THE EARLY KEANTtiROPTC AGE IQI 



are of more value than any number of examples in 

 which, from local circumstances, the' succession* itfayv 

 be obscure or uncertain. 



The above examples relate to the men of the 

 older neanthropic age, the men of the so-called 

 neolithic or polished stone age of archaeologists. 

 These men can be shown to be identical with the 

 oldest populations of postdiluvian Europe, peoples 

 whose descendants exist to-day in many parts of 

 Western Europe, though they have been more or less 

 displaced or mixed with later intrusive races. These 

 people have gone on without any physical cataclysm, 

 or change of fauna, or geographical or climatal 

 changes of any magnitude, into the ages of bronze 

 and iron and of the modern civilisation. Thus, while 

 the palaeocosmic men passed away abruptly and have 

 left no certain successors, those who succeeded them 

 pass on without a break into the existing populations 

 of the world. 



We must, however, here guard ourselves from a 

 misconception which has apparently unconsciously 

 deceived many writers on this subject. It by no 

 means follows from the facts insisted on above that 

 there are no direct links of connection between palaeo- 

 cosmic and neocosmic men. The ancestors of the 

 latter must have existed through the palanthropic 

 period, and wherever they were living they may have 

 had the same characters which distinguish them at 

 a later time, and which persist to this day. There 

 would therefore be nothing contradictory to our 



