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AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

THE HALL OF
THE AGE OF MAN

By HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN

GUIDE LEAFLET SERIES, No. 52
FIRST EDITION, 1921 SECOND EDITION, REVISED 1923
All Illustrations Copyrighted by the American Museum

Collection of Native North American Indian Books,
Historical Books, Atlases, plus other Important ail*
thors and family heirloom books.

As of 12-31-93

VISITORS WHO DESIRE TO STUDY MORE CAREFULLY THE EXHIBITS
AND COLLECTIONS IN THE

HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

will find a Reading Table and on request will be supplied by a Hall
Attendant with the following reading matter:

The Age of Mammals

By Henry Fairfield Osborn. Edition of 19 10.

Men op the Old Stone Age

By Henry Fairfield Osborn. Edition of 1921,

Tour op the Stone Age in 1921

By Henry Fairfield Osborn. Reprint from Natural History,

The Pliocene Man op Foxhall, in East Anglia
The Dawn Man of Piltdown, Sussex
Our Ancestors Arrive in Scandinavia
Brittany Four Thousand Years Ago

A Guide to the Fossil Remains op Man in the British Museum,
(Natural History)

By A. Smith Woodward. Third Edition, 1022.
Other recent works of reference which may be found on application
in the American Museum Library are:

Les Hommes Fossiles

By Marcellin Boule, Paris, 1921,
(The most complete existing work on fossil man.)

The Origin and Evolution op the Human Dentition

By William K. Gregory. Edition of 1922.

■ V

The HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN is designed to show what we
know of Man and his environment during the long period of geologic time
in which man rose from a condition of limited intelligence and subordina¬
tion to the Animal World to his present condition of great intelligence
and mastery both of the Animal World and of many of the principal forces
of Nature.

The exhibit is arranged in an educational manner so as to present
very simply, very truthfully, and very clearly, our actual knowledge,
and not to confuse the visitor with theories or speculations.

The actual fossil remains of Man are represented by casts which are
colored as nearly as possible to duplicate the originals which are to be
found only in the great museums of Europe. Great pains are taken to
secure casts of the very latest discoveries in various parts of the world.
The beginning of this collection was a gift of Dr. J. Leon Williams in 1915,
and it is constantly being amplified by gifts from other friends and from
museums abroad.

The models and restorations and mural paintings of man and of
the great mammals among which he lived and struggled represent
the knowledge of more than a century of exploration and anatomical
study by the leading students of Comparative Anatomy, Palaeontology
from the time of Cuvier in 1790 to the present period

TrrpTwprwi

Neanderthal Man
Modeled by Dr. J. H. McGregor on cast of
aux Saints, France, in 1908.

skull found at La Chapelle

Neanderthal I\Ian Cro-Magnon Man

Homo neanderthalensis Homo sapiens

Three Great Races of Prehistoric MaV.

IVIodels by Professor J. H. McGregor.

The Hall of the Age of Man in the
American Museum

By HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN

Second Edition, reprinted, with additions and changes from Natural History, the Journal of the
American Museum of Natural History, for May-June, 1920, pages 228-246.

The exhibits in the Hall of the Age of Man are intended to illustrate what is
known of the origin, relationships and early history of man, as deduced from his
remains and primitive implements, and also to show the animals by which he was
surrounded in the early stages of his existence. These animals are shown not only
as mounted skeletons but in a series of large mural paintings portraying them as they
appeared in the flesh amid their natural surroundings. These paintings are the result
of the study of their fossil remains and their careful comparison with related existing
animals, a work to which the author has devoted many years of study. Hence they
give an accurate and vivid idea of the animals that were the contemporaries of early
races of man in various regions of the world.

