70 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



time certain features that are peculiar to themselves and which tend 

 to prove their antiquity. One of these features — probably that 

 most characteristic of them all- — is the great thickness of the cranial 

 vault. The average thickness of a modern skull is about 5 mm. ; 

 that of the Galley-Hill man has a thickness more than double this, 

 running from 10 to 12mm. The Clichy skull has even a greater 

 maximum thickness. It runs from 10 to 13 mm. The Olmo skull 

 has an average thickness of 11 mm., while that of Eoanthropus has 

 a maximum thickness of 12 mm. Thickness of skull would thus seem 

 to be one of the characteristics of primitive man; and when in the 

 future we find skulls with this character, under such conditions 

 as surrounded the Galley-Hill, Clichy and Olmo skulls, where the 

 geological evidence of their age is plain and clear, we need not do 

 violence to this evidence and cast doubt upon their antiquity because 

 in other characters they approximate to the modern type of skull. 



Admitting, then, with Keith and those who think with him that 

 the Galley Hill, Clichy and Olmo men preceded by many thousands 

 of years Homo neanderthalensis and by their radical difference in 

 type from him, could not have belonged to the same race, we have 

 now to seek the origin and affiliations of these High-terrace men. 

 Were they autochthonous? Did they come into existence in that 

 part of the world where we find their remains? Are they the direct 

 lineal descendants of the Dawn-men, or are they like the Cro-Magnons 

 migrants from the south, earlier representatives of the Mediterranean 

 race? 



It is not possible to give decisive answers to these questions one 

 way or the other in the present state of our knowledge. Like the 

 Mediterranean race, they are distinctly dolichocephalic, while Eoan- 

 thropus appears to be mesocephalic with a tendency toward dolicho- 

 cephaly. 



Viewing the matter strictly on the merits of the evidence at our 

 disposal, it would seem that we are hardly more justified in regarding 

 the High-terrace men as the direct lineal descendants of the Dawn- 

 men, notwithstanding their common thickness of skull, than as 

 early immigrants from the Mediterranean region. Keith takes the 

 view that Eoanthropus represents a collateral branch of the human 

 family, one of those primitive types or genera that passed out of 

 existence without leaving any posterity to represent them. To 

 others, the evidence seems to point the other way, and marks Eoan- 

 thropus as the direct ancestor of the High-terrace men. This is the 

 view held by Elliott Smith, who looks upon Eoanthropus as the direct 

 ancestor of the High-terrace men, and thus possibly of ourselves. 



