So long as Homo sapiens was believed to occupy a higher platform in the organic world than other animals by virtue of his special endowments, no one, apparently, thought of looking for evidence of his origin and history in the obscure vista of prehistoric times. The long cherished traditions and myths which had gathered around the inquiry left little room for any other hypothesis than that his apparition on the field of life was the last and crowning achievement of a long series of creative fiats which brought the present world-drama into existence. In the cosmogony thus conjured up, the multitudinous phenomena of the material world—animals and plants, the distribution of land and water, the recurrence of seasons, etc.—were regarded as having been specially designed and arranged to administer to the life-functions of this new being.