EVOLUTION 239 



of a theorem in geometry, the presence of Homo sapiens. Thus there is a 

 break, at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, with no indisputable men 

 of our own species earlier, and no men of any other species after it. The 

 situation is such that only the captious would deny that Homo sapie?is 

 existed before the Cro Magnons, who are his first clear manifestation; but 

 on the other hand it is not such that any anthropologist can ring general 

 agreement from his colleagues as to a particular time, whether relatively 

 late or going back toward the beginning of the Ice Age, when Homo sa- 

 piens might be said first to have become a distinct species. 



Through the long reaches of the Lower Paleolithic there is sprinkled 

 a corporal's guard of human fossils. The Neanderthal species is well rep- 

 resented by finds, especially in the west, which can be referred to the 

 last 100 millenniums or more of this time. Equally well known (for the 

 cranium at least), thanks to recent discoveries, are the Java and Peking 

 types, obviously related to one another and probably dating from the 

 lo\\er middle part of the Pleistocene. Aside from these, the main species 

 are largely single specimens or scraps; the Heidelberg (an early forerun- 

 ner of the Neanderthals) and Piltdown men, and the undatable Africans — 

 the Broken Hill skull of Rhodesia, and Africanthropus, from the Lake 

 regions. Of all these and certain others none is assigned to Homo sapietis. 

 This gives a picture of several species of man, some of whom at least must 

 have been contemporaneous, though differing considerably. The question 

 is: Did Homo sapiens also overlap any of them in time, or did he, appearing 

 late, arise from one of them, and if so, from w^hich one? 



The possible representatives of our own species during the Lower Pale- 

 oHthic are not many. (There are reasons, however, for not expecting them 

 to be. For example, Homo sapiens has a thin skull, which is less likely to 

 survive in fossil form.) One is the Galley Hill skeleton of the Thames Val- 

 ley, whose physical type is fully sapiens but whose geological claims to 

 antiquity are impaired by the confusion and carelessness which attended 

 its discovery in 1888. There are a few other modern looking skulls with 

 similarly sullied credentials. Otherwise the skeletal evidence of early 

 Homo sapiens rests on two finds. The first is the very important Swans- 

 combe skull, also of the Thames valley, whose parts were found in an ab- 

 solutely certain connection (a rare thing) with glacial deposits and arch- 

 eological tools which are believed to belong to the second interglacial, in 

 the first half of the Pleistocene. It is thus very ancient, but its establishment 

 as an actual specimen of Homo sapiens has to rest on the crow^n and back 

 of the head, all else being gone. This is not entirely satisfactory. Most are 

 inclined to accept its validity, and to believe that it legitimizes Galley 

 Hill at last, but some would regard it with acute suspicion, remembering 

 that the back of the ape-jawed Piltdown skull would seem almost equally 

 modern. The other main find comprises skeletons from two caves at Mount 

 Carmel in Palestine, excavated ten years ago and dating apparently from 



