278 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



During the last four Paleolithic Ages several distinct races 

 inhabited Europe, which may or may not have left survivors 

 into Neolithic times, and which may or may not, therefore, 

 have been our own direct forefathers. But whether or not these 

 peoples were exterminated by the incoming Neolithic tribes, 

 they differed in minor characters only from ourselves, and 

 differed from one another less than the divergent races still 

 living in different parts of the world. In a word, they belonged 

 to our own species, Homo sapiens. In their anatomy they were 

 entirely human, and in their culture they were less rude than 

 some savages of the Nineteenth Century. 



When, however, we pass back from the Aurignacian into the 

 Mousterian Age the scene entirely changes. We find ourselves 

 on utterly unfamiliar ground, and in surroundings where the 

 analogy with the lowest living races no longer affords a very 

 safe guide. Europe was inhabited during Acheulean and Mous- 

 terian times, and possibly earlier also, by the famous Neandertal 

 race, who, it is now realised, constituted a distinct species, named 

 Homo neandertalensis or Homo primigenius. This extinct species 

 is now familiar to us from a number of discoveries, of which the 

 most important are those at Neandertal itself, Gibraltar, Spy in 

 Belgium, Krapina in Hungary, and La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Le 

 Moustier, and La Ferrassie in the south of France. As is well 

 known, the Neandertaler differed from Homo sapiens in having 

 an extremely receding forehead, with enormously developed 

 brow-ridges, and in having his cranial axis disposed at a somewhat 

 different angle. Moreover he exhibited a heavier and stouter 

 development of bone in all parts of his body, and his brain, 

 although as large as that of the living species, was distinctly 

 more simian in structure. 



These Neandertalers were contemporary for a short time, but 

 probably only for a short time, with the very different Aurigna- 

 cian races. It is natural to suppose that the brutish Mousterians 

 were exterminated by the higher type, and so different are the 

 two species that it is more than doubtful whether it was physically 

 possible for any miscegenation to have occurred. The displace- 

 ment of Homo neandertalensis by Homo sapiens was probably not 

 a very long process. It is true that from time to time various 

 11 discoveries " have been announced in which skeletons of the 

 modern type of man have been found in strata older, sometimes 

 much older, than the Aurignacian. As a rule these skeletons 



