[hill-tout] PHYLOGENY OF MAN 49 



It is the intent'on in this paper to briefly review this evidence 

 and see to what conclusions it may be said to fairly lead one in re- 

 spect to any of these questions; and to offer in the course of our 

 inquiry a line of evidence which, in the writer's opinion, has had 

 too little attention paid to it hitherto and which seems to him capable 

 of throwing very definite light upon some, at least, of the problems 

 we have to deal with. 



In spite of the fact that there exists considerable difference of 

 opinion upon the significance of many of our later discoveries and 

 that on many points of extreme importance our highest authorities 

 are in direct conflict, the present century has seen a decided advance 

 in many directions in our knowledge of ancient man. 



One of the most outstanding and definite of the results of these 

 researches, and one upon which there is now little or no difference 

 of opinion has been the establishment of a series of successive cul- 

 tural epochs in man's past reaching back from the Bronze age, which 

 is directly linked with our own, to remotest Palaeolithic times. 



Some twelve of these epochs are generally recognized and are 

 known to us under the terms Tardenoisian, Azilian, Magdalenian, 

 Solutrian, Aurignacian, Mousterian, Acheulean, Chellean, Strepyan, 

 Mesvinian, Mafflian and Reutelian. Of these, the first is regarded 

 as the transitional epoch linking up the Neolithic with the earlier 

 Palaeolithic period. The others all fall within and extend over the 

 whole Pleistocene era. 



Beyond the Pleistocene and extending into the Pliocene and 

 Upper Miocene is another long and somewhat ill-defined period, 

 known broadly as the Eolithic, because the stone implements re- 

 covered from the geological beds of this period become relatively 

 cruder and exhibit less and less skill as the recession of time goes on 

 until it is no longer possible to say whether they are the work of man 

 or the chance products of nature. Hence the term Dawn-stone 

 period. This period is also, by some authorities, sub-divided into 

 separate cultural epochs each marked by its own distinct term. 

 These, in their chronological order, are Prestian, Kentian, Cantalian, 

 and Fagnian. 



The time embraced by these epochs is variously estimated at 

 from one and a half to two and a half million years. Thus man's 

 duration on the earth is now known to be much greater than was 

 formerly supposed. 



Accepting the higher estimate as approximately the more cor- 

 rect — for the greater our knowledge of man's past becomes the greater 

 need there seems to be to draw larger drafts upon the bank of time — 



—17 



