e. How far
back he may have existed as a man-like biped is another question, which
we are not likely soon to solve.

It is scarcely necessary to pursue this branch of our subject farther.
We have reached one end of a line of development, the succeeding course
of which is well known. From the earliest rudely chipped stones and
flints that are certainly the work of man, we can easily trace his
progress upward through better examples of the chipped and later through
those of the polished stone implement, until the age of metal began.
And with these stones have been found many other indications of the
progressing powers of man, in the shaping of bone, the invention and use
of a considerable variety of implements and ornaments, and the earliest
efforts of art, as stated in a preceding section. There is no occasion
to go into the detail of these steps of progress. When they are reached,
this section of our work ends. We are concerned here simply with man's
ancestor and man in his earliest stage of existence, not with man in his
later course of development.

IX

THE FIRST STAGE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

The question has often been asked, if man has descended from an ape
ancestor why is it that no traces of this ancestral form have been found
in a fossil state? If man has gone through such an extended course of
development, why has he left no remains? This question, looked upon as
unanswerable by many of those who ask it, is really of minor importance.
A half-dozen answers, each of considerable weight, could easily be made
to it. In the first place, it may be said that the absence of remains
referred to is far from a single instance, but one out of thousands. It
is generally admitted that the species of animals found fossil are very
far from representing all the species that have existed upon the earth,
and probably form but a minute percentage of them. In the second place,
the remains of man's ancestor have not been sought for in its native
locality, the tropical regions. In the third place, man belongs to the
class of animals least likely to be preserved in the fossil state, since
they dwell in the depths of forests and at a distance from the lakes and
streams in whose muddy bottoms the remains of so many animals have been
fossilized. Another answer is, that of the various species of anthropoid
apes that probably existed in the past, a few relics only of a single
species have been found. If there were this one species a