SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PILTDOWN DISCOVERY 279 



have been remarkably well preserved, and under these circum- 

 stances it is not surprising that they have been received with a 

 great deal of scepticism, and that it has been suggested that 

 they are probably interments. One of the most recent of these 

 finds is the so-called Ipswich skeleton, which was unearthed by 

 Reid Moir, and has found a powerful advocate in Prof. Keith. 

 This discovery has, however, recently been subjected to most 

 severe criticism by W. H. Sutcliffe * and others ; and it may be 

 taken as certain that all the supposed discoveries of pre-Aurigna- 

 cian sapiens will not bear close examination. And, indeed, it 

 appears very unlikely that true man can have inhabited Europe 

 for long before the Aurignacian epoch, because we know that 

 the Neandertalers lived here, probably in considerable numbers, 

 before that age, and it is improbable that the higher and better 

 armed type, if it had then been living in this part of the world, 

 would have tolerated the presence of its bestial relative. 



Thus it will be seen that the Paleolithic Period includes 

 within itself very dissimilar elements. The gap which separates 

 the Mousterian from the Aurignacian is more profound than 

 any break which occurs in all the succeeding ages from the 

 Aurignacian to the Twentieth Century. The Aurignacian and 

 all that comes after it constitute the era of Homo sapiens, of 

 true man ; before the Aurignacian we are back among kindred 

 but unfamiliar creatures. It is clearly an irrational arrange- 

 ment to group the earliest true men together with the various 

 extinct species under the title " Paleolithic " ; and even if it 

 be argued that the prehistoric periods are founded upon cultural 

 not upon racial considerations, the break between the Neander- 

 talers and the artistic and much more skilful Aurignacians 

 is very great — and, in any case, an event of such importance 

 as the appearance of true man should be expressed in 

 classification. 2 



Passing farther back behind the Aurignacians, our knowledge 

 of the extinct members of the Hominidae has been greatly 

 extended by the epoch-making discovery at Piltdown, Sussex, 

 which we owe to the enterprise and patient research of Mr. 

 Charles Dawson and Dr. Smith Woodward. This discovery 

 has given us a fifth species of the Hominidae. The Neander- 



1 Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 191 3. 



2 I make the suggestion that the Aurignacian and three subsequent ages should 

 be classed together as Deutolithic, and the previous epochs grouped as Protolithic . 



