CHAPTER II

PRIMITIVE MAN AND EARLY CIVILIZATIONS

The development of scientific history has not followed a uniform course. Progress has been rhythmic. There has been always a reaction coming in the steps of brilliant discoveries. Periods of feverish experimental activities have been succeeded by others during which little apparent progress was made.

Such dull intervals seem to have been necessary for developing, formulating, classifying, and testing the innumerable details and inferences that the discoveries of the active periods produced.

While mankind in general has contributed to the total of our intellectual treasures, some races have been more active in this way than others. For this reason it is advisable to briefly survey the more recent discoveries about the ancestors of existing peoples.

Indo-Malaysia, parts of central Asia, and the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia are variously credited with having been the cradle of the human race. It should be understood, however, that we are only permitted to speak authoritatively of existing races, because the land forms of the earth have undergone such remarkable changes that we can know little definitely about the earlier periods of human history. For the purposes of the history of science, while bearing in mind these qualifying suggestions, we may accept the statement that man's ancestors originated in proximity to India.

It was around the waters of the Persian Gulf that the earliest known civilizations arose. The people who founded them came from central Asia. They had reached a considerable degree of culture, which suggests that they themselves came from earlier centers of civilization.

The study of prehistoric antiquity is termed archæology. Its principal periods have been divided, for convenience, into the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages. Each of these is distinguished by the substances used for tools. In the Stone Age men used stone spearheads, arrows, and knives, whereas in the Iron Age similar things were made of iron or copper.

The science of mankind is known as Anthropology. It deals with the innumerable steps in the evolution of mankind from remote periods, and with the primitive development of the arts, sciences, and religion. Yet it is one of the youngest of the sciences.

One of its essential teachings is that heredity and racial predispositions play, and always have played, more important parts in man's evolution, and in the development of civilization, than environment and education.

Hereditary tendencies, such as the religious, moral, and æsthetic instincts have been indispensable in preserving and developing all the races of mankind.

Moral discipline has been the chief factor in self-control, and therefore in civilization. It is because the moral sense has proved so beneficial to the human race, and is the most powerful of our instinctive desires, that mankind always has been and must be religious. It controls man's knowledge, desires, and will, and has dominated the race since our early ancestors began to think.

When we recognize this fact we can readily see that anything which tends to oppose the moral or ethical sanctions, or detract from religious beliefs, is injurious to civilization and human progress. The histories of religion, ethics, and æsthetics plainly develop the rôles which have been played by moral self-discipline in the protection and development of mankind, as well as of knowledge and science.

The moral control of individuals acts also upon society generally, and upon whole racial and national groups. The ethical ideals assist each individual mind to realize its own end and at the same time tend to influence the tribal and social mind to attain a common end. This great moral, instinctive force, which has played such an immensely valuable part in developing civilization and science, is known as the human social and national conscience. It acts both individually and collectively.

European races have been divided into classes corresponding to the prevailing cephalic indices. The longheads are grouped as the Nordic, or Baltic, subspecies, because they were formerly numerous around the Baltic countries. People of this group are distinguished by tall statures, fair skin and hair, good physique, and light colored eyes. These peoples include the Scandinavians, Anglo-Saxon, and certain important Teutonic groups, as well as Asiatic peoples who are known as the Aryans.

The most important rôles in the development of modern civilization, art, industry, and science have been played by representatives of the Nordics.

The Iberian, or Mediterranean, subspecies, ranks next in importance. The peoples of this great racial division originally occupied the countries between the northern Atlantic coast of Africa and the confines of the areas of the Nordics around the northern provinces of France. They spread down the Mediterranean and over large areas in Asia. Their skulls are long, but differ from those of the Nordics in their absolute size. Their stature is lower, and weaker than that of the Nordics, while their hair, eyes, and skin are dark or black. The Welsh, the Moors, and the early Greeks are chiefly classed with the Mediterranean group. The Carthaginians, Phœnicians, Egyptians, and Etrurians were members of it.

The roundheads comprise the Alpine subspecies. This is the strongest numerical group to-day. It is characterized by small round heads, short bodies, dark hair, and dark eyes. It is of Asiatic origin and includes the Slavs, modern Greeks, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Swiss, the pre-Nordic Irish, French, and Belgians. The first Alpine invasion of Europe began about 10,000 B. C. There were many subsequent ones through the plateaus of Asia Minor, the Balkans, and valley of the Danube. They reached England about 1800 B. C., and formed small colonies in Ireland, the descendants of which now call themselves Celts and are clearly distinguished by the characteristic Alpine indices. This race is now so well acclimatized in Europe that most of its Asiatic traces have been lost, and its round skulls and dark eyes and hair are the only reminders of its Mongolian origin.

Members of each of these three great racial groups of mankind have throughout the ages contributed to the development of the sciences and arts. The Nordics began to appear in European history as agricultural tribes, speaking Aryan languages, like Celtic and Welsh, who swept down from the north and pushed the earlier settlers back through their irresistible arms, which were made of bronze and later of iron. The earlier settlers were still furnished with arms and implements of the Stone Age.

There was a much older intellectual people than the Nordics settled in Europe. The people of this race, about whom we have learned through recent archæological researches, are known as the Cro-Magnons. They lived between 25,000 and 10,000 B. C. Their skulls were distinguished from those of the Nordics by their pronounced cheek-bones and broad faces. Their culture, as their favorable cephalic index would suggest, was of a high character. Numerous drawings and art works of theirs, which have been preserved, place them among the world's superior peoples.