A series of cases in the center of the hall are devoted to the story of man, and that
it can be compressed into so small a space is an indication of the scarcity of his re¬
mains, for here are displayed reproductions of the most notable specimens that have
been discovered. It has been necessary to use copies, for the actual specimens are
few in number and scattered through many museums in widely separated parts of
the world,

The beginning of the Age of Man, some 500,000 years ago, roughly
estimated as the close of the Age of Mammals, marks in reality
but the beginning of the close of the Age of Mammals. The
extinction of the most superb mammals that the earth has ever produced,
during the early stages of human evolution, progressed from natural
causes due directly or indirectly to the Glacial epoch. With the intro-

Trinil Ape-man
Pithecanthropus erecius

Fig. 1.

HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

duction of firearms the destruction has proceeded with increasing
rapidity, and today it is going on, by the use of guns and steel traps, at
a more rapid rate than ever. By the middle of this century man will be
alone amid the ruins of the mammalian world he has destroyed, the
period of the Age of Mammals will have entirely closed, and the Age of
Man will have reached a numerical climax, from which some statisticians
believe it will probably recede, because we are approaching the point of
the over-population of the earth in three of the five great continents.

Man as a Primate, Case I

A few of the more striking points of anatomical agreement between
men and apes are illustrated in the first A case, which shows comparative
series of skulls, lower jaws, brain-casts and teeth.

In this exhibit skulls of the great man apes (at the right in Case I) are
placed for comparison with those of some of the known extinct or fossil
races of man, each ascending along a line of its own. Copies of the most
recent discoveries in various parts of the world are placed in this series ;
in fact, this entire exhibit is designed to show from time to time our
progress in discovery, to present actual evidence in place of theories
and speculations, and to show how very limited this evidence is as
compared with the abundant evidence in the ancestry, for example, of
the horse (shown in the hall of the Age of Mammals).

The Ascent of Man

Man has a long line of ancestry of his own, perhaps two million or
more years in length. The cradle of the human race was, in our opinion,
in Asia, in regions not yet explored by palaeontologists. One reason that
human and prehuman fossil remains are rare is that the ancestors of man
lived partly among the trees and forests; this does not mean that they
were arboreal; they lived chiefly on the ground.^ Even when living in a
more open country the ancestors of man were alert to escape the floods
and sandstorms which entombed animals like the horse of the open
country and of the plains. Hence fossil remains of man as well as of his
ancestors are extremely rare until the period of burial began.

The earliest known human remains of the Trinil, Piltdown and
Heidelberg races consist principally of portions of skulls, of jaws, and
teeth. Individuals of the prehistoric races of Europe are now
represented by casts in the Hall of the Age of Man. The museum series

['This refers only to the higher, more recent ancestors of man. The most thorough studies of
the anatomy of the foot of man and other primates have brought strong support to the view that
the human foot has been derived from an earlier ape-like stage in which the great toe could be used
in climbing. W. K. G.]

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bottom, Sivapithecus at the left, and several species of Dryopithecus and allied genera at the right. The geologic ages (Oligocene, Miocene, etc.) are indicated by
the horizontal zones. The black lines indicate the relationshi])s as inferred by Dr. W. K. Gregory.

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Fig. 2. A, B, C, D, skull fragments found by Dawson and Smith Woodward in 1911,
1912. E, jaw fragment found by Dawson in 1912. F, canine tooth found by Father Teil¬
hard de Chardin in 1913. G, nasal bones found by Dawson in 1913. H, single worked flint
found near original skull fragments by Smith Woodward. Jaw one-third natural size;
other fragments a bit larger than one-third (distorted somewhat by camera).

Fi g 3. A, side and top views of jaw of first Piltdown man, with first and second lower
molar teeth in place. B, side and top views of first lower molar tooth of second Piltdown
man. About three-fourths natural size.

Fig. 4.
Germany.

The ^‘Heidelberg jaw/’ found
About one-third natural size.

Mauer, near Heidelberg,

Fig. 5. Sand-pit at Mauer, near Heidelberg. X marks the spot where the
jaw was found, in place and beneath 79 feet of glacial and post glacial deposits.

HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

began in 1915 with the gift of the J. Leon Williams Collection, and has
been enriched by additions from the museums of London, Paris, and
recently by the Neanderthal man of Krapina, presented by Professor K.
Gorjanovic-Kramberger, through the kindness of Col. C. W. Furlong;
also the Talgai skull from South Australia, presented by Dr. Stewart
A. Smith.

