208 HUMAN FOSSILS 



II! 



take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid 

 form, by the modification of which he has, probably, 

 become what he is. And considering what is now 

 known of the most ancient Races of men ; seeing 

 that they fashioned flint axes and flint knives and 

 bone-skewers, of much the same pattern as those 

 fabricated by the lowest savages at the present 

 day, and that we have every reason to believe the 

 habits and modes of living of such people to have 

 remained the same from the time of the Mammoth 

 and the tichorhine Rhinoceros till now, I do not 

 know that this result is other than might be 

 expected. 



Where, then, must we look for primaeval Man ? 

 Was the oldest Homo sapiens pliocene or miocene, 

 or yet more ancient ? In still older strata do the 

 fossilized bones of an ape more anthropoid, or a 

 Man more pithecoid, than any yet known await 

 the researches of some unborn paleontologist ? 



Time will show. But, in the meanwhile, if any 

 form of the doctrine of progressive development is 

 correct, we must extend by long epochs the most 

 liberal estimate that has yet been made of the 

 antiquity of Man. 



sessor specifically, still less genetically, from Homo sap-fen*. 

 At present, we have no sufficient warranty for declaring it to 

 be either the type of a distinct race, or a member of any existing 

 one ; nor do the anatomical characters of the skull justify any 

 conclusion as to the age to which it belongs." See also the 

 essay on the Aryan question in this volume. 1894.] 



