120 



The Journal of Heredity 



and drop it again, is possible and may 

 happen countless times, until one indi- 

 vidual, not forgetting his family at home 

 to whom he is carrying food, will take 

 the strange new thing with him. Indeed 

 some birds will carry off bright objects, 

 mentioning which we may recall the 

 celebrated jackdaw of Rheims. 



"On another day he has picked the 

 vivid-hued feather of some gorgeous 

 tropical bird. He looks at it, and takes 

 it home stuck in his hair for convenience 

 of carrying. On his arrival it at once 

 strikes the eye of his wife and children. 

 Signs of pleasure are expressed. His 

 vanity is flattered, and here we have 

 man beginning to adorn his person. 



"In reviewing the possible circum- 

 stances attending the daily life of proto- 

 man . . . and considering his few re- 

 quirements and small metal activity, we 

 may perhaps assume that it was in con- 

 nection with his food that the first use of 

 an implement took place. 



" Let us take a nut too hard for him to 

 crack with his jaws, and banging it 

 down is also without effect. -His next 

 act is to take a stone and crush it. Yet 

 there is no originality here, since mon- 

 keys in captivity have been observed to 

 do the same, and, further, to hide the 

 stone for future use. The only point 

 we need therefore note in this connection 

 is that stones can readily have come into 

 common use for such a purpose with 

 earliest man, who is now acquiring 

 greater intelligence. 



"The next stage that may be con- 

 sidered is the additional use of stones for 

 producing music or noise. It is said 

 that a gorilla practices a sort of music by 

 beating trees with a stick in addition to 

 striking his chest for the sake of hearing 

 the resounding noise. There is there- 

 fore the association of striking with 

 pleasant sounds. Proto-man similarly 

 found out early, even if his i^rogenitors 

 had not already done so, that stones 

 could make a pleasant rattling sound 

 when thrown on a rock, and could render 

 the noise as pleasing as he liked by 

 merely adding to their niunber. 



"Man has, therefore, to sum up, 

 turned to the rrmgh stones which he can 

 pick up anywhere for his first imple- 

 ment. Three uses are established: that 



of throwing when attacked ; for throwing 

 and hearing them resound, and for 

 breaking up Jiard nuts, with a hint of a 

 grinding motion. 



"In addition to the use of a stone im- 

 plement, he has acquired some idea of 

 personal adornment and a rudimentary 

 idea of music as well. These mean that 

 both his eye and ear can receive impres- 

 sions of other than a purely utilitarian 

 nature. His taste for new foods is, 

 however, undeveloped, and only forced 

 on him by necessity, owing to failure of 

 something to which he is accustomed. 

 Unclothed, and still with only the rudest 

 form of shelter, he lives a family life, and 

 the new generation as it becomes adult 

 tends to separate and form new families 

 which move farther afield in search of 

 new food supplies. 



THE DAWN OF ART 



"As far as we have reached in the 

 course of his evolution man has not 

 advanced beyond the stage of making an 

 uncertain and spasmodic use of a few 

 objects in their natural state. We must 

 now make an endeavor to think out how 

 he could have begun to work on some of 

 these natural objects so as to adapt them 

 to a specific purpose which he may have 

 had, necessarily in a vague sort of way, 

 in his own head. 



"The assimiption may be made and 

 adhered to that it was on stones that 

 earliest man first exercised his handi- 

 craft. Nevertheless between using any 

 stone that came to hand in order to 

 crack a nut on a rock, and breaking it or 

 chipping it for a specific use, lies an 

 enormous gulf, and this we must en- 

 deavor to bridge. 



"As a possible hypothesis, what may 

 have happened is that a certain Proto- 

 man whilst digging for roots with his 

 bare hands, met some obstructing stones. 

 These, like monkeys of the present day, 

 he would pull out and throw aside. 

 Early man, though, has already a dawn- 

 ing intelligence, and is, as we have 

 shown, not unfamiliar with handling 

 stones. As he burrows, he comes on a 

 stone that scrapes the skin off his 

 fingers. He grips — and, instead of 

 throwing it away, still grips it, and 

 goes on burrowing. 



