PDF - Wallace Online

432 TROPICAL NATUREadvance, man's intellectual and moral development reachedalmost its highest level in a very remote past. The lower,the more animal, but often the more energetic types have,however, always been far the more numerous ;hence suchestablished societies as have here and there arisen under theguidance of higher minds have always been liable to be sweptaway by the incursions of barbarians. Thus in almost everypart of the globe there may have been a long succession ofpartial civilisations, each in turn succeeded by a period ofbarbarism ;and this view seems supported by the occurrenceof degraded types of skull along with such " as might havebelonged to a philosopher," at a time when the mammoth andthe reindeer inhabited southern France.Nor need we fear that there is not time enough for therise and decay of so many successive civilisations as this viewwould imply, for the opinion is now gaining ground amonggeologists that palaeolithic man was really preglacial, and thatthe great gap (marked alike by a change of physical conditionsand of animal life)which in Europe always separateshim from his neolithic successor, was caused by the comingon and passing away of the great ice age.If the views now advanced are correct, many, perhapsmost, of our existing savages are the successors of higherraces ;and their arts, often showing a wonderful similarity indistant continents, may have been derived from a commonsource among more civilised peoples.