820 THE ARYAN QUESTION VT 



investigator of human palaeontology. For it may 

 easily happen, that the bones of him that " died o' 

 Wednesday," may thus come to lie alongside the 

 bones of animals that were extinct thousands of 

 years before that Wednesday ; and yet the inter- 

 ment may have been effected so many thousands 

 of years ago that no outward sign betrays the 

 difference in date. In all investigations of this 

 kind, the most careful and critical study of the 

 circumstances is needful if the results are to be 

 accepted as perfectly trustworthy. 



In the case of the remains found in a cave of 

 the valley of the Neander, near Diisseldorf, half a 

 century ago the characters of which gave rise to 

 a vast amount of discussion at that time and subse- 

 quently the circumstances of the discovery were 

 but vaguely known. The skeleton was met with 

 in a deposit, the loess, which is known to be of 

 quaternary age ; there was no evidence to show 

 how it came there. Consequently, not only was 

 its exact age justly and properly declared to be a 

 matter of doubt; but those who, on scientific or 

 other grounds, were inclined to minimise its 

 importance could put forth plausible speculations 

 about its nature which do not look so well under 

 the light thrown by a more advanced science of 

 Anthropology. It could be and it was suggested 

 that the Neanderthal skeleton was that of a 

 strayed idiot ; that the characters of the skull were 

 the result of early synostosis or of late gout ; and, 



