RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE 477 



igneous rocks. An important negative result is that no 

 kaolin or kaolin-like substance forms from the alkaline solu- 

 tions at temperatures up to 280 C. The conclusion is 

 drawn that kaolin probably originates by the action of acid 

 solutions upon felspars. This is corroborated by the rarity 

 of references in the literature to the association of kaolin and 

 carbonates, though this association would be expected if 

 carbonated alkaline waters were the cause of kaolinisation. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. By A. G. Thacker, A.R.C.Sc. 



Readers of these notes may remember that during the last 

 three years I have repeatedly pointed out that the main facts 

 of Prehistoric Anthropology as now known are totally mis- 

 represented by Lord Avebury's classification of the Stone Ages 

 into Paleolithic and Neolithic epochs, Lord Avebury (then 

 Sir J. Lubbock) having invented these terms when the science 

 was in its infancy. The use of the words Paleolithic and 

 Neolithic suggests that the most important break in the 

 " Stone Age " occurs between these two periods, and that 

 each period possesses within itself some kind of unity. The 

 facts are, as the reader will remember, altogether different. 

 By far the most important break in the history of man in 

 Europe occurs between the Lower and the Upper Paleolithic, 

 at the beginning of the Aurignacian Age, when Homo sapiens 

 appears, and displaces the least ancient of the extinct species 

 of the Hominidse, Homo neandertalensis. Thus the so-called 

 Paleolithic period has no sort of unity, and the affinities of 

 the later " Paleolithic men " are with the men of the Neolithic 

 and later periods, not with the older " Paleolithic men." My 

 suggestion therefore was (see Science Progress, October 19 13) 

 that the misleading term Paleolithic should be abandoned, and 

 that the word Protolithic should be coined for the earlier part 

 of the so-called Old Stone Age, and that the later part of 

 what has hitherto been called Paleolithic should be described 

 as Deutolithic. The new words are etymologically analogous 

 to those coined by geologists in splitting up the Paleozoic era 

 into its two parts — the Protozoic and Deutozoic. 



I am now glad to see that Prof. G. Elliot Smith, of Man- 

 chester University, has been laying stress upon this same 

 point. In a review of Prof. Osborn's Men of the Old Stone 

 Age in the American Museum Journal for last May (vol. 



