THE MOST ANCIENT REMAINS OF MAN 
though some, at least, are markedly thicker; and that 
with them are associated very primitive human imple- 
ments, as well as animal fossils of early Pleistocene and 
Pliocene age. The problem is this: Are the skulls, the 
implements, and the animal fossils contemporaneous; or, 
in other words, may the skulls not be intrusive? 
The probabilities all seem to point to the specimens 
being of the same age; but in view of the history of the 
deposition of the gravels, together with some of the un- 
certainties of the find and the apparent incongruity of 
the parts, there is room for no little disagreement. 
The original main problem, the genetic and chronologi- 
cal association of the jaw and the teeth with the two 
skulls, remains much as it was soon after their discovery, 
and no amount of thought, discussion, or even reexamina- 
tion of the specimens can promise, it seems, for the pres- 
ent, definite conclusions. The only hope, as in so many 
other cases of this sort, lies in new and sufficient dis- 
coveries. 
Doctor Hrdli¢ka concludes: 
In view of all this it must be plain that any far-fetched 
deductions from the Piltdown materials are not justified. 
This applies particularly to the superficially attractive 
conclusion that the Piltdown remains demonstrate the 
existence in the early Pleistocene, and long before the 
Neanderthal and even the Heidelberg forms, of men with 
practically modern-sized and modern-formed skulls and 
brains and directly ancestral to Homo sapiens, or recent 
man. This hypothesis is a proposition that would change 
the whole face and trend of human prehistory, and that 
against all other better substantiated evidence in this 
line. Such a theory, all science will agree, could only 
be established as a fact by the most ample and satisfac- 
tory material demonstration, which is quite impossible 
in the present case. 
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