THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN BODY 337 



dicated the expectations of Professor Dwight. For in his latest 

 book, 'The Antiquity of Man" (1916), Sir Arthur Keith has a 

 chapter of Conclusions, in which the following recantation 

 apper,rs: "We were compelled to admit," he owns, ''that men 

 of the modem type had been in existence long before the 

 Neanderthal type." 



But, even if it were true that savagery preceded civilization 

 in Europe, such could not have been the case everywhere; 

 for it is certain that civilization and culture of a com- 

 paratively high order were imported into Europe be- 

 fore the close of the Old Stone Age. The Hungarian Lake- 

 dwellings show that culture of a high type existed in the 

 New Stone Age. These two ages are regarded as prehistoric 

 in Europe, though in America the Stone Age belongs to history. 

 It is also possible that in Europe much of the Stone Age was 

 coeval with the history of civilized nations, and that it may 

 be coincident with, instead of prior to, the Bronze Age, which 

 seems to have begun in Egypt, and which belongs unquestion- 

 ably to history. And here we may be permitted to remark 

 that history gives the lie to the evolutionary conceit that 

 civilized man has arisen from a primitive state of barbarism. 

 History begins almost contemporaneously in many different 

 centers, such as Egypt, Babylonia, Chaldea, China, and 

 Crete, about 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, and, as far back as his- 

 tory goes, we find the record of high civilizations existing side 

 by side with a coeval barbarism. Barbarism is historically a 

 state of degeneration and stagnation, and history knows of no 

 instance of a people sunk in barbarism elevating itself by its 

 own efforts to higher stages of civilization. Always civiliza- 

 tion has been imposed upon barbarians from without. Sav- 

 ages, so far as history knows them, have never become civil- 

 ized, save through the intervention of some contemporary 

 civilized nation. History is one long refutation of the Dar- 

 winian theory of constant and inevitable progress. The 

 progress of civilization is not subsequent, but prior, or parallel, 

 to the retrogression of barbarism. 



