A MILLION YEARS OF CHILDHOOD 5 



of the human stern from the general "anthropoid" 

 group in what the geologist calls the Oligocene Period ; 

 and he says, quoting the authority of our leading 

 geologist, Professor Sollas, that this Oligocene Period 

 closed about 1,800,000 years ago ! A recent school of 

 geologists, which estimates the age of rocks from the 

 traces of radium in them, would actually multiply 

 this figure by ten ; but it is impossible to entertain 

 such an age for man. It is enough to say that no 

 geologist would allow less than a million years since 

 the close of the Oligocene Period. 



We may therefore safely say that it is at least a 

 million and a-half years since the human branch of 

 the tree of life separated from the ape branch. Now 

 we have no human remains and no prehistoric imple- 

 ments that seem to be more than half-a-million years 

 old. That leaves a round million years during which 

 primitive man was so low in intelligence that he did 

 not even think of knocking two flints together to give 

 a better cutting edge to one of them. No doubt this 

 crude half-man used stones which he found on the 

 ground, as well as sticks. But that scarcely lifts him 

 above the level of animal intelligence. The stark fact 

 is that a hundred years of search have not discovered 

 a single object upon which this early man left the 

 faintest imprint of intelligence. He was, for the 

 whole of that million years, lower than the lowest 

 " savage " known to modern science. 



Some will wonder why we say that man existed at 

 all during that period, if there is no positive trace of 

 him. But, while we have no remains of man during 

 that period, we have remains of his ape-cousins. We 

 have found skeletons which show beyond question 

 that large man-like apes — even more man-like than 



