

THE CHARACTERS OF HOMO 441 



session of the country. This race, the Cro-Magnon, Beginnings 

 was veritable Homo sapiens. In his bodily structure, 

 his skull, and presumably his brain, he was like modern 

 Europeans. His lineal descendants are probably still 

 living in France. For many thousands of years this 

 race lived in caves, the walls of which it ornamented 

 with remarkable drawings, sometimes in colors. Thus 

 it is possible to look upon sketches of the hairy mam- 

 moth, made by men who hunted this now extinct ani- 

 mal. It is strange to contemplate the life of Cro- 

 Magnon man, so primitive and barbarous, yet showing 

 flashes of genius prophetic of the future. How could 

 he know or imagine the forces latent within him, his 

 tremendous powers for good and evil, his capacity for 

 invention and discovery ? Could he have contemplated 

 the future of his race, would he have rejoiced in the 

 splendid coming developments, or would he have re- 

 coiled from the baseness and wickedness which he, the 

 barbarian, could never have supposed possible? After 

 all, we of today stand midway in the stream of human 

 progress. Like the Cro-Magnon man, we are capable 

 of much more than we know, and are destined to go 

 forward to a future in the light of which the present 

 will seem miserably inadequate. Unlike the Cro- 

 Magnon man, we know that our feet are set on a path 

 of progress, and that it is for us to decide where that 

 path shall lead. Driven from our paradise of primitive 

 simplicity, we have the choice of good and evil, but no 

 longer the option of deciding whether to choose. 



References 



OSBORN, H. F. Men of the Old Stone Age, 1915. 



MILLER, G. S. The Jaw oj the Piltdown Man. Smithsonian Institution, 1915. 

 DUCKWORTH, W. L. H. "Prehistoric Man." Cambridge Manuals of Science 

 and Literature, 1912. 



