Quotes about Prehistoric Man

Avi Tuschman

Within only 2,000 years of humanity’s arrival in the New World, indigenous peoples drove to extinction 84 of the 107 genera of large mammals – all before the invention of the wheel, writing or iron tools.

This quotation shows that man has always had a serious effect on the environment. And that indigenous peoples did not necessarily have a harmonious relationship with nature. A few did, just like some modern humans do, but most did not then as most of us do not now.

George Bernard Shaw

The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is this stuff [ indicating her body ], this flesh and blood and bone and all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the body of this death.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

"Natural" man is always there, under the changeable historical man. We call him and he comes-a little sleepy, benumbed, without his lost form of instinctive hunter, but, after all, still alive. Natural man is first prehistoric man-the hunter.

Richard Leakey

To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils.

Arthur Koestler

The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use.

Koestler, a Hungarian Jew, lived and worked in England for most of his life. He was not only a great writer, but was an amateur scientist. As species have evolved, the new capability allowed the organism to better survive and thrive in its environment. Koestler was a fine scientist and knew that his statement was not literally true. The human brain in early man was used as it evolved and, indeed, the use actually shaped the evolution. However the quip makes a wonderful point about the fact that man has not yet reached the point where the brain capacity is used or irrational and illogical decisions of man have been very often sub-optimal.

Pablo Picasso

I don't think I'm wrong when I say that the most beautiful objects of the "stone age" were made of skin, fabric, and especially wood. The "stone age" ought to be called the "wood age." How many African statues are made of stone, bone, or ivory? Maybe one in a thousand! And prehistoric man had no more ivory at his disposal than African tribes. Maybe even less. He must have had thousands of wooden fetishes, all gone now.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The number of known human fossils only increases slowly. But the manner of regarding and assessing them is capable of progressing rapidly, as indeed it does. In the absence of any absolutely sensational discovery in prehistory, there is an up-to-date and scientific manner of understanding man, which is solidly based on palaeontology.

Patricia Ireland

He doesn't write like a Neanderthal. He may be a Cro-Magnon.

Referring to conservative Supreme Court nominee, Anthony Kennedy:

Prehistoric Man Quotes