The Study of Prehistoric Times

Abstract

THOUGH T. H. Huxley, having established beyond the reach of criticism ‘Man's Place in Nature’, considered that his duty as biologist and anthropologist stopped short at the limits of organic evolution, he realized, perhaps before anyone else, that the principles of evolution did not stop there. He was well aware that when a primate had made a tool and had thus become entitled to be called a man, a new vista was opened in the realm of evolution, and that by the creation of extra-corporeal organs man had discovered a new method of adjusting himself to his environment. Just as the doctrine of evolution, when applied to plants and animals, is the fundamental theme and focus of all biological research, so the evolution of civilization should hold a like place in anthropological studies, and its most important duties should be to trace, step by step, man's progress in the development of his material civilization, the evolution of his varied forms of social organizations, allied as these are with the growth of his religious conceptions and practices, until the whole series is complete from the primitive flint tool to the aeroplane or television, from the simple family group to the nation or empire. Here attention is directed to the methods that have been used and are still being employed to reconstruct man's behaviour during the period before writing was known that is termed ‘prehistoric’.