A Review: World-Power and Evolution 
those of the Europeans of today. Lit- 
tle by little their power and skill in- 
creased. Yet even at the end of the 
period of mild interglacial climate, they 
were still extremely primitive. They 
had no esthetic art so far as we know. 
Their greatest exhibition of skill was in 
‘flaking’ the edges of flints to produce 
sharp cutting edges. This they did with 
great: skill, producing implements of 
beautiful symmetry and considerable 
utility. Doubtless they had other arts, 
such as the dressing of skins, the build- 
ing of huts, and the making of wooden 
clubs. Yet how little this represents in 
proportion to the hundreds of thou- 
sands of years since man first began to 
chip the flints that he picked up from 
the ground! Only at the end of this 
last Interglacial Epoch do we find the 
first positive evidence that man had 
learned to use fire. 
“We now come to a strange and 
most significant fact. Man had lived 
through three great glacial epochs, but 
he had never been subjected to a really 
severe climate. Now for the first time 
he endured one, for the last epoch was 
much more rigorous than its predeces- 
sors. At the same time his evolution 
proceeded much more rapidly than ever 
before. 
“The approach of this severe climate 
was gradual. First there was a long 
period of relatively cool, dry conditions. 
Central France, for example, may have 
been something like what southeastern 
Russia now is. This caused the dis- 
appearance of two rather sensitive 
Asiatic mammals, the hippopotamus 
and the southern mammoth. Then, as 
the Scandinavian ice-sheet accumulated 
farther north, the climate became more 
severe. Men repaired to the shelter of 
grottos and caverns as they had not for 
tens of thousands of years. The hardy, 
broad-nosed rhinoceros and the straight- 
tusked elephant both disappeared, while 
animals of the cold Arctic tundra, such 
as the reindeer, the wooly mammoth, 
and the wooly rhinoceros, and the 
Arctic lemming, migrated all over 
southern Britain, Belgium, France, 
Germany and Austria. 
141 
PROGRESS IS CHILLED 
“This condition was too severe for 
early man. The stage of human de- 
velopment, which coincides with the 
beginning of refrigeration, ‘is seen to 
present the climax of a gradual and 
unbroken development’ not only in in- 
dustries but in ideas. The next indus- 
trial stage, which certainly presents the 
closing workmanship of the same 
Neanderthal race, and which coincides 
with the main cold period of the Fourth 
Glaciation, ‘shows a marked retrogres- 
sion of technique in contrast to the 
steady progression which we have ob- 
served up to this time.’ 
“The climatic conditions which were 
unfavorable to development in central 
Europe seem to have been highly fa- 
vorable in other places where they were 
not quite so severe. Thus somewhere 
in central Asia there appears to have 
developed during this period the great 
Cro-Magnon race. These highly gifted 
people had brains as large as those of 
modern Europeans. They invaded 
southern Europe after the most severe 
part of the fourth Glacial Epoch had 
passed away. ‘After prolonged study 
of the works of the Cro-Magnons, one 
cannot avoid the conclusions that their 
capacity was nearly if not quite as high 
as our own; that they were capable of 
advanced education; that they had a 
strongly developed esthetic.as well as a 
religious sense; that their society was 
quite highly differentiated along the 
lines of talent for work of different 
kinds.’ The civilization, such as it was, 
of the Cro-Magnons ‘was very widely 
extended. This marks an important 
social characteristic, namely, the read- 
iness and willingness to take advantage 
of every step in human progress, where- 
ever it may have originated.’ 
“These fine people lived in Europe 
from about 25,000 years ago until 7,- 
000 years ago. Their art was perhaps 
their greatest claim to fame, for their 
drawings and paintings on the walls 
and roofs of caverns were wonderful, 
considering the primitiveness of the 
tools they employed. Why they -dis- 
