The Beginnings of Mankind

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The Beginnings of Mankind

        The earth is now believed to be roughly six thousand million years old. In this vast extent of time, man and his ancestors have existed for about seven hundred and fifty thousand years, while civilized man – the man who cultivates his own food and has some form of community life has been on earth only 6000-8000 years. This is under one millionth of the Earth's age. Suppose you were to stretch out a roll of paper for fifty miles, and make this represent the time that Earth has existed. Then, Civilized man's history would span just four inches of the roll – the length of a chocolate bar.

        In this comparatively short time, Man has progressed from being a simple herdsman, who invented the wheel, who learned how to make pottery and who began to need a society governed by laws, to a highly sophisticated creature able to pivot himself away from the Earth and land on the moon.

        Man lived for many thousands of years as nothing more than an animal, a member of the primate (or ape-like) group of mammals. His development was extremely slow. Most of the time, the earth was engulfed in thick ice layers, and all over the globe there were huge glaciers. This period is referred to as the Ice Age, and though it was extremely cold, various forms of life were able to exist. During the period there were intervals of warmer weather, when the polar ice-cap receded, which no doubt helped the various forms of life to develop. For near-Man, life was one unending struggle with nature, cold, winds, storms and floods. Now and again he enjoyed a respite of better weather, and we believe that this helped him to adapt himself to changing conditions. Primitive Man first appeared about three quarters of a million years ago. We call him Australopithecus, and traces of him have been found in Africa. By scientific methods such as carbon-dating, we have been able to estimate how long ago he lived. Perhaps in future years we may discover an even earlier ancestor.  Australopithecus was not really human in the sense that we understand the term. His brain was very small- less than half the size of ours and it took nearly a quarter of a million years for him to mature into the next stage- Pithecanthropus.

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         Pithecanthropus may be said to be the first specimen of a near-human being. He is an intermediate stage between ape and Man. Relics of him have been found in places such as Indonesia, Africa, Europe, and China. He seems to have developed about half a million years ago. His head rested upright on his spine, and his eyes were positioned so as to give him three dimensional vision which allowed him to judge distance. His teeth were shorter than those of his ancestors and he knew how to use the fingers and thumbs of his hands as graspers. His ...

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