In Search of Adam: The Story of Man’s Quest for the Truth About His Earliest Ancestors

608 Pages·1956·85.785 MB·English

by  Herbert Wendt

Adam
In Search of

Adam
In Search of
The story of man's quest for the truth
about his earliest ancestors
BY
HERBERT WENDT
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY
JAMES CLEUGH
Illustrated with photographs
and line cuts
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON
W$t &tbers;foe ipresa Cambribge
1956
Copyright © 1955 by Herbert Wendt •
All rights reserved including the right
to reproduce this book or parts thereof
in any form # library of congress cata-
LOGUE card no. 56-7241 • First printing
July 1956 • Originally published in
Germany as Ich Suchte Adam • Published
in England as I Looked for Adam
w
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I ought not to allow this book to appear without thanking
all those who have come to my aid with valuable suggestions
and the provision of material. I am especially indebted to
Frau Doktor Dorka of Berlin, Professors Weinert of Kiel,
Heberer of Gottingen, Falkenburger of Mainz, Absolon of
Briinn, von Koenigswald of Utrecht, and Herr Brandt, Direc-
tor of the Heme Museum. Professors Weinert, Heberer, and
von Koenigswald, as well as Herr Brandt, were so good as to
read the proofs of the German edition and in so doing to call
my attention to the latest investigations and discoveries that
I was thus enabled to take into consideration.
I must also take this opportunity to thank all those who
have courteously co-operated in the provision of illustrative
material or granted permission for individual pictures to be
used. My thanks are due in particular to the Anthropological
Institute of the University of Kiel, the Zoological Institute
of the University of Gottingen, the Ems Valley Museum at
Heme, and the firm of Holbein at Basel, whose exception-
ally fine production, Die Kunst der Eiszeit by Hans-Georg
Bandi and Johannes Maringer greatly inspired me.
The many drawings that had to be made for the book were
supplied by Herr Gerhard Bluhm of Stockum near Hamm
in Westphalia.
PREFACE
In a confined space, damp and cold, one hundred and thirty feet
below the surface of the earth, two men are crouching. Their torches
illuminate an underground passage, half full of water. The silence
is deathly. Now and again a drop of moisture falls from the roof
into the black lake with a harsh clicking sound. After hesitating for
a few minutes the men remove their clothing, put away their torches
and matches in a rubber case, plunge into the water, and try to find
their way along the passage, into the unknown, by swimming. The
roof becomes gradually lower and lower. They have to dive and they
begin to get out of breath. At last, in the darkness they bump into
a rock. They clamber onto it like seals, noticing that the passage
has come to an end. They open their rubber case, light their torches,
and find themselves looking into a broad lofty hall thickly festooned
with glittering stalactites.
Shortly afterwards their excavation picks are digging into the
tough clay of the cave. One of the men utters a soft exclamation as
he takes up a hand axe and holds it to the light of his torch. The
cracks and bulges of thewall of the cavern are illuminated. Suddenly,
scratches madeby the claws of cave bears and the imprints of human
hands become visible, together with human figures and animals
painted in color. In this hall deep in the interior of the mountain
primitive man once made his home.
This scene took place in 1923: the names of the two men were
Norbert Casteret and Henri Godin. They had found the now world-
famous cave of Montespan. Many such caves have since been dis-
covered. Many remains of prehistoric animals and men, together
with evidence of early civilizations, have been dug up. Scientific
detective work that has been going on for two hundred years has
now given some answers to the question of the origin and course
of the evolution of humanity.
The adventure of cave exploration is only one of the many aspects
PREFACE
Vlll
of the story told in this book. The quest for Adam was also made
by biologists and geneticists, looking for clues to the mysteries of
life in their laboratories, by thinkers breaking with old prejudices,
by professors who proclaimed revolutionary theories of the origin of
species, and by talented amateurs whose chance finds opened up
