ad been
often observed before the idea arose that this could be made useful, and
that where stones of the desired shape were not to be found, the shape
of those at hand might in this way be improved.
If we seek for some turning-point, some stage of progress, in which the
man-ape fairly emerged into man, perhaps it would be well to select that
which we have now reached, that in which the animal in question, which
had hitherto used the objects of nature in their natural form, first
gained the idea of manufacture and began to shape these objects by the
use of tools. In truth, the dividing line between man-ape and man was
imperceptibly fine. Various points of demarcation might be chosen, each
founded on some important step in evolution. But among them all that in
which the effort to convert the objects of nature into better weapons by
the use of tools is perhaps the best, as it was probably the first step
in that long process of manufacture to which man owes his wonderful
advance.
With this early effort at manufacture, man had reached a stage in which
he was first able to make a permanent record of his existence upon the
earth--aside from that of the very infrequent preservation of his bones
as fossil remains. A chipped stone is a permanent object. Even a very
rudely shaped one bears some indications of its origin upon its surface,
some marks pointing back to man in his early days. Unfortunately for
anthropologists, natural agencies sometimes produce effects resembling
those achieved by man's hands, and some degree of skill in manufacture
and well-marked design is necessary before one can be sure that a
seeming stone weapon has not been shaped by nature instead of man.
Within a recent period research for the evidence of early man in the
shape of chipped stones has been diligently made, with an abundance of
undoubted and a number of doubtful results. Some of these reach very far
back in time, and if actually the work of man he must have lived upon
the earth as a manufacturing animal for years that may be numbered by
the million. Seemingly chipped stones have been found that belong to the
remote Miocene geological age. With the latter are some scratches upon
bones that also seem the work of tools. But these Miocene relics are
questionable. They do not seem to surpass the shaping power of nature
herself. Unless some more indubitable relics are found, we must place
the advent of man as a tool-using animal at a much later dat
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