Science (journal)/Volume 5/No. 100/Man in the Stone Age
Man in the stone age.
In Science, iv. 469, Prof. Henry W. Haynes takes me up sharply in reference to an opinion I expressed about the epoch of the appearance of man, properly so called, in prehistoric time in Europe, and calls this opinion ‘a most amazing travesty of the views of Mortillet.’
Professor Haynes tells us that he gave a critical notice of Mortillet’s work, ‘Le préhistorique; antiquité de l’homme,’ in Science: it is probable, therefore, that he read that book. But it is evident, that, if he did, he has forgotten it: otherwise he would not repeat that Mortillet takes the station St. Acheul as typical of the oldest stone age, inasmuch as he definitely rejects it as being of mixed later types, and substitutes the station of Chelles (op. cit., 133). He would also have remembered that Mortillet denies, in so many words, that the anthropoid then living was man as we understand the term. THese words are, “Nous nous retrouvons, done, en présence de l’anthropopithèque, dont j’ai démontré l’existence,” etc. (p. 248). Passing to the next age or epoch, the Moustérien, he asserts that it, too, was characterized by this race of anthropopitheci (p. 339); while in the third epoch, that of lolutré, he leaves the question open, denying that any traces of man or anthropoid have been discovered (p. 392).
This brings us late, very late, in paleolithic time, without an osteologic trace of any being who should properly be called man; for it would indeed be a travesty to apply that name to a creature without language, without religion, and without social compacts. If the question is to be any thing beyond one of word-splitting, these psychological characteristics must be connoted by the word ‘man;’ for in all ethnological study they almost alone occupy us, as Peschel has well shown in his chapter, ‘Die stellung des menschen in der schöpfung’ (Völkerkunde, einleitung). Yet Mortillet himself denies them to his anthropopithecus.
Media, Penn., Dec. 13.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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