The earliest known man is the Foxhall man, known at present only
by his flint implements, partly burned with fire, found near the little
hamlet of Foxhall, near Norwich, on the east coast of England. These
flints, discovered in 1921, constitute the first proofs that man of suffi¬
cient intelligence to make a variety of flint implements and to use fire
existed in Britain at the close of the Age of Mammals; this is the first
true Tertiary man ever found.

The Trinil ape-man, the Pithecanthropus of Java is the lowest of the
known human or subhuman races. It is called ape-man because it is
more human than ape-like. The restored head by Professor J. Howard
McGregor, of Columbia University, is designed to show its half human,
half anthropoid resemblance, as suggested by the top of the cranium,
the only part known, which is far more human than that of any ape
cranium, and at the same time far more ape-like than that of any
human cranium. It is not impossible that this ape-man is related to
the Neanderthal man.

The Most Ancient Human Races, Piltdown and Heidelberg

A few deep brown fragments of a skull and jaw and one tooth repre¬
sent all the remains known of the Piltdown man, discovered in England
by Charles Dawson in 1912. Several reconstructions of the Piltdown skull
have been made, including the original by Professor A. Smith Woodward
in London, in the British Museum, another, in this country, by Professor
McGregor. The problem whether the Piltdown jaw belongs to this
human skull or whether it belongs to a fossil chimpanzee is now actually
settled, because a second specimen of the Piltdown man has been found
two miles from the first in the same Piltdown gravels; this specimen has
the same kind of lower grinding teeth and the same form in the bone of
the forehead. The skull itself is of a primitive human type, the brain
cast showing a lowly development of the higher cerebral association
centers (Elliot Smith 1922).

Unquestionably the next most ancient human relic which has thus
far been discovered is the jaw of the so-called Heidelberg man, a fossil
which may be 250,000 years old. It is notable for its great size and for
its lack of a protruding bony chin. The Heidelberg man may be
ancestral to the Neanderthal man.

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HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

The Neanderthal Race

The Neanderthal man represents the oldest fossil human race of
which the skeleton is fully known. The remains are very abundant,
and the American Museum owns reproductions of many skulls and parts
of skulls found during the last half century in Spain, Germany, France,
and Hungary. Foremost of these is the skullcap found near Diisseldorf,
Germany, in 1856, which constitutes the type of the Neanderthal race
itself.

Of great interest is the reconstruction by Professor McGregor of a
Neanderthal female head, based upon a skull found at Gibraltar in 1848,
which gives us the head characters of the women of this very primitive
race.

Nearly perfect is the skull from La Chapelle-aux-Saints, originally
restored by Professor Marcellin Boule, of Paris, and reconstructed by
Professor McGregor; this distinguished American expert in the anatomy
of palaeolithic man is now engaged upon the reconstruction of the entire
skeleton and body of the Neanderthal man. This life-sized Neanderthal
model will be one of themost interesting exhibits in the American Museum ;
it represents many years of laborious study and research by Professor
McGregor, who was sent by the Museum on a special tour through
Europe to examine all the known fossil remains of the Neanderthal race,
representing forty or fifty individuals altogether, including the last
specimen to be found, that of La Ferrassie, France, which is now being
described by Dr. Boule.

The Rodesian Race

The most recent discovery is the Rhodesian man. Homo rhodesiensis,
made in 1921, in a cave at the Broken Hill Mine, northern Rhodesia,
Africa, where the human remains were found in association both with
stone and bone implements, and with broken bones of animals which had
evidently been used as food. This man was in the Stone Age of industry,
using scrapers and knives of quartz and quartzite. The forehead is
very low and the ridges above the orbit are excessively prominent; the
opening for the nose was very wide, but the palate and teeth are like
those in existing races. The brain is of a very low human type of the
capacity of 1,280 c.c. (see Smith Woodward’s Guide, pp. 29-31).