new paths of research for prehistorians. All these achievements and
discoveries are described.
The uncovering of prehistory is probably the most dramatic
chapter of natural history, full of incident and intrigue, as well as of
human tragedy. Each skull and hand axe that lies in a museum
today, and each book that deals with the origin of mankind, has had
a career of its own. If the evidence of prehistory is examined with
the eye of the professional student it acquires an uncanny reality. It
emerges from the museums, the cabinets of specimens and the
libraries, dissipating the mists of ignorance that obscure the epochs
of human and cultural evolution by which the fate of our world has
been decided.
In this narrative of scientific fact I have therefore stressed the man
himself, the investigator, possessed and inspired by genius, who
first makes the facts come to life. For this reason I was obliged to
enter upon other scientific fields beyond my actual theme, citing
documents, letters, and reports that enabled the setting in which
each separate event occurred to be reconstructed. Thus I hope the
reader will be able to participate in the adventure of research, in the
works of excavation, in the unveiling of relics of the days before
history, and in scientific disputes that victimized so many misunder-
stood discoverers.
H.W.
CONTENTS
PREFACE vu
Part One
ADAM KNOCKS AT THE BACK DOOR
CHAPTER EVIDENCE OF THE FLOOD
I.
Under the town gallows at Altdorf 3
Philosophers, fables, and fossils . 5
A complaint by the fishes of Lake Constance 11
The persecuted skeleton of an ancient sinner 14
A fossil called Beringer 17
Voltaire objects 19
Did Caesar bring elephants to England? 21
CHAPTER II. THE MAN WHO CLASSIFIED NATURE
Fins become wings 25
The swallow at the bottom of the sea 29
The wedding customs of flowers 31
Discovery of the mammoth 34
How fearful are Thy creatures, O Lord! 40
Man is a superior animal 44
Who can count the species or know their names? 51
CHAPTER III. LINKS BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST
Animals too have a soul 56
The highly objectionable "machine-man" 58
Nature knows no system 63
The unclassifiable bastards 67
!
CONTENTS
X
Man is a decadent ape 72
Buffon writes the story of the earth 78
CHAPTER IV. SECRETS OF EVOLUTION
—
Eve the mother of mankind 85
The quarrel about the germ in the egg 91
A forgotten ancestor 96
Under the sign of Venus 99
Natural scientists revolt 106
Open competition for animate beings 112
Part Two
ADAM DISOWNED
CHAPTER V. THE ANIMAL IS THE ELDER BROTHER OF MAN
Man, too, has an intermaxillary bone 123
God and nature are one 129
Beast and Man from one archetype 138
Can apes become men? 140
CHAPTER VI. THE HISTORY OF THE EARTH IS WRITTEN IN
CATASTROPHE
The Devil is a vegetarian 144
Human fossils do not exist 149
Animate beings are the products of their environment 157
The condemnation of Jean Baptiste Lamarck 162
The pope of bones and the red lady 166
CHAPTER VII. ALL LIFE COMES FROM THE CELL
Man as an unknown mammal 172
The enfant terrible of zoology 177
Cell chemistry 184
CHAPTER VIII. HUMAN FOSSILS DO EXIST
The Flood was an ice age 191
The monkey of Pikermi 197
An argument about Adam's ancestors 200
The paradise of primitive man 207
A poor wretch from Neanderthal 215
The hand axe system of chronology 225
contents
xi
Part Three
MONKEY BUSINESS OVER ADAM
CHAPTER IX. THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
In the shadow of Erasmus 235
Jemmy Button gets his rights 239
Birth of a theory 248
A globe-trotter starts an avalanche 254
The aEair of Mr. Huxley's grandfather 259
To hell with the gorilla! 266
Eve follows the flag 271
CHAPTER X. NATURE'S STORY OF CREATION
Mechanized man and the riddles of the universe 278
Bombs in the powder barrel 283
The ape man of Java 290
How did life originate on earth? 301
CHAPTER XI. THAT WHICH THY FOREFATHERS HAVE
BEQUEATHED UNTO THEE
Mice sacrifice their tails 307
The miracle in a monastery garden 309
A mysterious field near Hilversum 314
Nature makes "quantum" leaps 317
Suicide of a natural scientist 320
CHAPTER XII. ARTISTS OF THE ICE AGE
Don Quixote of Altamira 327
The artists of the caves 333
Cave explorers 343
Cain buried his brother Abel 352
The prolific Venus of Willendorf 358
The expressionist painters of Valltorta 364
Herds on African rock faces 373
Part Four
ADAM UNMASKED
CHAPTER XIII. THE DAWN OF HUMANITY
A prehistoric Pompeii 383
Two men sold for 160,000 gold marks 387