THE ADVANCE OP PREHISTORIC HUMANITY 101 



CHAPTER VII 



THE ADVANCE OF PREHISTORIC HUMANITY 



WHEN, in following the story of evolution, we arrive 

 at the stage in which human faculty definitely appears, 

 we find ourselves on much firmer ground. Man has 

 been defined as the animal that makes and uses tools. 

 For ages that was his main distinction from many of his 

 animal neighbours, and it has had a fortunate result for 

 modern science. No doubt the first weapon employed 

 by the most primitive of our human ancestors was a 

 convenient piece broken from a tree, as we find in the 

 ape. Such weapons decayed like their users, and have 

 left no trace. Stone-throwing would be the next device 

 of the small and ungainly human in its conflicts with its 

 fellows, and especially in defence against its larger 

 enemies. Presently the dull wit notices that a sharp 

 stone is more effective than a round one, and the practice 

 begins of chipping the stones. At last a definite hatchet- 

 edge and point is evolved, and from this form we can 

 trace the growth of the weapon up to the flashing axe of 

 the warrior of the iron age. It is a plain story of the 

 growth of human intelligence, beginning below the level 

 of the lowest savage of our time and rising gradually to 

 the heights of modern science, art, and industry. 



The home of the ape-men of some hundreds of 

 thousands of years if not a good million years ago 

 was the south of Asia. Curiously enough the next traces 

 of man that are claimed with a good degree of confidence 

 are found in England. Britain and even Ireland were 

 still united to the continent well into the Pleistocene 