The Neanderthal Flint Workers {Mural I)

The mural of the Neanderthal group of flint workers shows in the
distance, along the Dordogne River, herds of woolly rhinoceroses.
The center of interest is the flint industry, which, with the chase, occu-

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HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

pied the entire energy of the Neanderthals. Since the Neanderthal
type is totally different from any modern human type, it must be studied
from models of its own. The group is very carefully arranged to show
the physical characters of this man: the knees slightly bent in the
peculiar standing posture, the broad, heavy shoulders, slightly stooped,
and the massive neck and the head set well forward. In the back¬
ground is the famous cavern of Le Moustier, which gives its name to the
Mousterian period of flint industry pursued by the Neanderthals.

The Cro-Magnon Race of High Type

The highly evolved Cro-Magnon race entered Europe from the east
and drove out the Neanderthals. The Cro-Magnons were people like
ourselves in point of evolution, and the characters of the head and
cranium reflect their moral and spiritual potentiality. This was a race
of warriors, of hunters, of painters and sculptors far superior to any of
their predecessors. The contrast between the Cro-Magnon head and
those of the Neanderthals which precede them is as wide as it possibly
could be. It is intellectual and thoughtful.

Cro-Magnon Artists Painting the Mammoth {Mural II)

One of the recent murals in the hall of the Age of Man (over the door¬
way opposite the Cro-Magnon exhibit) represents four of the Cro-
Magnon artists actually painting the great fresco in the cave of Font-de-
Gaume, Dordogne, France. The writer has been studying the composi¬
tion of this group for years, with Mr. Charles R. Knight, artist, aided
by advice of the Abbe Henri Breuil of the Institut de Paleontologie
Humaine, Paris, as well as of Mr. N. C. Nelson, archaeologist at the
American Museum of Natural History.

There are six figures in the group; four are depicted partly nude to
show their anatomy in contrast with that of the Neanderthals. The two
half-kneeling figures are holding up small lamps to illuminate the smooth
surface of the limestone wall on which the procession of mammoths is
being depicted. The half-erect figure represents an artist with pointed
flint incising the outlines of a mammoth on the wall. The fully erect
central figure represents an artist laying on the colors. A kneeling figure
is preparing the colors on a rock. This design enables the painter to
show the tall, slender proportions of the men of this Cro-Magnon race.
The standing figure to the left is that of a chieftain clothed in well-made
fur garments, who carries on top of his staff his baton de cornmandement
as the insignia of his rank. The only illumination is that of the flicker¬
ing wicks in the small oil lamps.

HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

Men of the New Stone Age

Men of the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, continued to used chipped
stone implements, but unlike their predecessors, they often polished them.
They were the direct forerunners of civilization. They cultivated the
ground, raising cereals, and had domesticated cattle and other animals ;
they made pottery and wove textiles; they lived in villages of huts,
often built on piles near the shores of lakes. They erected sepulchres
and temples of huge stones (dolmens, megaliths).

The Neolithic Stag Hunters {Mural III)

This mural group also is in its place in the hall (at the west end),
having been completed in 1919. It represents men of the Nordic race,
brown- or fair-haired, hunters of the stag, living along the southern shores
of the Baltic in the earliest stage of the New Stone Age, a stage known as
the Campignian from remains of huts and rudely polished stone imple¬
ments found near Campigny in France. The scene is on the border of
one of the northern beech forests and represents the return from the
hunt. After the ardor of the chase the hunters have thrown off their
fur garments. The chieftain in the center is partly clad in furs; in the
coming winter season he will be wholly fur clad. His son, a fair-haired
youth with a necklace of bear claws, grasps a bow and arrow and holds in
leash a wolf dog, ancestor of the modern sheep dog of northern France.
The hunters, with spears tipped with stone heads, are resting from the
chase. Two vessels of pottery indicate the introduction of the new
ceramic art, accompanied by crude ornamentation.

