass into the past and catching just
one blurred and tantalizing glimpse of this Thing,
3043.84 -> shambling through the bleak wilderness, clambering
to avoid the sabre- toothed tiger, watching the
3048.56 -> woolly rhinoceros in the woods. Then before we can
scrutinize the monster, he vanishes. Yet the soil
3055.44 -> is littered abundantly with the indestructible
implements he chipped out for his uses.
3060.24 -> Still more fascinatingly enigmatical are the
remains of a creature found at Piltdown in Sussex
3064.88 -> in a deposit that may indicate an age between a
hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand years
3069.04 -> ago, though some authorities would put these
particular remains back in time to before
3073.12 -> the Heidelberg jaw- bone. Here there are the
remains of a thick sub-human skull much larger
3078.4 -> than any existing ape’s, and a chimpanzee-like
jaw-bone which may or may not belong to it,
3083.12 -> and, in addition, a bat-shaped piece of
elephant bone evidently carefully manufactured,
3087.44 -> through which a hole had apparently been bored.
3090.4 -> There is also the thigh-bone of a deer with
cuts upon it like a tally. That is all.
3096.08 -> What sort of beast was this creature
which sat and bored holes in bones?
3100.72 -> Scientific men have named him Eoanthropus, the
Dawn Man. He stands apart from his kindred;
3106.56 -> a very different being either from the Heidelberg
creature or from any living ape. No other vestige
3112.08 -> like him is known. But the gravels and deposits
of from one hundred thousand years onward are
3117.28 -> increasingly rich in implements of flint and
similar stone. And these implements are no longer
3122.56 -> rude “Eoliths.” The archæologists are presently
able to distinguish scrapers, borers, knives,
3128.72 -> darts, throwing stones and hand axes ....
We are drawing very near to man. In our
3134.88 -> next section we shall have to describe the
strangest of all these precursors of humanity,
3139.12 -> the Neanderthalers, the men who were
almost, but not quite, true men.
3143.92 -> But it may be well perhaps to state quite
clearly here that no scientific man supposes
3148.32 -> either of these creatures, the
Heidelberg Man or Eoanthropus,
3151.52 -> to be direct ancestors of the men of to-day.
These are, at the closest, related forms.
3159.04 -> Chapter X
THE NEANDERTHALER AND THE RHODESIAN MAN
3163.6 -> About fifty or sixty thousand years ago,
before the climax of the Fourth Glacial Age,
3168.32 -> there lived a creature on earth so like a man
that until a few years ago its remains were
3172.56 -> considered to be altogether human. We have skulls
and bones of it and a great accumulation of the
3177.92 -> large implements it made and used. It made
fires. It sheltered in caves from the cold.
3185.04 -> It probably dressed skins roughly and wore
them. It was right-handed as men are.
3190.56 -> Yet now the ethnologists tell us
these creatures were not true men.
3194.8 -> They were of a different species of the
same genus. They had heavy protruding jaws
3199.68 -> and great brow ridges above the eyes and
very low foreheads. Their thumbs were not
3204.4 -> opposable to the fingers as men’s are; their
necks were so poised that they could not turn
3208.4 -> back their heads and look up to the sky. They
probably slouched along, head down and forward.
3214.56 -> Their chinless jaw-bones resemble the Heidelberg
jaw-bone and are markedly unlike human jaw-bones.
3220.64 -> And there were great differences from
the human pattern in their teeth.
3224.56 -> Their cheek teeth were more complicated in
structure than ours, more complicated and not
3228.8 -> less so; they had not the long fangs of our cheek
teeth; and also these quasi-men had not the marked
3234.08 -> canines (dog teeth) of an ordinary human being.
The capacity of their skulls was quite human,
3240 -> but the brain was bigger behind and lower in
front than the human brain. Their intellectual
3245.2 -> faculties were differently arranged. They
were not ancestral to the human line.
3250.88 -> Mentally and physically they were upon
a different line from the human line.
3255.28 -> Skulls and bones of this extinct species of man
were found at Neanderthal among other places,
3259.92 -> and from that place these strange proto-men
have been christened Neanderthal Men, or
3263.76 -> Neanderthalers. They must have endured in Europe
for many hundreds or even thousands of years.
3451.04 -> The world was growing liker our own in those
days though the climate was still austere.
3455.92 -> The glaciers of the Ice Age were receding
in Europe; the reindeer of France and Spain
3460 -> presently gave way to great herds of horses as
grass increased upon the steppes, and the mammoth
3464.72 -> became more and more rare in southern Europe
and finally receded northward altogether ....
3469.68 -> We do not know where the
True Men first originated.
