Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Man

MAN, a collective term for the human species. Since the middle of the 19th century there has been a growing tendency to refer all the sciences relating to man to one comprehensive science, Anthropology. Darwin is of the opinion that man sprung from one of the naked mollusks called Ascidians, the line of descent or ascent running through some humble fish, like the lancelot, then up through the ganoids and other fish, the amphibians, reptiles and birds, the Monotremata, the lowest Mammals, the Marsupialia, the Placental Mammalia, the Lemurs, the Simiadæ, and the anthropoid apes.

Blumenbach divided mankind into five races, the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Ethiopian, the American, and the Malay. Cuvier reduced the five to three, the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian. Pritchard extended them to seven, the Iranian (the same as the Caucasian), the Turanian (the same as the Mongolian), the Native Americans, the Hottentots, the Negroes, the Papuas or Woolly-headed Polynesians, the Alfuro and Native Australians. Latham divides mankind into three varieties, Mongolidæ, Atlantidæ, and Japetidæ. Huxley's classification of mankind is into the Australoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Xanthochroic, and Melanchroic races.

Tools distinguish man from other animals, and so where tools are found in geological strata and debris it is known that man must have been. The earliest tools were flaked stones and cracked bones. All flaked stones and cracked bones, however, may not be tools. Some of the flaked stones, for example, may have been produced by action of fire. Man is the only animal which uses fire, of course, but then fire may exist without the agency of man. Lightning, volcanic action, spontaneous combustion, and burning wells and springs may produce conflagrations, and therefore produce flaked flint stones. The earliest deposits in which stone tools and weapons clearly shaped by man are known to have been found are the gravel beds in the valleys of the Thames in England, the Somme in France, the Manzares in Spain, and in other portions of western Europe. These tools and hunting weapons are found alongside of tropical fauna, like the lion, elephant, hippopotamus, and large apes.

It is known, therefore, that man lived in Europe during a period when that country had a tropical climate. But geological deposits on top of the remains of tropical animals and man's tools contain the remains of arctic animals, like the musk ox, reindeer, and white fox. Man, therefore, hunted the tropical lion and elephant in England, Spain, and France before he hunted the arctic reindeer and white fox. The question, therefore, to be determined is, How long ago was the ice age? From all evidence it has been agreed that from 10,000 to 12,000 years have elapsed since the departure of the glacial mass from the now thickly settled portions of Europe and the N. part of the United States. The period of formation of the glacial mass and duration of the ice age is placed by the investigators at from 20,000 to 30,000 years. Allowing additional time for the primeval man in the tropical period to develop and spread over the area under consideration, the total of 50,000 years is arrived at as the approximate time which has elapsed since the earliest authentic traces of man on the earth.