ABSTRACT
What were the conditions under which the first men lived? We can only guess at them. Excavation tells us nothing about them and the study of savage peoples brings us little more light, for all those whom we are able to observe live in organized societies. Was there, as Karl Bücher supposed, a period when men searched individually for food, or were the first men, like horses, reindeer, and monkeys, banded in herds, seeking together the food they needed, as Oliver Leroy, that keen critic of Bⅱcher, believes? The documents which we have at our disposal are not sufficient to enable us to reach a definite conclusion. It is possible that the course of events on islands differed from that on the mainland; but it is, and perhaps always will be, impossible to have accurate knowledge of the beginnings of human civilization.