This race was courageous, warlike, hardy, but of a lower intelligence
and artistic order than the Cro-Magnons; it was chiefly concerned, in a
rigorous northern climate, with the struggle for existence, in which the
qualities of endurance, tribal loyalty, and the rudiments of family life
were being cultivated. Rude huts take the place of caverns and shelters,
which are now mostly abandoned.

These were tall men with high, narrow skulls, related to the existing
Nordic race, more powerful in build than the people ofThe Swiss Lake
Dwellings. Skulls and skeletons representative of this hardy northern
type are abundantly known in Scandinavia, but have not found their
way to our American Museum collections as yet.

The Great Fossil Mammals Contemporaneous with and Hunted by Man

The hall of the Age of Man contains four chief collections of the
mammals of the world during the. period of the Age of Man. In Europe
man hunted the reindeer, the wild horses and cattle, and the mammoth.
He used the hide of the reindeer for clothing, the flesh and marrow for
food. He carved the bones as well as the ivory tusks of the mammoth.

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Men of the Nordic race, brown- or fair-haired, living along the southern shores of the Baltic in the earliest stage of the New Stone Age.

HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

The mammoth, the northern, hairy type of elephant known to
early explorers of fossil remains, was foremost among the great mammals
hunted by man. The previous history of the proboscidean order is also
shown in the Hall of the Age of Man,

This is one of the romances of evolution quite equal in interest to
the evolution of the horse. This collection is by far the most complete in
existence; it contains as much in the way of complete skeletons as those
in all the other museums of the world combined. The early stages in the
evolution of the proboscideans, beginning with the Palxomastodon dis¬
covered in the Fayum region of northern Africa, carry us back into times
far antecedent to the Age of Man, namely, into an early period of the
Age of Mammals, the Oligocene. Thus the visitor can see here the entire
history of the evolution of the proboscideans, which taken altogether is
the most majestic line of evolution that has thus far been discovered.
The evolution of the proboscideans culminates in the mastodons and
mammoths.

The Four Seasons in the Glacial Epoch {Murals IV -VII)

The four great murals on themorth walls of the Hall of the Age of
Man represent scenes during the four seasons of the year near the close
of the Glacial epoch in the Northern Hemisphere.

These four seasons belong in the same period of geologic time,
namely, the final glacial stage, the period of the maximum advance of
the glaciers over the entire Northern Hemisphere, of the most intense
cold, and of the farthest southward extension of the northern types of
mammals. This is the time of the Cro-Magnon race, and our knowledge
of the mammals, reindeer, and rhinoceroses is derived from the actual
Cro-AIagnon paintings and etchings, chiefly those found within the
caverns. The murals of the four seasons are as follows :

IV. Midwinter. — The woolly rhinoceros in northern France.

V. Early Winter. — The reindeer and mammoth on the river Somme,
France.

VI. Midsummer. — The mastodon, royal bison, and horse on the Mis¬
souri River, in the latitude of Kansas.

VII. Autumn. — The deer-moose, tapir, and giant beaver, in northern
New Jersey.

Glacial Midwinter in Northern France {Mural IV)

The woolly rhinoceros, like the woolly mammoth, was heavily en¬
wrapped in hair, beneath which was a thick coat of fine wool. With this
protection the animal was quite indifferent to the wintry blasts which

THE WOOLLY RHINOCEROS IN A GLACIAL WINTER, NORTHERN FRANCE (MURAL

HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

swept over the steppe-like country of northern France. This golden-
brown wool is actually preserved on the side of the face of one specimen
discovered, which is now in the Museum of Petrograd. The head of the
rhinoceros was long and narrow, like that of the white rhinoceros of
Africa, but the jaws were narrower and the upper lips were more pointed.
It is an animal quite distinct from the great black rhinoceros still
extant in Africa, which is a grazer with broad lips. In the distance in
the painting are shown the saigas, antelopes which wandered over France
at that time, and a group of woolly mammoths.