3473.2 -> But in the summer of 1921, an extremely
interesting skull was found together with pieces
3478.16 -> of a skeleton at Broken Hill in South Africa,
which seems to be a relic of a third sort of man,
3483.12 -> intermediate in its characteristics between the
Neanderthaler and the human being. The brain-case
3488.48 -> indicates a brain bigger in front and smaller
behind than the Neanderthaler’s, and the skull was
3493.04 -> poised erect upon the backbone in a quite human
way. The teeth also and the bones are quite human.
3499.68 -> But the face must have been ape-like with enormous
brow ridges and a ridge along the middle of the
3503.92 -> skull. The creature was indeed a true man,
so to speak, with an ape- like, Neanderthaler
3509.52 -> face. This Rhodesian Man is evidently still
closer to real men than the Neanderthal Man.
3516.08 -> This Rhodesian skull is probably only the
second of what in the end may prove to be
3520 -> a long list of finds of sub-human species which
lived on the earth in the vast interval of time
3524.48 -> between the beginnings of the Ice Age and the
appearance of their common heir, and perhaps
3528.32 -> their common exterminator, the True Man. The
Rhodesian skull itself may not be very ancient.
3534.88 -> Up to the time of publishing this book there has
been no exact determination of its probable age.
3540.4 -> It may be that this sub-human creature survived
in South Africa until quite recent times.
3547.6 -> Chapter XI
THE FIRST TRUE MEN
3551.2 -> The earliest signs and traces at present known
to science, of a humanity which is indisputably
3556.16 -> kindred with ourselves, have been found in western
Europe and particularly in France and Spain.
3561.76 -> Bones, weapons, scratchings upon bone and
rock, carved fragments of bone, and paintings
3566.64 -> in caves and upon rock surfaces dating. it is
supposed. from 30,000 years ago or more, have
3573.68 -> been discovered in both these countries. Spain
is at present the richest country in the world in
3579.04 -> these first relics of our real human ancestors.
Of course our present collections of these things
3584.64 -> are the merest beginnings of the accumulations
we may hope for in the future, when there are
3588.8 -> searchers enough to make a thorough examination of
all possible sources and when other countries in
3593.12 -> the world, now inaccessible to archæologists, have
been explored in some detail. The greater part of
3599.44 -> Africa and Asia has never even been traversed yet
by a trained observer interested in these matters
3604.24 -> and free to explore, and we must be very careful
therefore not to conclude that the early true men
3609.04 -> were distinctively inhabitants of western Europe
or that they first appeared in that region.
3614 -> In Asia or Africa or submerged beneath the
sea of to-day there may be richer and much
3618.48 -> earlier deposits of real human remains
than anything that has yet come to light.
3623.2 -> I write in Asia or Africa, and I do not mention
America because so far there have been no finds at
3628.32 -> all of any of the higher Primates, either of great
apes, sub-men, Neanderthalers nor early true men.
3634.72 -> This development of life seems to have
been an exclusively old world development,
3638.48 -> and it was only apparently at the end of the
Old Stone Age that human beings first made their
3642.88 -> way across the land connexion that is now cut by
Behring Straits, into the American continent.
3648.48 -> These first real human beings we know of in Europe
appear already to have belonged to one or other of
3653.44 -> at least two very distinct races. One of these
races was of a very high type indeed; it was
3659.12 -> tall and big brained. One of the women’s skulls
found exceeds in capacity that of the average man
3664.8 -> of to-day. One of the men’s skeletons is over six
feet in height. The physical type resembled that
3671.28 -> of the North American Indian. From the Cro-Magnon
cave in which the first skeletons were found these
3676.8 -> people have been called Cro-Magnards. They
were savages, but savages of a high order.
3682.72 -> The second race, the race of the Grimaldi cave
remains, was distinctly negroid in its characters.
3688.56 -> Its nearest living affinities are the
Bushmen and Hottentots of South Africa.
3693.2 -> It is interesting to find at the very outset of
the known human story, that mankind was already
3698.08 -> racially divided into at least two main varieties;
and one is tempted to such unwarrantable guesses
3703.28 -> as that the former race was probably brownish
rather than black and that it came from the East
3707.36 -> or North, and that the latter was blackish rather
than brown and came from the equatorial south.
3712.88 -> And these savages of perhaps forty thousand years
ago were so human that they pierced shells to
3717.36 -> make necklaces, painted themselves, carved
images of bone and stone, scratched figures
3722 -> on rocks and bones, and painted rude but often
very able sketches of beasts and the like upon
3726.88 -> the smooth walls of caves and upon inviting rock
surfaces. They made a great variety of implements,
3732.96 -> much smaller in scale and finer than those of
the Neanderthal men. We have now in our museums
3738.64 -> great quantities of their implements, their
statuettes, their rock drawings and the like.
