When Europeans began to traverse the globe in
the last few centuries, they picked up here and there little
groups of men who had, in their isolation, remained just where
their fathers had been when they quitted the main road of advance
in the earlier stages of the Old Stone Age. The evolution of man
is guided by the same laws as the evolution of any other species.
Thus we can understand the long period of stagnation, or of
incalculably slow advance. Thus, too, we can understand why, at
length, the pace of man toward his unconscious goal is quickened.
He is an inhabitant of the northern hemisphere, and the northern
hemisphere is shaken by the last of the great geological
revolutions. From its first stress emerges the primeval savage of
the early part of the Old Stone Age, still bearing the deep
imprint of his origin, surpassing his fellow-animals only in the
use of crude stone implements. Then the stress of conditions
relaxes--the great ice-sheet disappears--and again during a vast
period he makes very little progress. The stress returns. The
genial country is stripped and impoverished, and the reindeer and
mammoth spread to the south of Europe.
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