VI THE ARYAN QUESTION 319 



nary and the Recent populations that the 

 Quaternary population followed the retreating ice 

 northwards and left behind them a desert which 

 remained unpeopled for ages. Other high authori- 

 ties, on the contrary, have maintained that the races 

 of men who now inhabit Europe may all be traced 

 back to the Great Ice Age. When a conflict of 

 opinion of this kind obtains among reasonable and 

 instructed men, it is generally a safe conclusion 

 that the evidence for neither view is worth much. 

 Certainly that is the result of my own cogitations 

 with regard to both the hiatus doctrine (in its 

 extreme form) and its opposite though I think 

 the latter by much the more likely to turn out 

 right. But I hesitate to adopt it on the evidence 

 which has been obtained up to this time. 



No doubt, human bones and skulls of various 

 types have been discovered in close proximity to 

 palaeolithic implements and to skeletons of qua- 

 ternary quadrupeds ; no doubt, if the bones and 

 skulls in question were not human, their con- 

 temporaneity would hardly have been questioned. 

 But, since they are human, the demand for further 

 evidence really need not be ascribed to mere con- 

 servative prejudice. Because the human biped 

 differs from all other bipeds and quadrupeds, in 

 the tendency to put his dead out of sight in vari- 

 ous ways ; commonly by burial. It is a habit 

 worthy of all respect in itself, but generative of 

 subtle traps and grievous pitfalls for the unwary 



