It may seem that if we set aside the
disputable evidence of the Eoliths and the Java remains we can
say nothing whatever on this subject. In reality a fact of very
great interest can be established. It can be shown that the
progress made during this enormous lapse of time--at least a
million years--was remarkably slow. Instead of supposing that
some extraordinary evolution took place in that conveniently
obscure past, to which we can find no parallel within known
times, it is precisely the reverse. The advance that has taken
place within the historical period is far greater, comparatively
to the span of time, than that which took place in the past.
To make this interesting fact clearer we must attempt to measure
the progress made in the Pliocene and Pleistocene. We may assume
that the precursor of man had arrived at the anthropoid-ape level
by the middle of the Miocene period. He is not at all likely to
have been behind the anthropoid apes, and we saw that they were
well developed in the mid-Tertiary. Now we have a good knowledge
of man as he was in the later stage of the Ice-Age--at least a
million years later--and may thus institute a useful comparison
and form some idea of the advance made.
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