period could do more than build stone monuments and fashion polished stone implements; they understood something of rude mining processes, for they left articles of bronze and iron.51 The existence of ornaments, arms and cutting implements of all kinds, such as axes, knives and the handles of swords dating back to the Neolithic period, has led Lubbock to divide the prehistoric period into four epochs: the Drift Age (rough stone age), the Polished Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.

In the course of the discussion in this chapter we have attempted to present some of the most authentic and important evidence which scientists have gathered to explain the origin and the great antiquity of man. In the chapters immediately following, we must concern ourselves with the even more difficult problem of accounting for man's remarkable mental development which surpasses that of any other living creature. This really brings us to the study of Social Evolution, for modern students of mankind have come to believe more and more completely in the importance of the social factor in the evolution of higher animal types.

SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS.

BRINTON, D. G.-Races and Peoples.

DARWIN, C.-The Descent of Man.

DENIKER, J.-The Races of Man.

GEIKIE, J.-The Great Ice Age.

GIDDINGS, F. H.-The Principles of Sociology.

KEANE, A. H.-Ethnology.

LUBBOCK, J. (Lord Avebury)-Pre-Historic Times.

MARETT, R. R.-Anthropology (Home University Series).

METCALF, M. M.-Organic Evolution.

ROMANES, G. J.-Darwin and After Darwin, I The Darwinian

Theory.

TYLOR, E. B.—Anthropology.

51 See figure 42.

IV

ASSOCIATION

99 1

THE origin of the mental faculties and moral nature of mankind is to be explained by the socializing influences of group life. In the preceding chapters we have examined the doctrine of descent to determine whether man's physical form was related to other species of animal life. We saw that there was no scientific reason for separating man from the rest of the animal kingdom as regards the processes of evolution. "There is no reason to doubt the continuity of animal and human society.' From the strictly sociological point of view, the student of social evolution accepts the conclusions of biology and geology and begins his investigation with the inquiry as to whether the earliest men were isolated pairs, descended perhaps from a single pair, or whether the transition from the animal to the human state was made by entire social groups. Professor Giddings holds that there is no evidence whatsoever for the theory of numerous isolated pairs. Indeed, there is much evidence to the contrary which leads us to believe that the transition from the animal to the human state was made under the socializing influences of group life.2

Throughout the ages before man was differentiated, certain animals lived in groups and were becoming accustomed to the advantages afforded by association. 1 Giddings, F. H.-The Principles of Sociology, p. 208.

102

2 Ibid.

V

Life in societies is the most powerful weapon in the struggle for life. Horses, although badly organized on the whole for resisting their enemies and the adverse conditions of climate, would soon have been exterminated were it not for their sociable spirit. The wolf and the bear cannot capture a horse unless the animal becomes detached from the herd. If a beast of prey approaches, several studs unite at once and repulse the beast, sometimes even chasing it. When a snowstorm rages, studs crowd together and the warmth of their several bodies. keeps them from freezing. If the group disperses, the horses perish and the survivors are found after the storm, half dying from fatigue. The common ant thrives without having any of the protective features which animals living in isolated life possess. Its color renders it conspicuous and its sting is not formidable. Yet ants are dreaded by most stronger insects. Their most important source of strength consists in the maintenance of a highly coöperative group life. The animals which know best how to combine have the greatest chances for further evolution, even though they may be inferior to others in each of the faculties enumerated by Darwin and Wallace, save in the intellectual faculty. This last is generally admitted to be the most powerful aid in the struggle for existence. But the intellectual faculty is eminently a social faculty. "Language, imitation, and accumulated experience are so many elements of growing intelligence of which the unsociable animal is deprived." For this reason we find at the top of each class of animals, those which combine the greatest sociability with the highest development of intelligence. "The fittest are thus the most sociable animals, and sociability appears as the chief

Kropotkin, P.-Mutual Aid, 1904, p. 47.

4 Ibid.

factor of evolution, both directly, by securing the wellbeing of the species while diminishing the waste of energy, and indirectly, by favoring the growth of intelligence."5 Thus it was that thousands of years before man appeared, association was preparing the way for human society. Association was a chief cause of the development of intelligence and of the power to coöperate. Moreover, social life developed with a progressive weeding out of unsocial creatures which thereby became a more easy prey to physical forces and living enemies." Association not only endowed certain species with the mental capacity that was eventually to make one of them the master, but it developed the social instincts of all the others to such a degree that they could become useful coöperators with mankind. The teachable disposition acquired by certain animals from their age long experience of social life made domestication a possibility. Later we shall see that domesticated animals made possible civilization. In this way the enormous importance of domestication is apparent.

The savage peoples of the present day live in groups, and all the remains of prehistoric men show that they too lived in groups. There is no reason to believe that the anthropoid precursor of man was an unsocial animal. Indeed, the mental differences that mark men off from other creatures are those that are created by social discourse. Speech in particular, an attainment that has given man his preeminence among other animals, is distinctly a social creation. Since association and sociability have been such all-important factors in the mental evolution of mankind we shall consider the advantages that accrue from social life.

5 Ibid.

• Giddings, op. cit., pp. 204-207.