THE CIVILIZATIONS OF MAN 89 



Students of the social evolution of man have two ap- 

 proaches to the problem of origins. One is through archae- 

 ology; the other is the observation of primitive tribes living 

 today. Tools, pottery, bones, burial mounds, and the like are 

 helpful, but they leave many questions unanswered. These 

 constitute, however, a very rich record of relics dating back 

 several hundred thousand years. Vaguely in the beginning 

 there is fire, and there are tools and weapons of unworked 

 stone and, probably too, of wood; then after a very long 

 time rough-worked stone is used. Gradually the techniques 

 improve and beautifully fashioned, polished stone imple- 

 ments appear. Still later, metals replace stone in rising levels 

 of skill in workmanship and utility. It is all a very obvious 

 evolution and shows, as does organic evolution, a gradual 

 speeding-up to the greatly accelerated inventiveness of our 

 day. Primitive tribes in various parts of the present-day 

 world also give us some indication of the past, but again the 

 information is incomplete. The two methods, archaeology 

 and ethnography, taken together give us much information. 



Man in his formative period, the several hundred thou- 

 sand years of the early history of the species, must have been 

 few in number and very scattered. Originally, he was prob- 

 ably molded to culture by the catastrophe of the ice ages. 

 An ape became human by a long and gallant struggle with 

 the cold of four ice ages by overcoming his natural animal 

 fear of fire— fire, by which he not only surmounted the 

 hardships of nearly a million years, but in which he thought 

 he saw spirit and deity in nature, the Shining Father and the 

 Burning Mountain. Archaeologists agree that man's posses- 

 sion of fire is a critical distinction. Fire is a fact of prime cul- 

 tural significance, and culture, in turn, is the unique posses- 

 sion of the human species. The early use of fire by man is 

 easily established by archaeological and paleontological evi- 

 dence. It was already in use some 450,000 years ago in caves 

 near Peiping, China, where very primitive, cannibalistic Si- 

 nanthropus sought shelter; and its use is suspected as far 