3743.68 -> The earliest of them were hunters. Their chief
pursuit was the wild horse, the little bearded
3748.96 -> pony of that time. They followed it as it moved
after pasture. And also they followed the bison.
3756.16 -> They knew the mammoth, because they have left us
strikingly effective pictures of that creature.
3761.2 -> To judge by one rather ambiguous
drawing they trapped and killed it.
3765.36 -> They hunted with spears and throwing stones.
They do not seem to have had the bow, and it
3770.56 -> is doubtful if they had yet learnt to tame any
animals. They had no dogs. There is one carving
3777.04 -> of a horse’s head and one or two drawings that
suggest a bridled horse, with a twisted skin or
3782 -> tendon round it. But the little horses of that
age and region could not have carried a man,
3787.12 -> and if the horse was domesticated it was
used as a led horse. It is doubtful and
3791.92 -> improbable that they had yet learnt the rather
unnatural use of animal’s milk as food.
3796.72 -> They do not seem to have erected any buildings
though they may have had tents of skins,
3800.8 -> and though they made clay figures they
never rose to the making of pottery.
3804.88 -> Since they had no cooking implements their
cookery must have been rudimentary or nonexistent.
3810.16 -> They knew nothing of cultivation and nothing
of any sort of basket work or woven cloth.
3815.76 -> Except for their robes of skin or fur
they were naked painted savages.
3820.24 -> These earliest known men hunted the open steppes
of Europe for a hundred centuries perhaps, and
3824.88 -> then slowly drifted and changed before a change of
climate. Europe, century by century, was growing
3831.04 -> milder and damper. Reindeer receded northward
and eastward, and bison and horse followed.
3837.36 -> The steppes gave way to forests, and red
deer took the place of horse and bison.
3842.32 -> There is a change in the character of the
implements with this change in their application.
3846.96 -> River and lake fishing becomes of great importance
to men, and fine implements of bone increased.
3852.72 -> “The bone needles of this age,” says de
Mortillet, “are much superior to those
3856.56 -> of later, even historical times, down to the
Renaissance. The Romans, for example, never had
3862.88 -> needles comparable to those of this epoch.”
Almost fifteen or twelve thousand years ago a
3868.4 -> fresh people drifted into the south of Spain, and
left very remarkable drawings of themselves upon
3873.2 -> exposed rock faces there. These were the Azilians
(named from the Mas d’Azil cave). They had the
3879.92 -> bow; they seem to have worn feather headdresses;
they drew vividly; but also they had reduced
3884.56 -> their drawings to a sort of symbolism—a man for
instance would be represented by a vertical dab
3889.36 -> with two or three horizontal dabs—that suggest
the dawn of the writing idea. Against hunting
3895.04 -> sketches there are often marks like tallies. One
drawing shows two men smoking out a bees’ nest.
3902 -> These are the latest of the men that we call
Palæolithic (Old Stone Age) because they had
3906.32 -> only chipped implements. By ten or twelve thousand
years a new sort of life has dawned in Europe,
3912.16 -> men have learnt not only to chip but
to polish and grind stone implements,
3915.76 -> and they have begun cultivation. The Neolithic
Age (New Stone Age) was beginning.
3922 -> It is interesting to note that less than a century
ago there still survived in a remote part of the
3926.4 -> world, in Tasmania, a race of human beings
at a lower level of physical and intellectual
3931.12 -> development than any of these earliest races
of mankind who have left traces in Europe.
3936.08 -> These people had long ago been cut off by
geographical changes from the rest of the species,
3940.88 -> and from stimulation and improvement. They
seem to have degenerated rather than developed.
3946.72 -> They lived a base life subsisting
upon shellfish and small game.
3950.96 -> They had no habitations but only squatting
places. They were real men of our species,
3956.48 -> but they had neither the manual dexterity nor
the artistic powers of the first true men.
3964.48 -> XII
PRIMITIVE THOUGHT
3967.92 -> And now let us indulge in a very interesting
speculation; how did it feel to be a man in
3972.56 -> those early days of the human adventure? How
did men think and what did they think in those
3977.44 -> remote days of hunting and wandering four hundred
centuries ago before seed time and harvest began.
3983.52 -> Those were days long before the written
record of any human impressions,
3987.04 -> and we are left almost entirely to inference and
guesswork in our answers to these questions.
