Man in the making : an introduction to anthropology / by R.R. Marett.

  • Robert Ranulph Marett
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Man in the making : an introduction to anthropology / by R.R. Marett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the home-fire burning, but, what is much harder, how to light it. By knocking two lumps of iron- pyrites together, perhaps, in the course of his flint¬ chipping operations, he produced a spark which, after further experiment, he nursed into a flame. However it was done, done at last it was; and puny man, the intrepid master of fire, could hencefortn rout the giant, but relatively feeble-minded, cave-bear from his coveted lair. I have spent seven summers in helping to excavate such a converted lair of Neanderthal man in the Island of Jersey—then a hill standing up on the wide plain of the Channel River, where the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and the reindeer wan¬ dered at large and provided excellent hunting. Nearly forty species of animals furnished the bones found by us in that cave-kitchen. There were the hearths round which the hunters feasted; and there in plenty were the flint knives with which they cut up the abundant meat, together with the scrapers that prepared the skins for use as coverlets or garments. Sealed and secured under some four thousand tons of rock-rubbish lay this evidence, which no fair-minded man can gainsay, of man’s hoary antiquity. Argue if you like that these Neanderthal men were not our direct ancestors. That is indeed probable. But were they not men notwithstanding? Proofs are forthcoming from the French caves that they buried their dead with provision, in the way of food and weapons, for a future existence. Thus, ancestor or not, Neanderthal man has a chance of meeting us in heaven, I should venture to think. To judge by his remains, however—which by no means reveal his whole apparatus of arts, since the wood, skin, sinew and so on have long ago perished —Neanderthal man was a long way behind the later cave-men as regards both the material and the spiritual aspects of his culture. Overshadowing all their other achievements are the fine-art products of these more