48 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



it possible to definitely and indubitably establish this type as a 

 distinct and primitive race which, while considerably in advance of 

 Pithecanthropus erectus, still exhibited marked simian characters; 

 and scarcely anybody thereafter doubted that in the low-browed 

 Neanderthalers, the heavy-jawed Heidelberg men and Dubois' Javan 

 ape-man, we were viewing three of the successive stages through 

 which man had passed in his evolutionary career. 



The discovery, however, of the Cro-Magnon men with their 

 strongly-marked modern characters, as partial contemporaries and 

 immediate successors of the low, pithecoid Neanderthalers; and a 

 critical re-examination in the light of our newer knowledge of the 

 claims to antiquity of the pre-Mousterian High-terrace type of man — • 

 whose possession also of modern characters had thrown doubt upon 

 their age as indicated by the geological formations in which they were 

 found^ — completely upset this view; and when the Piltdown remains 

 with their peculiar and, in some respects, astonishingly modern 

 characters were discovered in sediments earlier in time, if anything, 

 than those in which Dubois had found Pithecanthropus these views 

 could no longer be entertained and a reconstruction of our ideas 

 concerning the evolutionary phases of man's history became im- 

 peratively necessary. 



If Pithecanthropus could no longer be regarded as standing in the 

 direct line of man's ancestry^ — and additional evidence will be adduced 

 in this paper to show that he could not be — and if Neanderthal man 

 with his low, pithecoid characters must also be eliminated from our 

 family tree, who then, it might fairly be asked, were our ancestors? 

 What had been our descent? What the course of our evolutionary 

 history; and what part have these rejected types of early humanity 

 played in man's phylogeny; and can the lineage of any of the races 

 of men on the earth today be traced back to any other of those palae- 

 olithic races our researches have shown us to have existed in the dim 

 and distant days of the middle and early Pleistocene period? If 

 so, whence came they and what kind of progenitors were theirs? 



These are all questions of the deepest interest to humanity and 

 it is only natural to crave the fullest replies that science can give 

 to them. But such answers as may be given at the present stage of 

 our investigations will depend to a large extent upon the point of 

 view we may take upon certain fundamental aspects of our subject 

 and upon the interpretation we may give to the evidence which has 

 been brought to light during the present century and particularly 

 during the last decade. There is, unfortunately, anything but 

 general agreement upon many aspects of this. 



