The Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Author:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: evolution, phenomenon of man, love energy, globalization, noogenesis, matter, conscious evolution, omega point, teilhard de chardin, noosphere

■ - MODERN - NEOLITHIC

Homo sapiens

Neanderthaloid

Prehominions

+ — + Australopithecus Socialized Zone

J

A //J

diagram 4. The development of the human Layer. The figures on the left indicate thousands of years. They are a minimum estimate and should probably be at least doubled. The hypothetical zone of convergence on the point Omega is obviously not to scale. By analogy with other living layers, its duration should certainly run into thousands of years.

continental masses of the old world from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 1 Almost everywhere, at this period, we find the land being drained, ravines being carved, and thick layers of alluvium spreading over the plains. Before this great upheaval we can establish no certain trace of man anywhere. Yet it was barely over when we find chipped stone mixed with the gravels on almost all the raised lands of Africa, Western Europe and Southern Asia.

Man of the Lower Quaternary period, the contemporary and the author of these earliest tools is only known to us in two fossil remains. We know them well, however—the Pithecanthropus of Java, long represented only by a simple skull, but now by much more satisfactory specimens recendy discovered ; and the Sinanthropus of China, numerous specimens of which have been found in the last ten years. These two beings are so closely related that the nature of each would have remained obscure if we had not had the good fortune to be able to compare them. 8

What can we learn from these venerable relics which are at least some one or two hundred thousand years old ?

To begin with, anthropologists are now in agreement on one point : both Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus are already definitely hominid in their anatomy. If we arrange their skulls in series between those of the great apes on the one hand and modern man on the other, we are at once struck by the wide morphological breach, the void, apparent between them and the anthropoids, while on the human side they seem to fall naturally into the same cast. We find a relatively short face and a relatively spacious cranium. In Trinil man die cerebral capacity hardly descends below 800 c.c. while with Peking man in the biggest

1 At the end of the Villafranchian age, to be more exact. [By a decision of the International Geological Congress (1948), the Villafranchian is now included in the Pleistocene.]

* To avoid complicating the story, I will say nothing here of Heidelberg man. However ancient and remarkable his jaw, we do not know enough about him to determine his real anthropological position.

THE PHENOMENON OF MAN

males it reaches noo. 1 We find a lower jaw essentially constructed on human lines towards the symphysis, and lastly and most important of all. we find erect biped posture leaving the fore limbs free. With all these signs it is quite obvious that we are on the human side of the line.

However hominid the Pithecanthropus and Smanthropus were, judged by their physiognomy they were certainly strange creatures such as have long ago vanished from the earth.

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