A History of Agriculture in India v1.c12.s7.2

v1.c12.s7.2

About 25,000 years ago, the glacial climate in Europe improved slightly for a while. The Neanderthal man unaccountably passed out of the Pleistocene picture and his place was taken by the Cro-Magnon-man, the modern species, *Homo sapiens*. More than 100 specimens of Cro-Magnon-man have been collected in western and central Europe. His cranial capacity was equal to that of the present-day man. In the evolution of brain we notice the upward march of living matter from the scattered nerve cells of coelentrates to the highly complex human brain, which is one of nature's marvels and is the seat of soul or spirit of man. As Jacquetta Hawkes sums up, 'Throughout this vast stretch of time the increase in the size and complexity of the neo-pallium or New Brain makes the central theme; in the fossil skulls which are our principal record for the human epic we see the forehead and vault rising, their capacity swelling. Here, housed within the curved bone plates of the skull, is the most subtle and complex instrument in the world, which, at the command of the whole man, has created the rich and varied cultures, the superb individual works of art, the inspiring if never final systems of thought, that make the history of mankind.'