3992.64 -> The sources to which scientific men have gone
in their attempts to reconstruct that primitive
3996.88 -> mentality are very various. Recently the science
of psycho-analysis, which analyzes the way in
4002.88 -> which the egotistic and passionate impulses of
the child are restrained, suppressed, modified
4007.52 -> or overlaid, to adapt them to the needs of social
life, seems to have thrown a considerable amount
4012.48 -> of light upon the history of primitive society;
and another fruitful source of suggestion has
4016.96 -> been the study of the ideas and customs of
such contemporary savages as still survive.
4022.24 -> Again there is a sort of mental fossilization
which we find in folk-lore and the deep-lying
4026.64 -> irrational superstitions and prejudices that
still survive among modern civilized people.
4031.92 -> And finally we have in the increasingly numerous
pictures, statues, carvings, symbols and the like,
4037.28 -> as we draw near to our own time, clearer and
clearer indications of what man found interesting
4042.24 -> and worthy of record and representation.
Primitive man probably thought very much as
4047.2 -> a child thinks, that is to say in
a series of imaginative pictures.
4051.52 -> He conjured up images or images presented
themselves to his mind, and he acted in
4055.76 -> accordance with the emotions they aroused. So
a child or an uneducated person does to-day.
4062.32 -> Systematic thinking is apparently a comparatively
late development in human experience;
4066.88 -> it has not played any great part in human life
until within the last three thousand years.
4072.32 -> And even to-day those who really control
and order their thoughts are but a small
4076 -> minority of mankind. Most of the world
still lives by imagination and passion.
4082 -> Probably the earliest human societies, in the
opening stages of the true human story, were
4086.96 -> small family groups. Just as the flocks and herds
of the earlier mammals arose out of families which
4092.64 -> remained together and multiplied, so probably
did the earliest tribes. But before this could
4098 -> happen a certain restraint upon the primitive
egotisms of the individual had to be established.
4103.36 -> The fear of the father and respect for the
mother had to be extended into adult life,
4107.44 -> and the natural jealousy of the old man of
the group for the younger males as they grew
4111.36 -> up had to be mitigated. The mother on the other
hand was the natural adviser and protector of
4116.56 -> the young. Human social life grew up out of
the reaction between the crude instinct of
4121.44 -> the young to go off and pair by themselves as
they grew up, on the one hand, and the dangers
4126.08 -> and disadvantages of separation on the other.
An anthropological writer of great genius, J.
4132 -> J. Atkinson, in his Primal Law, has shown
how much of the customary law of savages,
4136.8 -> the Tabus, that are so remarkable a fact in tribal
life, can be ascribed to such a mental adjustment
4142.08 -> of the needs of the primitive human animal to
a developing social life, and the later work of
4146.48 -> the psycho- analysts has done much to confirm
his interpretation of these possibilities.
4151.84 -> Some speculative writers would have us believe
that respect and fear of the Old Man and the
4156 -> emotional reaction of the primitive savage to
older protective women, exaggerated in dreams
4160.72 -> and enriched by fanciful mental play, played
a large part in the beginnings of primitive
4164.88 -> religion and in the conception of gods and
goddesses. Associated with this respect for
4169.92 -> powerful or helpful personalities was a dread and
exaltation of such personages after their deaths,
4175.36 -> due to their reappearance in dreams. It
was easy to believe they were not truly
4179.92 -> dead but only fantastically transferred
to a remoteness of greater power.
4184.4 -> The dreams, imaginations and fears of a
child are far more vivid and real than
4188.4 -> those of a modern adult, and primitive
man was always something of a child.
4193.04 -> He was nearer to the animals also, and
he could suppose them to have motives
4196.64 -> and reactions like his own. He could imagine
animal helpers, animal enemies, animal gods.
4203.2 -> One needs to have been an imaginative child
oneself to realize again how important,
4207.44 -> significant, portentous or friendly, strangely
shaped rocks, lumps of wood, exceptional trees or
4212.96 -> the like may have appeared to the men of the Old
Stone Age, and how dream and fancy would create
4217.52 -> stories and legends about such things that would
become credible as they told them. Some of these
4222.72 -> stories would be good enough to remember and tell
again. The women would tell them to the children
4227.76 -> and so establish a tradition. To this day most
imaginative children invent long stories in which
4233.28 -> some favourite doll or animal or some fantastic
semi-human being figures as the hero, and
4238.16 -> primitive man probably did the same—with a much
stronger disposition to believe his hero real.
4243.92 -> For the very earliest of the true men that we
know of were probably quite talkative beings.
4248.96 -> In that way they have differed from the
Neanderthalers and had an advantage over them.
4253.36 -> The Neanderthaler may have been a dumb animal. Of
course the primitive human speech was probably a
4258.72 -> very scanty collection of names, and may have
been eked out with gestures and signs.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMQg4A731cw