THE PROBLEMS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 373 



THE PROBLEMS OF ANTHROPOLOGY.* 



By KUDOLPH VIKCHOW. 



INTERNATIONAL prehistoric congresses have for a whole 

 generation exercised a great influence upon the researches 

 and the ideas of our contemporaries. This institution was founded 

 at the time when the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes of the ex- 

 istence of man in the Drift period ; the observations of Ferdinand 

 Keller on pile constructions ; those of Cristi and Lartet on the 

 troglodytes of the Dordogne, and of Vorso on the kitchen-mid- 

 dens ; and the theory of Darwin and his disciples, were producing 

 a revolution in scientific traditions. As a result of that revolu- 

 tion, the Congress found itself confronting a great problem. It 

 was incumbent on it to study all the countries of Europe in order 

 to collect prehistorical traces of man, to attract general attention 

 to the origin and course of human civilization ; and it proposed 

 to itself to remove the veil of mystery from before the primitive 

 cradle of man. 



Many of the questions which were raised at this time have now 

 been definitively resolved. We know that man existed in the Qua- 

 ternary epoch, that he lived through long ages miserable and de- 

 pressed, while stone, wood, horn, and bone constituted the material 

 of his arms and of his only instruments ; we are convinced that a 

 long interval separated the age of stone from the age of metals, 

 and that only in particular places was the use of stone immedi- 

 ately replaced by that of metals. These are the data which now 

 make part of the general knowledge acquired by civilized nations 

 since the foundation of the Congress. But further studies respect- 

 ing the origin and the regions whence the different branches of 

 civilization have sprung have advanced relatively but very little. 



First, the question of Tertiary man especially occupied the Con- 

 gress, and reached its culminating point at the meeting in Lisbon. 

 We were taken there to the plain of Otta to look in the strata for 

 his remains. We found there flint chips that might in an extreme 

 case be regarded as having been cut by man ; but we discovered no 

 human bones or potteries or worked objects ; and the majority of 

 the Congress, on leaving the place, were far from being convinced 

 that these flint chips were distinguished, in any respect, from the 

 debris which is found in the ground everywhere, and which re- 

 sults from the disintegration of a siliceous soil. Nobody has ever 

 found in virgin Tertiary strata any piece of flint that has been rec- 

 ognized by the learned world as an unquestionable relic of the ex- 



* Address at the opening of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology and 

 Anthropology, at Moscow. 



