In this, as in all other pictures of the same
epoch, I regret to say that the ancient hunter is represented in the
costume of Adam before the fall. Our old master's studies, in fact, are
all in the nude. Primitive man was evidently unacquainted as yet with
the use of clothing, though primitive woman, while still unclad, had
already learnt how to heighten her natural charms by the simple addition
of a necklace and bracelets. Indeed, though dresses were still wholly
unknown, rouge was even then extremely fashionable among French ladies,
and lumps of the ruddle with which primitive woman made herself
beautiful for ever are now to be discovered in the corner of the cave
where she had her little prehistoric boudoir. To return to our hunter,
however, who for aught we know to the contrary may be our old master
himself in person, he is a rather crouching and semi-erect savage, with
an arched back, recalling somewhat that of the gorilla, a round head,
long neck, pointed beard, and weak, shambling, ill-developed legs. I
fear we must admit that pre-Glacial man cut, on the whole, a very sorry
and awkward figure.
Was he black? That we don't certainly know, but all analogy would lead
one to answer positively, Yes. White men seem, on the whole, to be a
very recent and novel improvement on the original evolutionary pattern.
At any rate he was distinctly hairy, like the Ainos, or aborigines of
Japan, in our own day, of whom Miss Isabella Bird has drawn so startling
and sensational a picture.
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