ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN KACE. 985 



extinct animals, alike point to a remote antiquity. la particular, a very 

 close investigation of those found at Moulin Quignon, near Abbeville, by 

 M. Boucher de Perthes and others?, has been made by Mr. Prestwich, 1 who 

 has shown that although some doubts may exist respecting the authenticity 

 of the Human jawbone and some of the flint implements recently discovered 

 there, yet that the genuineness of other flint implements cannot be doubted, 

 and that the age of the gravel beds in which they have been discovered is 

 perfectly well determined as belonging to an early Quaternary or Post-plio- 

 cene period, dating before the excavation of the valley of the Sonnne, and 

 consequently to a period when the physical character of the country wore a 

 very different aspect from that which it now presents. 



823. Nor can the circumstance be disregarded, that in the oldest existing 

 monuments, as on those of Amenophis, of Horus, and of Rhameses, 2 sculp- 

 ture and painting, amongst the latest of the fine arts in their development, 

 had attained to so high a degree of perfection amongst the Egyptians, that 

 the types of the Human race there depicted may still be referred to as ex- 

 cellent portraitures of some of the still existing varieties, the Jew, the 

 Mongol, and the ^Ethiopian being readily distinguishable. For this indi- 

 cates, on the one hand, the wonderful permanence of particular types, and 

 so far constitutes an argument against the Specific Unity of Man on the 

 assumption that his duration upon the earth has not exceeded, as ordinarily 

 computed, some 6000 years; whilst if we estimate the period occupied in 

 the progress to a high degree of civilization in these old times by the rate 

 at which it has advanced in the history of modern European nations, we 

 find it requisite to admit the lapse of a much longer period than is usually 

 allowed, and of a long sequence of antecedent generations. In all the na- 

 tions of Western Europe, in France, in England, in Germany alike, it has 

 taken many centuries to rear the modern fabric of civilization ; and the 

 ultimate results obtained by ancient nations, however imperfectly they may 

 be known to us, do not appear to be of so extraordinary a nature as to lead 

 us to attribute to them a superior, if even an equal, measure of intellectual 

 endowments with ourselves, nor on that account to admit that their progress 

 in mental culture may have been more rapid. 3 



824. The evidence tending to show that the most ancient races of Man 

 possessed a materially lower type of organization than those at present in 

 existence, is not by any means sufficient to enable any general conclusions 

 to be drawn respecting the truth of the developmental theory, or to show 

 that there have been transitional links between the higher Apes and Man. 

 In the most remarkable cranium yet discovered, that of the Neanderthal, 

 which has been most carefully examined by Prof. Huxley, the forehead is 

 indeed unusually low and retreating, the supraorbital ridges prominent, and 

 the bones remarkably thick. Yet its cubic capacity does not appear to be 

 materially less than that of many crania that might be selected from modern 

 nations; and hence, as Mr. Huxley adds, the first traces of the primordial 

 stock whence Man has proceeded need no longer be sought by those who 

 entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development in the newest 

 tertiaries, but must be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of 

 the Elephas primigenius (mammals) than that is from us. 



825. Many interesting facts have recently come to light, which, whilst 



1 See Phil. Transact , 1860, p. 277; Proc. of the Royal Society, vol. xii, 1SU2, p. 

 38 ; and Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, Nov. 1st, 18H3, vol. xix, p. ^97. 



2 See Samuel Morton, Crania ^Egyptiara, Philad., 18J4 ; and the wurks of Cham- 

 pollion and Konellini ; Paul Broca, On the Phenomena of Hybridity in Man, Journal 

 de la Physiol , vol. iii, 1861. 



3 Sir Charles Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 89. 



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