A Woman Of The Ice Age

Author : Louis Gratacap
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781981333615
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (336 download)

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Download or read book A Woman of the Ice Age by L. P. Gratacap written by Louis Gratacap and published by . This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Prehistoric Man needs rehabilitation. At least it can be urged that there are possible phases of the prehistoric man that can be elevated into emotional dignity, not unworthy of romance and heroics. It has been too commonly assumed, under the omnipresent pressure of scientific generalizations, that the prehistoric was a semi-feral type of human animal, squalid, distorted, simian-faced, thin-thighed and adumbrant, without speech, perchance groping his blind and biological course upward, by some sort of evolution, into a reasoning, talking, purposive and spiritual creature; that he was a faunal expression simply, like a triceratops in the Upper Cretaceous, or a mud-buffalo in the Philippines.But there is some sense in claiming for him the possibilities of dramatic action and feeling, assuring to him the restitution of poetic feeling, religious designs, and emotional episodes. It is sensible, for if we place the prehistoric anywhere before the advent of human annals, the length in time of his existence is so enormous that it is inconceivable that[Pg 2] he could not have evolved speech, and if speech then the retinue of feelings and ideas which arise with speech, just as speech itself is the index of a cerebral cortex that has become elaborately modified. Let us look at this claim more closely; let us even affectionately increase, intensify and adorn it.This story has been written under the influence of a melodramatic assumption, hostile, it will be said, to probability, and essentially fanciful, chimerical and fabulous. It cannot be denied that it departs, perhaps summarily, from the postulates of arch�ology, as to the life and demeanor and mental compass, or, more particularly, emotional resources of that necessary object who must, to relieve anthropology of its lugubrious alarm over accepting a quicker entrance into the world of our race, have lived in the great Prehistoric Day of Geology.In the day which saw the passage into sedimentary records of the last of the Tertiaries, and carried on its calendars the rise, amplitude and disappearance of the Ice Age, in that day Man lived, and he lived all through it, and it was a long day, measured by thousands of years. But why must it be predicated that man could not have reached in that day such a range of feelings as are involved in the rise and refinement of love? It is perfectly true, as it is entirely permissible so to choose, that this tale of the Woman of the Ice Age, has to do with the advanced types of prehistoric[Pg 3] man, and that thus typified the author has reason to insist that Lhatto and Ogga are just creations.The physical perfection of Lhatto and Ogga cannot be wisely disputed. The prehistoric is usually thought of as a half-emancipated ape, shaggy with hair, protuberant in eye-brows and mouth, shuffling, chattering his uncouth experiments in speech or conveying his desires by grimaces, shrugs, gestures and contortions. But when we realize, that however explained, evolution does not present us with abundant intermediate forms in its processes of improvement, but rather offers us a range of ascending steps, or positions, with the blended connexions removed, it is quite unlikely that in the evolution of man there was any hesitancy in passing from the monkey state to the rights of primogeniture as God's image.