MAN, HIS ENVIRONMENT AND HIS ART n 



is the "pronounced gorilla-like drooping of the temporal region, due to 

 the extreme narrowing of its posterior part, which causes a deep exca- 

 vation of its under surface." This feeble development of that portion 

 of the brain which is known to control the power of articulate speech is 

 most significant. To Professor Smith the association of a simian jaw 

 with a cranium more distinctly human is not surprising^ The evolu- 

 tion of the human brain from the simian type involves a tripling of the 

 superficial area of the cerebral cortex ; and " this expansion was not like 

 the mere growth of a muscle with exercise, but the gradual building-up 

 of the most complex mechanism in existence. The growth of the brain 

 preceded the refinement of the features and the somatic characters in 

 general." The Piltdown skull with its primitive brain and simian 

 lower jaw, but with a frontal profile suggesting the modern rather than 

 the Neandertal type, tends to prove that in the lower Quaternary the 

 differentiation among Hominidae had already progressed much farther 

 than has been generally supposed: and that we shall have to go a long 

 way back in the past to find the parting of the ways between the ancestor 

 of man and that of his nearest of kin among the apes. The capacity of 

 some of the male skulls of the jSTeandertal type is unusually large, but 

 the brain still lacks the superior organization that characterizes the 

 modern human brain. The jSTeandertal race seems to have disappeared 

 rather suddenly at the close of the Mousterian epoch. Art-loving 

 Aurignacian man was of a different type both physically and mentally. 



Cultural remains, although much more abundant, are confined wholly 

 to durable materials such as stone, bone, horn, and ivory. Pottery and 

 metals are durable, but the fact that they do not occur is very good 

 negative evidence that they were unknown. "We are justified in assum- 

 ing that wood, bark, roots, plant stems, skins, etc., were used, but not 

 one trace of these has been preserved. It is also fairly safe to assume 

 that fire-making was a very early invention of man, for unmistakable 

 traces of it are found as far back as Mousterian times (and have been 

 reported by one author in the Acheulian and Chellean). 



The hearth suggests a roof and these the family and possibly the 

 tribe. At Torralba, Province of Soria, Spain, the Marquis of Cerralbo 

 has recently uncovered a large camp site, which has yielded an associa- 

 tion of rude eolithic and Chellean industry with the remains of a very 

 old fauna: Eleplias antiquas (and possibly also the Pliocene elephant), 

 Rhinoceros etrascus, Equus stenonis, and a large and small deer. Some 

 sort of tribal organization would naturally develop under such con- 

 ditions. 



Man very early sought shelter under overhanging rocks and in cav- 

 erns, but these are limited geographically while man's range was practic- 

 ally unlimited. La Quina (Charente) was in Mousterian times a mag- 



