72 THE RISE OF MAN. 



activity in which to struggle successfully for existence as 

 a specialized unit in organized society. They are all fitted 

 for survival and they all leave offspring." 



The origin of civilization is due to favorable conditions 

 in which man can make use of his superiority acquired 

 during hard times. 



The oldest fossils of anthropoid apes are found in the 

 eocene and miocene strata, and we must assume therefore 

 that the genesis of man started in the pliocene period. 

 The pliocene period then is the age of the man-ape who 

 left no records, for the implements he used for many mil- 

 lenniums were the stones he picked up and the bones of 

 the hunted animals he had gnawed. Accordingly we can 

 not expect to find unequivocal evidences of his activity or 

 intelligence. When he first began to chip flints he ceased 

 to be a man-ape and became an ape-man or pithecanthro- 

 pus, a fair promise of the true man. 



Almost simultaneously with the appearance of the 

 ape-man is the beginning of the ice age which reached its 

 climax in the pleistocene period and must have been very 

 hard on this new species in the animal creation. It was 

 a severe school, but to its very severity man owes his 

 most precious qualities, foresight, earnestness of purpose, 

 responsibility and conscience, based upon a feeling of sol- 

 idarity with other members of the same community 



We assume that this ape-man or pithecanthropus had 

 been temporarily cut off from a retreat to warmer regions 

 and so he was compelled to work out the progress of the 

 race under penalty of extinction. We assume further that 

 from time to time some families or tribes escaped to the 

 south and found there more comfortable surroundings, but 

 as soon as their hardships ceased, their development was 

 arrested, and so their several types constitute the mile- 

 stones on the path of progress, mementoes of what the 

 man of today might be had he not longer remained in the 

 school of anthropogenesis. There are the Veddas of 



