184 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



prolongation of growth as a feature of mankind alongside of a growing 

 sex-differentiation affecting general habits to a degree previously unknown. 



It is, next, very important to remember that this differentiation took 

 place within groups rather than among solitary individuals or even isolated 

 families, for in all likelihood the habit of group-life is part of man's heritage 

 from animal ancestors. So human society does not so much result from 

 the coming together of individuals as human individuality results from 

 the liberation, bit by bit, of individual initiative within groups. This 

 is a fact which sociologists have in the past too often neglected. The 

 different food-quests of the two sexes, the increased dependence of the 

 infant, and the growth of brain all helped to make society more durable 

 and more complex, especially as organised hunting provided a link between 

 the younger fathers and the elder boys. Another factor, which must 

 have operated at the same stage, was Fire. As it was used both by mid- 

 Pleistocene men and by the almost unrelated late Pleistocene men in 

 Europe, it must be very old indeed, and it was almost certainly used by 

 the Foxhall men, who date very far back, while ashes of fires are known 

 from the later phases (Acheulian) of the early Pleistocene. It would help 

 to give society a focus, and to give women another stay-at-home function. 

 Its values for warmth in a cold climate, for food preparation, for scaring 

 wild animals, for hardening and pointing the ends of broken branches, for 

 preparing flints for flaking, are all too well known to need long discussion. 



One more theoretical point. Elliot Smith has shown that some 

 measure of human speech is a very old feature indeed in mankind, and 

 the exercise of the faculty of speech is an insistent need all through man- 

 kind. Probably progress towards the erect attitude freed the laryngeal 

 region from the constraints of some of the tissues previously helping to hold 

 in place the projecting snout. The increase of family life must have pro- 

 moted development of intercommunication, and the growth of brain made 

 possible new and varied registrations of associations of sounds with objects, 

 which became better appreciated, thanks to improved detailed vision. 



The ceremonial burial at La Chapelle aux Saints in the mid-Pleistocene 

 period is very generally held to imply that, probably from reflection on 

 their dreams, men were already beginning to picture a life after death. 

 This development of fancy can be seen to have bearings on the conduct 

 of nurture, on the relations of the generations, on the continuity and 

 stability of society. 



The stone implements of early Pleistocene man are generally of a few 

 types only, though they may be wonderfully executed, with evident 

 affection and esthetic appreciation. They illustrate the heavy hand of 

 tradition limiting initiative but allowing the compensation of the crafts- 

 man's joy, a feature of society one might demonstrate from many regions 

 at many periods. 



II. — The Early Forms of Modern Man— General Considerations. 



The foregoing inevitably too speculative preface seemed necessary in 

 order to help us to know the rock whence modern man was hewn, and it 

 is the evolution of the forms of modern man that I should like to touch as 

 my main theme. Here we find a difficulty at the outset. Modern man 

 is known first from the north-west quadrant of the Old World, chiefly from 