Soon after the settlement of the Cro-Magnons in Europe, and their intermarriage with the earlier settlers, their physical development and stature began to decline. They were finally absorbed and destroyed by the inferior peoples among whom they dwelled. Their disappearance, like that of the ancient Greeks, who appear to have been the most intellectual people the world ever produced, shows how the upward development of human physical and intellectual qualities is constantly injured by the contacts of superior and inferior races.

The scientific discoveries made prior to the Iron Age, or about 2000 B. C., were not numerous. The struggle for life was so intense that few had opportunity for contemplation and philosophic reflection. It was subsequent to the discovery of the basic principles of metallurgy, in the Iron Age, that science began rapidly to advance. The benefits bestowed upon mankind by the employment of metals reduced the sharpness of life's struggles, permitted and instigated reflection, and provided means for experimentation.

Modern history begins with the peoples of Mesopotamia. There were cultured peoples east of the Tigris and Euphrates, in Persia, India, Mongolia, Tartary, and China before the founding of Babylon. But we are more instructed about the Babylonians and Assyrians than about earlier Asiatic races.

The Babylonians and Assyrians appear to have originated in central Asia and to have migrated to Arabia about 10,000 B. C., and perhaps earlier. They were well settled in Arabia before the Egyptian pyramids and other Semitic memorials were planned. They brought with them from the farthest Orient many important contributions to civilization and culture, and developed many others.

These were religious, philosophical and keen commercial peoples. They shaped the organization of modern religions. The Babylonians reduced the world of gods to a single system with classifications distinguishing between major and minor deities, and between those of heavenly, or stellar, and earthly habitats, and those of time and space. They developed many religious myths of the Creation, the Flood, Paradise, and others which were subsequently embraced by other religions.

Both the Babylonians and Assyrians composed beautiful hymns, prayers, parables, and religious tales, and had numerous elaborate religious customs, rituals, ceremonies, and festivals conducted by priests, nuns, and acolytes.

Anu, or Anum, the God of Heaven, was the principal Babylonian deity, while Ashur was the leading god of the Assyrians.

Religious studies and rites occupied a large portion of the time of these peoples and, consequently, their temples, monasteries, schools, and other religious buildings were large and numerous. Their architecture was elaborately artistic. This was one of their incentives to scientific invention. They made important discoveries in all the basic physical sciences, like chemistry, physics, metallurgy, and mathematics, to enable them to improve their buildings and to embellish them with paintings, pictorial tiles, and fancy metals and textiles. They had excellent professional men, artists, jurists, bankers, contractors, and scientists. They were fond of literature and founded extensive libraries. Music and musical instruments were very popular with them. Their cuneiform writings, as disclosed by numerous beautiful stone and porcelain tablets which have come down to us, were excellently done.

The fragments of literature, laws, and religious policies that we are acquainted with indicate that the numerous Babylonian and Assyrian settlements in each great empire possessed social and political conditions similar to those of our days. Science and art were then sufficiently advanced to enable these ancient people to live as agreeable, moral, and legally secure lives as those of any subsequent peoples.

The Chinese appear to have been making similar progress to that of the Babylonians about the same period. It would seem that both these peoples were in contact with a similar but earlier cultured race in central Asia. Although the early Chinese were a religious people, they appear to have been more philosophical than the Babylonians. This enabled them to make further progress in the abstract sciences. In subsequent years they made rapid strides in the physical sciences, as will be shown later.

The Egyptians came into prominence toward the end of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, and for many centuries played a great rôle in developing civilization. The numerous benefits which they bestowed upon the world by their researches in science and art are not fully appreciated.

Early history pictures two great Asiatic races struggling for supremacy in India. They were the Aryans, a fair-skinned people, and the Dravidians, a colored people. The Aryans succeeded in displacing the Dravidians in the great plains, upon which they settled and developed large cities, important world commerce, and contributed great art works and scientific and philosophical discoveries to the world's stores. The Dravidians retired to the hill country, where their representatives still live.

The minds of the various Indian peoples have always been strongly philosophical. This led them to the development of numerous religious sects and philosophical systems, and they made important mathematical discoveries. While the scientific bent of the ancient Greeks was of a concrete nature, which tended toward geometrical proofs for scientific problems, that of the ancient peoples of India was toward numerical symbolism and arithmetical proofs. We find that when the Greeks were developing geometry the Indians were contributing to arithmetic and algebra.

The Chinese closely resembled the ancient Indians in the philosophical tendency of their minds; but, owing perhaps to the different conditions under which they lived, they were more concrete in their ideas. They also made progress in mathematics and developed medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, and many of the sciences which were applied to commercial and industrial uses. The progress made in mathematics in China was transmitted to Egypt, and therefore to Europe, through India. Among early Chinese discoveries in mathematics were methods of solving numerical equations and the development of magic squares and circles, which gave a great stimulus to studies in geometry and astronomy.

The Arabs, Greeks, and Romans took up the discoveries of the Asiatic peoples, and the Egyptians enlarged them and passed them forward to us. The Arabs solved cubic equations by geometrical means, perfected the basic principles of trigonometry, and made great advances in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and astronomy.

A survey of the early history of science indicates that from the remotest period man was engaged in grappling with the great principle of causation. Progress was necessarily slow at first on account of the scarcity of tested data. Then it became more rapid. Soon after the founding of the great city of Babylon we find that the Babylonians were possessed of enough knowledge of the arts and sciences to enable them to become world traders and great industrial undertakers. They built many cities and lived highly civilized lives. The history of modern science may very properly be dated from the building of Babylon.