ANCIENT KEMAINS 01' MAN HRDLICKA. 551 



skeletons, some of them almost complete, with additional skeletal parts 

 from six other bodies, is now being studied by Prof. J. Matiegka, 

 the director of the Anthropologicky Ustav, of Prague. The writer 

 has seen this collection on two occasions and he regards it as by far 

 the most important assemblage of material from the transitional 

 period between earlier and the latest paleolithic forms. It repre- 

 sents in a measure the much searched-for bridge between the Nean- 

 derthal and recent man. Archeologically, these valuable skeletons 

 belong to the earlier Solutrean or the Aurignacean. 



Besides the above described or enumerated specimens, there are 

 many others scattered over the museums of Europe, for which great 

 or less antiquity has been at some time, or is still being claimed. In 

 many of these instances the student finds that the evidence adduced 

 and the testimony of the skeletal parts themselves speak rather 

 against any great age, or leave the subject in serious doubt. It would 

 seem best for the progress of science to eliminate all such specimens, 

 with perhaps some of those mentioned above, from consideration, 

 unless or until new and ample evidence be found to convince us that 

 they really deserve place in the range of the precious authentic docu- 

 ments that represent the earlier phases of man's natural history. 



The gradually accumulating finds which throw light on the physi- 

 cal past of man, have naturally stimulated further exploration in 

 the same lines; and the various failures and uncertainties connected 

 with some of the finds in the past have impressed all investigators 

 in tlie field with the necessity of the most careful and properly con- 

 trolled procedure. Besides men of science, the educated public, en- 

 gineers controlling public works, and even many among the work- 

 men in Europe have been impressed by these remarkable discoveries, 

 and in hundreds of instances are doubtless watching for new treas- 

 ures. Under these conditions we are justified in hoping that from 

 time to time we shall receive additions to the precious material 

 already in our hands ; that these additions will fill the existing vacua, 

 and gradually extend farther back to the more strictly intermediary 

 forms between man and his ancestral stock, and perhaps eventually 

 even to the source of these link-forms themselves, to the peculiar 

 morphologically unstable family of the anthropogenous primates. 



While the anthropologist is thus painfully and slowly reconstruct- 

 ing the past physical history of man, he is also with every new fact 

 adding another imperishable block to the foundation upon which will 

 stand not only the knowledge of the future in regard to man himself, 

 but also the laws of his further physical development, and radically 

 even those of his beliefs and his moral behavior. This is a part of 

 the service of anthropology to humanity. 



