THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN BODY 335 



of evolution, but, for one whose confidence in the ^'reality" of 

 evolution is not so great, these palaeontological chronometers 

 are open to grave suspicion. 



If tne horizon levels are not too finely graded, the difficulty 

 of accepting such a time-scale is not excessive. Hence we 

 might be prepared to accept the chronometric value of the 

 division of fossiliferous rocks into Groups, such as the Palaeo- 

 zoic, the Mesozoic, and the Caenozoic, even though we are 

 assured by Grabau that this time-scale is "based on the 

 changes of life, with the result that fossils alone determine 

 whether a formation belongs to one or the other of these great 

 divisions" ("Principles of Stratigraphy," p. 1103), but when 

 it comes to projecting an elaborate scheme of levels or horizons 

 into Pleistocene deposits on the dubious basis of index fossils 

 and "industries," our credulity is not equal to the demands that 

 are made upon it. And this is particularly true with reference 

 to fossil men. Man has the geologically unfortunate habit of 

 burying his dead. Other fossils have been entombed on the 

 spot where they died, and therefore belong where we find them. 

 But it is otherwise with man. In Hilo, Hawaii, the writer 

 heard of a Kanaka, who was buried to a depth of 80 feet, 

 having stipulated this sort of burial through a special dis- 

 position in his will. His purpose, in so doing, was to preclude 

 the possibility of his bones ever being disturbed by a plough 

 or other instrument. Nor have we any right to assume that 

 indications of burial will always be present in a case of this 

 nature. We may, on the contrary, assume it as a general 

 rule that human remains are always more recent than the 

 formations in which they are found. 



Be that as it may, the evidences for the antiquity of the 

 Neanderthaloid man prove, at most, that he was prior to the 

 Cro-Magnon man in Europe, but they do not prove that the 

 former was prior to the latter absolutely. Things may, for all 

 we know, have been just the reverse in Asia. Hence we have 

 no ground for regarding the Man of Neanderthal as ancestral 

 to the race of artists, who frescoed the caves of France and 



