EARLY MAN 471 



period alone. That man may have existed previously no one 

 need deny, but no one can at present positively affirm on any 

 ground of actual fact. It may be necessary here to explain 

 the contentions often made that in Britain and Western Europe 

 man belongs to an interglacial period. When with Dr. James 

 Geikie, the great Scottish glacialist, we hold that there were 

 several interglacial periods, the Glacial age may be extended 

 by including the warm period of the Palanthropic, and the cold 

 at its termination, as one of the interglacial and Glacial periods. 

 In this way, as a matter of classification, man appears in the 

 latest Interglacial periods. This, however, as above stated, I 

 regard as an error in arrangement ; but it makes no practical 

 difference as to the facts. 



Inasmuch, however, as the human remains of the Post-glacial 

 epoch are those of fully developed men of high type, it may be 

 said, and has often been said, that man in some lower stage of 

 development must have existed at a far earlier period. That 

 is, he must, if certain theories as to his evolution from lower 

 animals are to be sustained. This, however, is not a mode of 

 reasoning in accordance with the methods of science. When 

 facts fail to sustain certain theories we are usually in the habit 

 of saying " so much the worse for the theories," not " so much 

 the worse for the facts," or at least we claim the right to hold 

 our judgment in suspense till some confirmatory facts are forth- 

 coming. 



We have now to inquire as to the actual nature of the indi- 

 cations of man in Europe and Western Asia at the close of the 

 Glacial or Pleistocene period. These are principally such of 

 his tools or weapons as could escape decay when embedded in 

 river gravels, or in the earth and stalagmite ot caverns or rock 

 shelters, or buried with his bones in caves of sepulture. Very 

 valuable accessory fossils are the broken bones of the animals 

 he has used as food. Most valuable, and rarest of all, are well- 

 preserved human skulls and skeletons. Some doubt may attach 



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