March i8th, ipTJ.] PROCEEDINGS. xix 



go into the waste-paper basket. Applying these principles to 

 the present aspect of the antiquity of man, we may take the 

 following points to be clearly proved : — 



1. That man is of vast and immeasurable antiquity, and 

 that he was living in Europe as a hunter in the early Pleistocene 

 age. 



2. That the human skeletons found in the caves of Nean- 

 derthal, Spy, La Chapelle aux Saints, Quina, and Gibraltar, and 

 in the Pleistocene river deposits of Mauer, near Heidelberg, and 

 more recently of Piltdown, near Lewes, prove that the ancient 

 inhabitants of those regions differed from existing types by the 

 possession of simian characters. 



3. That in the South of France men of modern types were 

 represented in the middle and towards the close of the pleisto- 

 cene age. The question of the pliocene age of man in Europe 

 is non-proven and may be put to the suspense account. The 

 evolution of the mammalia had arrived at the stage when living 

 species of the eutherian mammalia had appeared, and therefore 

 the time was ripe for the appearance of man. There are, how- 

 ever, no skeletons in evidence, and the chipped flints, " eoliths " 

 and "eagle's beaks" and other forms cannot be taken to be 

 proof of his handiwork, because they may be made without the 

 intervention of man. 



The Galley Hill skeleton, found in a pleistocene deposit 

 near Northfleet, in Kent, some 25 years ago, may also go to the 

 same suspense account, because the hotly-debated question as 

 to their being the result of a later interment cannot ever be 

 definitely settled. Both Sir John Evans and Professor Dawkins 

 at the time believed that they were burials of later date than the 

 pleistocene age. It is unfortunate that they should be taken 

 by Dr. Keith -and other competent craniologists in Britain and 

 Germany to prove the presence of a modern type of man in 

 Pleistocene Britain. 



If, however, there be doubt as to the age of the Galley Hill 

 interment, the evidence as to the presence of the same modern 



