The Ascent of Man 171 



stem diverged from the other orders of mammals; it sent forth 

 its tentative branches, and the result was a tangle of monkeys; 

 ages passed and the monkeys were left behind, while the main 

 stem, still probing its way, gave off the Anthropoid apes, both 

 small and large. But they too were left behind, and the main line 

 gave off other experiments indications of which we know in 

 Java, at Heidelberg, in the Neanderthal, and at Piltdown. None 

 of these lasted or was made perfect. They represent tentative 

 men who had their day and ceased to be, our predecessors rather 

 than our ancestors. Still, the main stem goes on evolving, and 

 who will be bold enough to say what fruit it has yet to bear I 



Primitive Men 



Ancient skeletons of men of the modern type have been 

 found in many places, e.g. Combe Capelle in Dordogne, Galley 

 Hill in Kent, Cro-Magnon in Perigord, Mentone on the Riviera; 

 and they are often referred to as "Cave-men" or "men of the 

 Early Stone Age." They had large skulls, high foreheads, well- 

 marked chins, and other features such as modern man possesses. 

 They were true men at last that is to say, like ourselves ! The 

 spirited pictures they made on the walls of caves in France and 

 Spain show artistic sense and skill. Well-finished statuettes rep- 

 resenting nude female figures are also known. The elaborate 

 burial customs point to a belief in life after death. They made 

 stone implements knives, scrapers, gravers, and the like, of the 

 type known as Palaeolithic, and these show interesting gradations 

 of skill and peculiarities of style. The "Cave-men" lived between 

 the third and fourth Ice Ages, along with cave-bear, cave-lion, 

 cave-hyama, mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, Irish elk, and other 

 mammals now extinct taking us back to 30,000-50,000 years 

 ago, and many would say much more. Some of the big-brained 

 skulls of these Palaeolithic cave-men show not a single feature that 

 could be called primitive. They show teeth which in size and 

 form are exactly the same as those of a thousand generations 



