CHAPTER XXXVI 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZED MAN 



Vocabulary 



Anthropology, the study of the development of man. 

 Diffidence, hesitation. 

 Obviously, plainly. 

 Relatively, comparatively. 

 Acquisition, something just obtained. 

 Degenerate, less developed than formerly. 



We have been studying the development of living things and 

 man's relation to them, which brings us to another even more 

 fascinating branch of biology, the development of man himself, 

 a science called Anthropology. 



We naturally think of man's development in terms of recorded 

 history, but we must remember that writing is a very recent art 

 and man's actual written records go back relatively but a little into 

 the far past from which we are still emerging. Greek writings 

 take us back about one thousand years B.C., Chinese, Egyptian, 

 and Arab records may possibly date as early as 3000 B.C., but 

 civilization was far older, and man, as a more or less human ani- 

 mal, much older still. Monuments and inscriptions may push back 

 the boundary by vague information covering perhaps ten thousand 

 years, though there is much dispute, and the data are uncertain. 



Still further back amid the mists of human history we draw 

 conclusions from bones and stone implements, showing that man 

 existed as early as the glacial period, and was contemporary with the 

 cave bear, mammoth, and aurochs, all now extinct. One ventures 

 with diffidence to set a time in years for the date of these remote 

 ancestors of ours, but apparently human animals, erect, large- 

 brained, using weapons and tools, possessing the power of speech, 



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