Early Winter Scene on the Somme River in Northern France {Mural V)

The scene represents the two herds, reindeer and mammoth,
migrating southward from the banks of the river Somme. These reindeer
and mammoths are, in fact, depicted very precisely in the paintings and
engravings left by the Cro-Magnon artists — especially in the cavern of
Font-de-Gaume. It is a striking fact that, in the case of the mammoth,
every painting, drawing, etching, and model which the Cro-Magnon
man has given us exhibits exactly the same characters: the long hairy
covering, the very high hump above the forehead, the notch between the
hump and the neck, the very high shoulders, the short back, the rapid
slope of the back over the hind quarters, the short tail. There is no
doubt that, aided by these wonderful Palseolithic designs, the artist,
Mr. Knight, has given us a very close representation of the actual
appearance of the woolly mammoth.

Midsummer on the Missouri {Mural IV)

The summer scene on the Missouri River (on the parallel of Kansas)
represents the region south of the farthest advance of the ice sheet. The
mastodons are grouped in such a manner as to show the characteristic
low, flattened head, the long low back, the symmetrical fore and hind
quarters, the extremely short, massive limbs, and the very broad and
massive hip region as seen from behind. In the center of the picture
stands the majestic Bison regius, the royal bison, known only from a skull,
a superb specimen with the horn cores attached, in the collection of the
American Museum. These animals were like gigantic buffalo or bison,
beside which the modern buffalo would appear very diminutive. The
characters of the hair and wool are not known, but it is assumed that they
were similar to those of the existing buffalo, since the paintings of the
bison by the Cro-Magnon artists in France all show the distinctive beard
below the chin. At the right is a group of wild American horses of the
period, the last of their race in this country; the species is Equus scotti,
the skeleton of which has been discovered in northern Texas.

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Painted by Charles R. Knight, under the direction of
Henry Fairfield Osborn. Copyrighted photograph.

THE MASTODON

This distant relative of the elephants may have been a contemporary of early man in the closing phases of
the period of the glaciers, in North America.

Painted by Charles R. Knight, under the direction of
Henry Fairfield Osborn. Copyrighted photograph.

THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH

This great elephant was characteristic of the latter part of the period of the glaciers in Europe. He was
hunted by the Cro-Magnons.

AUTUMN IN NORTHERN NEW JERSEY DURING LATE GLACIAL TIMES (MURAL VII)

The deer-moose (Cervalces) was an extinct species of deer combining characters of the deer and of the moose; the tapirs (center), are related to those
now found in Central and South America; the giant beaver (right) is now extinct.

HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

Early Autumn in New Jersey {Mural VII)

The autumn scene in northern New Jersey embraces three very
distinctive North American types of the period, all of which have become
extinct. The deer-moose, Cervalces (to the left), was described by
Professor W. B. Scott, of Princeton, from a single skeleton found in the
gravel beds of northern New Jersey, which is now preserved complete
in the Princeton Museum. The American fossil tapir (in the center) is
known from sparse remains, the best of which were among the earliest
discoveries of the pioneers of American palaeontology. The giant
rodents of the genus Castor aides (see two individuals at the right in the
painting) are known from nearly complete skulls and skeletons discovered
in Ohio and other central western states.

The Tar Pools of Southern California {Mural VIII)

This mural represents a scene in southern California, in the vicinity
of the Rancho-la-Brea deposits, including the remains of the astonishing
group of animals caught in the asphalt trap, so splendidly represented in
the collection of the Museum of History, Science, and Art, of Los Angeles.

The most characteristic animals of North and South America that
lived during the Age of Man (see the south side of the hall) are known
through some of the unique remains from the famous deposits of Rancho-
la-Brea of southern California, especially the sloths, saber-toothed tigers,
and wolves of the period— to which it is hoped that we may add some of
the less abundant forms, like the camel and the horse. So far as possible,
through exploration and exchange, this quarter section of the hall will
represent the mammalian life of North America, in contrast with the
mammalian life of South America during the same period of time.

