34 Proceedings 
minute examination of the Altamira figures, and in their new 
report they regard their old explanation as very improbable, 
and also as failing to explain certain other animal characteristics. 
They suggest that Piette was right, and that when these draw- 
ings were made there still lived in Europe creatures related to 
the common ancestor of the anthropoid apes and man. With 
this opinion the German anthropologist, Dr. Wilser, fully con- 
curs. A glance at the two facsimilest in L’ Anthropologie shows 
that the head does not project backwards, that the back is 
simply convex, and that the legs, at least in one figure, are bent. 
The faces I admit are hardly what one would expect, but re- 
call those of weasels or even birds, though perhaps big teeth 
are indicated. But the drawings are so rough that it is useless 
to insist on details. 
Turning in doubt from these mysterious drawings, we will 
enquire whether tradition throws any light on the subject. There 
is an enormous gap to bridge, which may well make us hesitate. 
But, firstly, if the Ape-man, or a not fully human animal, sur- 
vived, as seems possible, until the close of the Ice Age, it would 
be acomparatively small matter for him to linger on under favour- 
able circumstances for a few thousand years more in the vast 
wildernesses of mountain and forest in Central and Northern 
Europe, while the more advanced races were gradually multiplying 
in the plains and river-valleys. And though we may assume that 
at the time when the earliest known European traditions arose, 
the lowest forms of the Neandertal race whom our ancestors 
encountered had already become extinct, and that the survivors 
had risen somewhat in the scale, the latter may well have been 
far more savage and brutish than the lowest of existing races.t 
Moreover, traditions are known in some cases to have persisted 
for an almost incredible length of time. You have very likely 
heard the authentic story of the English villagers who told of a 
ghost in golden armour that haunted a certain barrow. When it 
+ Also figured, with parts omitted, in Wilser, of. cé¢. p. 30. 
+ If we are to believe the Scottish chroniclers, there were a few can- 
nibalistic cave-dwellers in that country even as late as the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries. See, ¢.g., Lindsay of Pitscottie’s Chronicle. 
