io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



skeletons], " more frequently present structures which resemble those of 

 the lower animals than do the modern races, is interesting. One chief 

 cause seems to be that ancient races stand somewhat nearer than mod- 

 ern races in the long line of descent to their remote animal-like pro- 

 genitors." We must not be led away by identifications of race in too 

 absolute a sense. We ourselves are, of course, the lineal descendants 

 either of the cave-men or of their contemporaries in some geologically 

 unexplored region ; yet it does not follow on that account that our 

 late Pleistocene ancestors were white-skinned people with regular 

 Aryan features. Granting that the Esquimaux are nearer representa- 

 tives of the cave-men than any other existing race (which is by no 

 means certain), it may yet be true that the earlier cave-men themselves 

 were black-skinned, hairy savages, with skulls and brains of the low 

 and brutal Neanderthal pattern. The physical indications certainly 

 go to show that they were most like the Australian savages. 



With the cave-men our inquiry ceases. The next inhabitants of 

 Europe were the comparatively modern and civilized neolithic Euska- 

 rians a race whom we may literally describe as historical. I trust, 

 however, that I have succeeded in pointing out the main fallacy 

 which, as it seems to me, underlies so much of our current reasoning 

 on " primitive man." This fallacy lies in the tacit assumption that 

 man is a single modern species, not a tertiary genus with only one 

 species surviving. The more we examine the structxtre of man and 

 of the anthropoid apes, the more does it become clear that the dif- 

 ferences between them are merely those of a genus or family, rather 

 than distinctive of a separate order, or even a separate sub-order. But 

 I suppose nobody would claim that they were merely specific ; in other 

 words, it is pretty generally acknowledged that the divergence be- 

 tween man and the anthropoids is greater than can be accounted for 

 by the immediate descent of the living form from a common ancestor 

 in the last preceding geological age. Mr. Darwin even ranks man as 

 a separate family or sub-family. Therefore, according to all analogy, 

 there must have been a man-like animal, or a series of man-like ani- 

 mals, in later, if not in earlier tertiary times ; and this animal or these 

 animals would in a systematic classification be grouped as species of 

 the same genus with man. In the Abbe Bourgeois's mid-Miocene split 

 flints we seem to have evidence of such an early human species ; and 

 I can conceive no reason why evolutionists should hesitate to accept the 

 natural conclusion. To speak of palaeolithic man himself a hunter, 

 a fisherman, a manufacturer of polished bone needles and beautiful 

 barbed harpoons, a carver of ivory, a designer of better sketches than 

 many among ourselves can draw as " primitive," is clearly absurd. 

 A long line of previous evolution must have led up to him by slow 

 degrees. And the earliest trace of that line, in its distinctively human 

 generic modification, we seem to get in the very simple flint implements 

 and notched bones of Thenay and Pouanc6. Fortnightly Revieio. 