A Loess Storm on the Painyas of Argentina {Mural IX)

A mural on the western wall (at the left) of the Hall of the Age of
Man presents a South American scene during the Old Stone Age. It
depicts the ancient pampas of Argentina with the winding river La
Plata in the background, and a typical extinct mammalian fauna. In
the distance at the right a violent dust storm is transporting columns of
fine, impalpable dust known as loess.

The Museum is extraordinarily rich in the great Pampean Collection
presented by certain of the trustees in 1899. This collection shows the
close connections between North and South America in glacial times.

One of the most wonderful fossil groups in the Museum, if not the
most wonderful, is the sloth and glyptodont group (center of southern
side of the Hall of the Age of Man). This group is still in preparation.

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ms are quietly browsing, while at the right are some of the slender-limbed Macrauchenias.

HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

It includes five sloths of three varieties (the Mylodon, Lestodon and
Scelidotherium) and three glyptodonts. These animals, so entirely diff¬
erent in external appearance and habits, nevertheless belong to the
same order of mammals, the Edentata, which, as its name implies, is
distinguished by the absence of enamel on the teeth. It is important to
bring these two animals together in the same exhibit, so as to show
the very wide contrasts in adaptation which may occur within the limits
of a single mammalian order: the sloths covered with long hair and
with vestiges of armature embedded in the skin, the glyptodonts nearly
hairless, and encased in powerful bony armature, which renders them
completely immune to attack by the saber-toothed tiger of the period.

Appendix

The Family Tree of Man
By William K. Gregory

Man is no doubt vastly superior to his distant relatives the an¬
thropoid (man-like) apes. His brain and mind are on far higher levels of
development, he walks erect, he is able to speak. Man has a long line
of ancestry of his own, extending for perhaps two million years or more,
far back into the Age of Mammals.

Yet the science of comparative anatomy has revealed the fact
that man is constructed upon the same general anatomical plan as that
of his more backward relatives, the gorilla and the chimpanzee, and that
he is connected with them by a very large number of anatomical marks of
distant kinship. The common plan, with differences in detail, upon
which man and the great apes are constructed, becomes more and more
evident and indisputable as our practical knowledge and experience of
human and comparative anatomy increase.

The science of comparative anatomy, in combination with the
science of palaeontology, has provided the basis for the exhibit called
^^The Family Tree of Man,’’ which is an attempt to present in a simple
graphic form what is accepted by the best scientific authorities.

The Primates first became distinguishable from other orders of
mammals very early in the Age of Mammals, that is, some three million
years ago, according to the most conservative estimate. The first
Primates were already adapted for living in trees and had grasping hind
feet, but as may be judged from their small crania, they were greatly
inferior in brain development to their modern descendants. This stage
of evolution is represented in the exhibit by a cast of the skull of an
extinct primate, Notharctus oshorni, from the Middle Eocene of north¬
western Wyoming.

The next two stages of ascent are so far known only from two small
lower jaws dating from the Lower Oligocene of Egypt. In the first of

HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN

these, Parapithecus, the lower jaw and dentition are intermediate in
character between the Eocene tarsioid primates and the oldest anthro¬
poid. In the second jaw (Propliopithecus) the number and position of the
teeth and the form and detailed arrangement of the cusps of all the teeth
are exactly such as would be expected in the common starting point for
the divergent lines leading to the gibbons, to the higher apes and to man.

In the long ages of the Miocene epoch (which is at the beginning
of the second half of the Age of Mammals) there was a great branching
out into different lines on the part of the primitive anthropoid stock, some
of which began to foreshadow the modern gorillas and chimpanzees, while
others (e.g., Sivapithecus) showed certain pre-human characters in the
jaw and molar teeth.

By the latter part of the Age of Mammals the pre-human stock had
probably become broken up into several distinct species, some of
which were more backward, others more progressive toward higher types.
The most backward of these early pre-human races was the Pithecan¬
thropus or Ape-man, from the Upper Pliocene (late Age of Mammals) or
Lower Pleistocene (early Age of Man) of Java. The top of his skull is
strongly reminiscent of the apes and indeed it was long debated whether
Pithecanthropus was a progressive ape, or a primitive man; but the im¬
print of the frontal lobes of the brain on the inside of the skull show that
he was an extremely primitive man, perhaps ancestral to the Heidelberg
and Neanderthal races.

