122 WORLD-POWER AND EVOLUTION 



was quite highly differentiated along the lines of talent for work 

 of different kinds." (Osborn, pages 274-5.) The civilization, 

 such as it was, of the time of the Cro-Magnons **was very widely 

 extended. This marks an important social characteristic, namely, 

 the readiness and willingness to take advantage of every step in 

 human progress, wherever it may have originated." 



These fine people lived in Europe from about 25,000 years ago 

 until 7,000 years ago. Their art was perhaps their greatest 

 claim to fame, for their drawings and paintings on the walls and 

 roofs of caverns are wonderful considering the primitiveness of 

 the tools employed. Why they disappeared we do not know. 

 They were not the ancestors of most of the modern Europeans. 

 They may have been fair-haired like the Nordics, but they had 

 peculiarly broad faces and relatively narrow heads unlike any 

 of the present great races. They were displaced by other races, 

 the long-headed, dark Mediterraneans, the broad-headed, brown- 

 haired Alpine people, and the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, long- 

 headed Nordics. These later races, which have carried civilization 

 forward by leaps and bounds, appear to have risen to their present 

 mental power during this same last Glacial Epoch. The place of 

 their origin is not certain, but their common center was quite 

 surely in central Asia not far from where the Cro-Magnons 

 developed. In that same region dwelt the ancestors of the races 

 that evolved the early civilizations of India, China, and Asia 

 Minor, and at least a part of the Mesopotamian civilization. 

 There in an environment not quite so severe as that of central 

 Europe, these early people developed the art of smoothing stone 

 implements and evolved other capacities which enabled them to 

 conquer the artistic Cro-Magnons. There, too, or else in the not 

 greatly dissimilar climate which then prevailed in North Africa, 

 the art of smelting copper was invented. A little later, in essen- 

 tially the same Asiatic regions, the far greater art of making 

 iron tools was developed, and man took still another of the great 

 steps which mark his advance toward civilization. 



