On
the other hand, the earliest remains of prehistoric man give no
indication of social life. Fire-places, workshops, caves, etc.,
enter the story in a later phase. Some authorities on prehistoric
man hold very strongly that during the greater part of the Old
Stone Age (two-thirds, at least, of the human period) man
wandered only in the company of his mate and children.*
* The point will be more fully discussed later. This account of
prehistoric life is well seen in Mortillet's Prehistorique
(1900). The lowest races also have no tribal life, and Professor
Westermarck is of opinion that early man was not social.
We seem to have the most plausible explanation of the divergence
of man from his anthropoid cousins in the fact that he left the
trees of his and their ancestors. This theory has the advantage
of being a fact--for the Ape-Man race of Java has already left
the trees--and providing a strong ground for brain-advance. A
dozen reasons might be imagined for his quitting the
trees--migration, for instance, to a region in which food was
more abundant, and carnivores less formidable, on the
ground-level--but we will be content with the fact that he did.
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