The Dawn Man (Eoanthropus) of the L^pper Pliocene, or Lower
Pleistocene of England, had a more progressive type of brain case than
that of Pithecanthropus, but his lower jaw was very ape-like, lacking a
bony chin.

The Heidelberg jaw (Lower Pleistocene age, Germany), although
already definitely human, is probably several hundred thousand years old.
The jaw is of great size, with retreating chin and primitive human teeth.

The Neanderthal Race occupied Europe in the latter part of the
Glacial period. The head is large, but the forehead is low, with strongly
projecting brow ridges.

The Cro-Magnon race occupied Europe in the closing stages of
Glacial times. It was in a high stage of evolution and belongs with
modern races of man in the species Ho7no sapiens.

The Australian aboriginals represent one of the most primitive of
the surviving races of man. They are probably distantly related to the
most primitive peoples of India and to the early stock of the white races.

The detailed relationships of the other races of men are illustrated
in special exhibits in the Introduction to Anthropology, now on the
second floor, extreme west tower.

Fig. 6. The progress of primitive man as shown by his tools and
weapons.

A. IMPLEMENTS TYPICAL OF THE EARLY PALEOLITHIC AGE

1. Hand-ax or chopping tool of flint.

2. Dagger or perforating tool of flint.

3. Implement of flint for various purposes, such as cutting and
scraping.

B. IMPLEMENTS AND ORNAMENTS TYPICAL OF THE LATE

PALEOLITHIC AGE

1. Knife blade or spear point of flint.

2. Knife or etching tool of flint.

3. End scraper or planing tool of flint.

4. Harpoon point of bone.

5. Lance point of bone.

6. Beads or pendants of elk teeth.

7. Beads of univalve shells.

S. Fragment of bone with partial outline of a horse etched upon it.

9. Fragment of bone with traces of geometric ornamentation.

Fig. 7. The progress of primitive man as shown by his tools and
weapons (continued),

IMPLEMENTS TYPICAL OF THE NEOLITHIC AGE

1, Ax-hammer of stone, perforated for hafting.

2 Ax of flint, partly polished.

3. Saw of flint, one edge notched.

4. Dagger of flint, probably in imitation of metallic form.

5. Knife or sickle blade of flint.

6. Arrow point of flint, also made in larger sizes and used as spear
points.

STONE CULTURES

HUMAN RACES

CONTEMPORARY MAMMALS

HISTORICAL

PERIOD

EXISTING MAMMALS

NEOL 1 T H 1C

PERIOD

MASTODON(?)MAMMOTH

AZ ILIAN

CRENELLE

MAGDALENIAN

CRO-MAGNON

SOLUTRIAN

AURIGNACIAN

GRIMALDI

REINDEER

COLD

NEANDERTHAL

MAMMOTH

MOUSTERIAN

WOOLLY RHINOCEROS

WARM

MOUSTERIAN

ELEPHAS ANTIQUUS
HIPPOPOTAM JS

COLD

ACHEULEAN

WARM

ACHEULEAN

KRAPINA

LATE

CHELLEAN

-J

EHRINGSDORF

CHELLEAN

ELEPHAS ANTIQUUS
HIPPOPOTAMUS

EARLY

CHELLEAN

HEIDELBERG

ELEPHAS ANTIQUUS

RHINOCEROS ETRUSCUS
HIPPOPOTAMUS

CROMERIAN

SABRE-TOOTH

ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS

MUSKOX

PILTDOWN ?

REINDEER

FOXHALLIAN

Fig. 8. Sequence of Old Stone Age (Paleolithic) in Europe.

The order in which the races of primitive men appeared in Europe and the
most striking mammals living at the same time.

FOR THE PEOPLE
FOR EDUCATION
FOR SCIENCE

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