BOOK VII.
PRIMITIVE MAN.—FORMATION OF THE HUMAN RACES.
CHAPTER XXI.
PRIMITIVE MAN.
I. The primitive type of the human species must necessarily have been effaced, and have disappeared. The enforced migrations, and the actions of climate, must of themselves have produced this result. Man has passed through two geological epochs; perhaps his centre of appearance is no longer in existence; at any rate, the conditions are very different to those prevailing when humanity began its existence. When everything was changing round him, man could not avoid being changed also. Crossing, also, has certainly played its part in this transformation. I shall shortly return to these different points which I only allude to here.
But, on the other hand, we shall see that the skull of the most ancient Quaternary race is repeated not only in some Australian tribes, but in Europe, and in men who have played an important part among their fellow-countrymen. The other races of the same epoch, judging from the skull, have many representatives amongst us. They have, nevertheless, passed through one of the two geological revolutions, which separates us from our original stock. It is then not impossible that the latter may have transmitted to a certain number of men, perhaps scattered in time and space, at least a part of its characters.
Unfortunately, we do not know where to seek for reproductions, bearing more or less resemblance to the primitive type; and, for want of information it would be impossible to recognise them as such, if we were to meet with them. Here, therefore, observation alone can furnish no data. But, when it is aided by physiology, some conjectures are possible.
II. We know that among animals atavism often causes the reappearance of ancestral characters, even when a careful selection has acted upon hundreds of generations. The silkworms of the Cévennes which yield white cocoons, and the black sheep of Spain furnish examples. In man, where selection does not exist, such facts would be much more likely to be produced. Some characters of our first ancestors ought to appear in isolated cases or collectively in all human races; perhaps, there are some which have been preserved in one or more groups. Consequently, by searching for them, and classifying those which appear in a more or less erratic manner among races which are most dissimilar in all other respects, we shall probably be able to form a partial reproduction of the primitive human type.
In this respect, it is difficult to avoid attaching a real importance to the prognathism of the upper jaw. This anatomical feature is very pronounced in almost all Negro races: it is also strongly marked in certain Yellow races. It is considerably diminished among Whites: but, nevertheless, it appears at times almost as strongly marked as in the two other groups: it existed in Quaternary man. Everything seems to indicate that it must have been as strongly developed in our first ancestors.
Phenomena of atavism acting on the colouring are of frequent occurrence among animals.
They are equally prevalent in the human species. This consideration causes me to attach real importance to the opinion of M. de Salles, who attributes red hair to the earliest men. In fact, among all human races, individuals have been noticed whose hair more or less approaches to this tint.
The experiments of Darwin upon the effects of crossing between very different races of pigeons led to the same conclusion. He found that the crossings resulted in the reappearance of certain peculiarities of colour in the mongrels, which were peculiar to the original species, and which had disappeared in the two parent races. Now in our colonies the offspring of a Mulatto and a White frequently has red hair. In Europe also, M. Hamy has remarked that children are born with red hair, when one of the parents is decidedly dark and the other decidedly fair. In all cases of this nature, we should say that the primitive character reasserts itself, being accidentally acquired by the reciprocal neutralisation of opposed ethnical characters.
When examined under the microscope, the cutaneous pigment which gives the human body its characteristic colour, doubtless shows different tints, but yellow is always present as a colouring element. If we apply to man the laws which Isidore Geoffroy has deduced from his observations upon animals, we are led to conclude that this colour originally predominated. When the White is crossed with the Negro, the yellow colouring element at once asserts itself and generally appears to predominate. In the colonies the general term of yellows is sometimes given to mulattos. This result is again explained by the experiments of Darwin; and the conclusion is admissible that the original colour of man more or less approximated to this tint.
Certain facts which have been observed among Negroes seem also to confirm this conclusion. Among the most strongly characterised peoples belonging to this type, the appearance has been noticed of individuals of a lighter colour, sometimes almost resembling the Whites in this respect, sometimes tending more or less to yellow, without presenting any of the phenomena of teratological albinism. These individual peculiarities of colour may be attributed to atavism. Now among no white or yellow race have facts been noticed which can be regarded as reciprocal to the preceding.
Nothing therefore authorises us to regard the Negro race as having preceded the other two; and, on the contrary, the contrast which I have just pointed out leads to the conclusion that the ancestors of the negro were a race of a much lighter colour.
On the other hand, we know that the Aryan race is the latest. The question of priority thus lies between the Semitic, the Allophylian, and the group of yellow races. What I have said above of the fundamental colour being present as an element in the colour of all races, and the phenomena of crossing, point with some probability in favour of the latter.
Philology seems to confirm this view. Monosyllabic languages, which imply the first attempts at human speech, only exist among the yellow races. All the Negro races and the Allophylian Whites speak agglutinative languages, which answer to the second form which man gave to the expression of his thoughts. Aryans and Semites both have inflectional languages.
Philology then seems to lead to the same conclusion as physiology, and even to give an appearance of greater probability to these conjectures, which I only give for what they are worth.
III. We know nothing of primitive man; we acknowledge that, from want of information, it would be impossible to recognise him. All that the present state of our knowledge allows us to say is that, according to all appearance he ought to be characterised by a certain amount of prognathism, and have neither a black skin nor woolly hair. It is also fairly probable that his colour would resemble that of the yellow races, and his hair be more or less red. Finally everything tends to the conclusion that the language of our earliest ancestors was a more or less pronounced monosyllabic one.
These are only conjectures, and they amount to but little, but this little is founded upon experiment and observation.
IV. We can also only form very vague conjectures upon the degree of intellectual development which man exhibited at his birth and during his first generations. At any rate it is possible to believe that he did not enter upon the scene of the world with innate knowledge, and the instinctive industries which belong to animals. Still less did he appear in a fully civilised state “mature in body and mind” as thinks the Comte Eusèbe de Salles. All traditions point to a period when human knowledge was very small, when man was ignorant of industries, to our eyes very elementary, and which we see appear in succession. Upon this point the Bible agrees with classical mythology. The Hebrews have their Tubal Cain, and the Greeks their Triptolemos. Prehistoric studies confirm this progressive development in Western Europe upon every point. Tertiary industries precede quaternary. The whole history of races seems to me to give, at least in part, a representation of that of the Species; and our thoughts go back almost irresistibly to the time when man found himself face to face with creation, armed solely with the aptitudes which were destined to undergo such a marvellous development.
Thanks to these aptitudes, at a very early period he satisfied at least the first wants of existence. The miocene man of La Beauce already knew the use of fire and worked flint. However rough and rudimentary his instruments may have been, he had even then an industry, and according to all appearance fed partly upon cooked food. The man of Saint-Prest, with his small lozenge-shaped arrow-heads, worked only on one side, with his rough hatchets, could undoubtedly attack and kill the great contemporary mammalia. He possessed scrapers which he used to prepare their skins with, and awls, which perhaps served as needles. From this distant period, upon which science has thrown as yet but little light, man reveals his existence by two great facts, and shows his superiority to the whole animal creation.