THE EARLIEST FORMS OF HUMAN HABITATION AND 

 THEIR RELATION TO THE GENERAL DEVELOPMENT 

 OF CIVILIZATION.' 



By Prof. Di-. M. Hoernes. 



According to a conception at present in vogue the main currents 

 of human civilizatioii have developed along certain simple lines, of 

 Avhich the starting point, the se^'eral halts, and the end can be readily 

 learned. It is assumed that the different groups of mankind must 

 present the same forms, in similar order, according to some sort of 

 arbitrar}^ law. Thus there have been mapped out for the history of 

 economics, of implements, costumes, habitation, morals, law, and 

 religion, certain strict and definite plans, which have been drawn more 

 from a priori reasoning and a limited experience than from a wide 

 knowledge of facts. These classifications, which may be readily 

 replaced by other similar ones, had nevertheless the advantage, like 

 all classifications, which are equally inexact, that they afforded for 

 the progress of investigation a better basis than when the material 

 is in disorder and fancy turned free. These classifications, however, 

 were not altogether inexact, but were merely inadequate for general 

 application so as to be extended to all parts of the globe and to all 

 groups of mankind. "When properly limited and used judiciously, 

 they present every evidence of being parts or fragments of the truth 

 to which, in order to make them complete, other fragments should be 

 constantly added until the highest possible degree of knowledge is 

 attained. 



As regards the history of human habitation, it is believed that at 

 a certain period there was an age of caverns when man dwelt exclu- 

 sively in the natural excavations of rocky regions. Later, when the 

 earliest forms of buildings appeared, the circular structure was 

 everywhere employed before those of quadrangular forms, wooden 

 buildings before those of stone, etc. At the verj'^ dawn of evolution, 

 man, it is thought, must have dwelt in hollow trunks of trees or in 

 the tops of high trees. But we can make no positive assertions con- 

 cerning that most remote stage of evolution. In all lines of evolution 

 the beginning belongs to the domain of imagination ; its suggestions 



1 Translated by permission from " Scientia, International Review of Scientific Synthesis," 

 published by Messrs. Williams & Norgate, London, No. 3, 1911, pp. 94-104. 



571 



