462 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 30 



plements of later periods which are universally recognized as made 

 by man). " The traces of fire are undeniable, whatever may be their 

 origin." ^* L. Capitan, another expert, is even stronger in his verdict 

 on certain implements of the same place : " If one would deny the 

 genuineness of this piece, he must reject the greatest part of scrapers 

 of the Mousterian. * * * These are flints purposely shaped by a 

 rather skillful hand." ^^ 



Tliose who accept the opinion of these specialists date man as far 

 back as the end of Tertiary time, or, what is more to the point, the 

 beginning of the glacial period, when the inland ice was for the 

 first time advancing toward central Europe. No wonder that they 

 figure upon a very high age for the human race. If man was wit- 

 ness of three or four advances of the ice, if he was existing during 

 two or three interglacial periods each of them of much longer dura- 

 tion than postglacial time, figures as high as several hundred thou- 

 sands of years do not surprise us. 



The time has not yet come to decide definitely for or against such 

 assumptions. Until the skeletal remains of assumed preglacial man 

 are discovered, some doubt is possible. It may also be, as Obermaier 

 suggests, that the red crag, in which the supposed implements occur, 

 belongs to the first glaciation in England (cold climate). If this be 

 the case, man living during this period was not Tertiary man, 

 although he must have appeared very soon after the close of the 

 Tertiary. 



In recent years a number of skeletal remains of a primitive man 

 have been unearthed in China. Geological and paleontological 

 evidence seems to point to a very high age of this man. Father 

 Teilhard de Chardin, S. J., geologist of the Tientsin University, 

 gives a succinct report of the discovery in a recent issue of " Primi- 

 tive man." ^® According to him Sinanthropus Pekinensis belongs 

 to the Lower Quaternary, while Neanderthal man was living in the 

 Middle Quaternary. That would raise the figures for the absolute age 

 of mankind considerably. 



Up to the present the exceedingly high figures for the age of 

 mankind have been derived from tliose theories which take it for 

 granted that Europe was repeatedly glaciated, either three or four 

 times. There are still geologists who do not accept long inter- 

 glacial periods. They assume that the ice never entirely left the 

 glaciated area during the whole Ice Age. The interglacial periods 

 of others are to them only minor oscillations of the ice front. An 

 advocate of such an opinion was Nils O. Hoist, a Swedish geolo- 



" Revue anthropologlque, vol. .32, 1922, p. 228. 

 « Ibidem, p. 131. 



"Teilh.ird de Chardin, Sinanthropus Pekinensis, Primitive Man (Publication of the 

 Catholic Anthropological Conference, Washington), Vol. Ill, 1930, pp. 46-48. 



