WHO WAS PRIMITIVE MAN? 101 



ment in the arts of working stone and bone, to which he gives the 

 names of the Moustier epoch, the Solutre epoch, and the La Madelaine 

 epoch, from the stations which best typify each stage of primitive 

 culture. M. Broca has shown that, between the time when the Mous- 

 tier cave was inhabited by troglodytes and the time when the La 

 Madelaine cave was similarly inhabited, the valley of the Vezere had 

 undergone a denudation to the depth of twenty-seven metres ; while 

 from the date of the La Madelaine cave to our own time the denudation 

 was only four or five metres. In other words, the interval between 

 the two epochs was far greater than the interval between the last of 

 them and our own times. 



As to the drift-men, the few bones attributed to them are so singu- 

 larly and suspiciously like those of neolithic times that it seems very 

 unsafe to build any definite conclusion upon them. Accordingly, 

 when Professor Dawkins tells us that " the river-drift man first comes 

 before us endowed with all human attributes, and without any signs 

 of a closer alliance with the lower animals than is presented by the 

 savages of to-day," I think we must venture to suspend judgment for 

 the present. Seeing that a later skull, like that of Neanderthal, is strik- 

 ingly ape-like in one most important particular, is considerably lower 

 in general type than that of the lowest living savage, and (as Professor 

 Huxley has shown) is rather nearer the chimpanzee than the modern 

 European in outline, it seems hazardous to conclude on very dubious 

 evidence that a still earlier race had skulls as w T ell formed as those of 

 the neolithic Iberians. The least doubtful cases are acknowledged to 

 be identical in character with the far later Cro-Magnon remains (be- 

 longing to the latest cave age), which in itself is enough to rouse con- 

 siderable suspicion. So many supposed palaeolithic skeletons, like the 

 "fossil man" of Mentone, have turned out on further examination to 

 be neolithic or later, that it is unwise to base conclusions upon them, 

 when those conclusions clearly run counter to the general course of 

 evolution. 



With regard to the previous history of the human race, we can only 

 guess at it by the analogy of the other higher mammalia. But late 

 researches have all gone to show that the general progress of mamma- 

 lian development has been singularly regular. If we apply this anal- 

 ogy, and couple it with the other known and observed facts, we may 

 be able still further to bridge over the gap between man and his an- 

 thropoid progenitor. As Professor Huxley remarks, " 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 ; they may be looked for in an 

 epoch more distant from the age of the JSlephas primicjenius than that 

 is from us." 



The bifurcation of the European placental mammals begins in the 

 Eocene ; and it is to the Eocene that we must look for the earliest 



