ANCESTRAL MAN. 21 



His cerebral powers were undergoing great stimulation, and an 

 extraordinary artistic faculty became developed. We find similar 

 unexpected tastes in the bower-bird who builds and adorns a 

 great hall of public assembly, and in. the garden-bird who lays out 

 an ornamental parterre. 



To have produced such evolution as this, there must have 

 been three favouring circumstances. 



i. — Something to evoke cerebral activity. This we may look 

 for in the rivalry of the chase, in a certain emulation in the 

 practice of their simple arts, and doubtless in the springing up of 

 those claims and restraints that make the beginnings of society. 



2. — Abundance of food to sustain cerebral activity ; and food, 

 like flesh or grain, of a stimulating kind. 



3. — Leisure for the employment of cerebral activity. And 

 leisure means two things ; first that the abundant food was easily 

 obtained, and second that there was security from personal 

 danger. The days were not wholly spent either in hunting prey 

 or avoiding foes. At last, too, climatal rigours had come to 

 man's aid, and had scared away many of his formidable 

 carnivorous enemies, and he had learned to escape from the 

 remainder in the shelter of a cave. 



His wonderful drawings, scratched on pieces of bone or ivory, 

 show us the animals by which he was surrounded and in which he 



was most interested. We find him hunting the urus 



A 



See Plate, 

 the mammoth, the reindeer, and a small horse [See Plate, 

 fig. 3] with a hog-mane and a large head ; and we see pictures of 

 the seal, the whale and the cave-bear [See Plate, fig. 2]. 



Above all, he reveals to us himself [See Plate, fig. 1] : his body 

 covered with long hair ; his calf and thigh greatly developed ; 

 never using the arrow, but smiting with a spear the monsters on 

 which he fed. Hurling the javelin of flint and the harpoon of 

 horn, he was able to take both birds and fish. Though it would 

 seem that he made clothing of skins, he usually represents 

 himself as entirely naked. 



We have also a singular portrait of the woman of the period. 

 She was remarkably differentiated from the man. She was short, 

 with little hair, and with slender limbs and extremities ; so that 

 whatever may have been her duties, she did not join in the chase, 

 but had already become a domesticated animal. 



It is note-worthy that the Bushmen of South Africa are natural 

 artists, though their brains weigh only 33 ounces, as compared 

 with the 44 ounces of the Negro, and the 49 ounces of the 

 European. Dr. Mann thus describes the method of a Bushboy 

 who had much skill in drawing animal figures. " He began by 

 "jotting down upon paper a number of isolated points, which 



