From a drawing by Charles R. Knight THE SABER-TOOTHED TIGER, ANOTHER CONTEMPORARY OF THE HEIDELBERG MAN Remains of this great feline are found in many portions of the globe, the particular specimen from which the picture was made being of South American origin. In many ways the creature was not a true cat, the high shoulders and short tail being rather bearlike than otherwise. The feet, however, were truly feline and were armed with many powerful claws. The long, saber-like canine teeth must have been very effective weapons, and could, no doubt, inflict terrible wounds upon an adversary. These teeth projected on either side of the lower jaw when the mouth was closed (see pages 119 and 123). for either beasts or men. Both the hu- Very few mammalian forms trace their man. The view held by some writers, that northern (including especially northwestern and north central) Europe was the special center of dispersal for vigorous and dominant life types which overran the world, is without foundation in fact. Again and again within comparatively recent geologic times northern Europe has been almost denuded of life. Only for short periods has it been a center of dispersal, and even during these periods it has merely dispersed types, perhaps developed types, of creatures. which in the normal course of events it has been receiving as dominant migrants. and invaders from other regions. This is as true of the "Nordic Man" who overran southern Europe fifteen hundred years ago as of his mixed-blood successors who during the last five centuries have on a larger scale overrun most of the earth, and of the parasitic companions of these mixed-blood successors, such as the rat, the rabbit, the house sparrow, and various weeds. The The great cultures and great cultive races of Europe in prehistoric times came from elsewhere, doubtless Asia. men who used metals, who owned flocks and herds, and who grew crops-that is, the men out of whom it was possible to develop modern civilization-were all immigrants in Europe, who had originated and started upward elsewhere. THE ONLY RECORDS OF EARLY MAN YET DISCOVERED ARE IN EUROPE or But while we could doubtless learn far more of the paleo-history and prehistory of man if we knew what had happened to him in Asia during the two three hundred thousand years before history dawned in Mesopotamia and on the Nile, we do not, as a matter of fact, possess such knowledge. The records are European, as already said, and necessarily in our studies we must deal chiefly with Europe. The climatic changes in both temperature and moisture produced extraordinary oscillations in the giant mammalian fauna of the time. Photograph from Osborn's "Men of The Old Stone Age" A HEAD RECONSTRUCTED ON THE PILTDOWN SKULL, FOUND IN SUSSEX, ENGLAND: EOANTHROPUS DAWSONI The race is believed to have lived in England and France 100,000 to 300,000 years ago (see page 123) At the close of Pliocene times Europe possessed a warmer climate than at present, and in the forests flourished many trees now only known in Americathe sequoia, sabal, sassafras, locust, sweet-gum, and tulip tree. There is no evidence that any ancestor of man then existed in Europe; but elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, saber-tooth tigers, wild oxen, and horses abounded. The period of glaciation which ushered in the Pleistocene drove these animals southward, or into restricted areas in middle Europe, and brought in many northern forms, such as the musk-ox. In the long succeeding period of mild climate elephants and hippopotamus lived beside or near by moose and lions and Irish elk, and the saber-tooth was the chief beast of prey (see page 117). Then came the second and severest period of glaciation. During the mild inter-Glacial period which followed new Photograph from Osborn's "Men of The Old Stone Age" THE APE-MAN OF JAVA It is the people who were the companions of these successive faunas whom Mr. Osborn describes. He begins by a brief summary of the probable ancestral tree of man in his prehuman days, showing that his stem probably branched off from that of the anthropoid apes at the beginning of the Miocene, having split from the monkey stem at or before the beginning of the Oligocene. Then he discusses the famous ape-man of Java, the pithecanthropus, the prehuman creature probably, however, only collaterally in our line. of ancestry-who appeared at the dawn of the Pleistocene (see picture, p. 112). This being was already half way upward from the beast, half way between true man and those Miocene ancestors of his, who were still on the psychic and intellectual level of their diverging kinsfolk, the anthropoid apes. He, or some creature like him, was in our own line of ascent during these uncounted ages when our ancestors were already different from all other brutes and yet had not grown to be really men. He probably used a club or stone at need; and about this time he may have begun very rudely to chip or otherwise fashion stones to his use. THE NEANDERTHAL MAN, A RACE WHICH LIVED IN Modeled on skull from cave of La-Chapelle-aux-Saints: Arctic tundra, and sometimes mingled His progress was very, very slow; the marked feature in the progress of man has been its great acceleration of rapidity in each successive stage, accompanied continually by an inexplicable halt or dying out in race after race and culture after culture. 250,000 YEARS LATER THE HEIDELBERG MAN After the ape-man of Java we skip a quarter of a million years or so-according to Mr. Osborn's conservative figur |