PREHISTORIC MAN 501 



tion of Piltdown man to other branches of the human stock? Far from 

 being an early, primitive type as has long been supposed, the so-called 

 "dawn man" seems to have been a late, specialized form. He was prob- 

 ably evolved in relative isolation, and apparently had nothing to do with 

 the origin of the Neanderthaloids or of modern man. 



The antiquity of "modern" man. All people now living belong to the 

 single species Homo sapiens. This species was long believed to have ap- 

 peared late in the Pleistocene, about the time the Neanderthalers vanished 

 from Europe. But this view is no longer tenable. Men of our own kind are 

 now known to have existed at least since the close of the great interglacial 

 age and perhaps far longer. 



Swanscombe man is the well-authenticated basis for this statement. 

 In 1935 to 1936, parts of a long-headed, thin-boned skull of modern type 

 were found at Swanscombe in the Thames Valley of England. They lay 

 at a depth of 24 feet in terrace gravels of the great interglacial age, associ- 

 ated with flint "hand axes" and flake tools. The dating was confirmed by 

 Oakley and Ashley Montagu in 1949, using the fluorine test. 1 This dis- 

 covery carried the known antiquity of Homo sapiens back to a time ante- 

 dating Piltdown man and all of the Neanderthaloids except Heidelberg 

 man! 



The long gap in the record of Homo sapiens from Swanscombe man to 

 the Cro-Magnons has been partially bridged by later discoveries. Two 

 fragmentary skulls of modern type were found in 1948 in the basal layers 

 of the Fontechevade cave in central France. Associated animal remains 

 show that they date from the last interglacial age. The flint tools that 

 occurred with them are of flake type — a fact of interest because it used 

 to be supposed that only Neanderthalers made tools of this sort. Three 

 Homo sapiens skeletons were found by Coon in 1951, in the cave of Ghar 

 Hotu in northern Iran, on an old shoreline of the Caspian Sea. Killed by 

 a fall of the cavern roof, these men apparently had lived early in the 

 fourth glacial age, at a time when Neanderthalers dominated Europe. 

 They were heavy-set, about 5 feet 8 inches tall, with low-placed eyes, long 

 teeth, and prominent chins, and differed from moderns chiefly in their 

 lesser brain capacity. 



Modern man. Completely modern skeletons begin turning up in fair 

 numbers in European cave layers dating from the first interstadial of the 

 fourth glacial age — a time variously estimated as 50,000 to 80,000 years 

 ago. These ancient Europeans were very like some people we see today. 

 They varied individually and from group to group, but not as much as do 

 the modern inhabitants of the region. Most of them belonged to a big- 



1 At the same time, these workers showed that another reputedly ancient example 

 of Homo sapiens, the Galley Hill skeleton, was in fact a relatively recent (postglacial) 

 burial. 



