324 THE ARYAN QUESTION VI 



we shall be able to pursue the ancestral type of men and the 

 anthropoid apes still further, perhaps as far as the eocene and 

 even beyond. 1 



These conclusions hold good whatever the age 

 of the men of Spy ; but they possess a peculiar 

 interest if we admit, as I think on the evidence 

 must be admitted, that these human fossils are of 

 pleistocene age. For, after all due limitations, 

 they give us some, however dim, insight into the 

 rate of evolution of the human species, and indi- 

 cate that it has not taken place at a much faster 

 or slower pace than that of other mammalia. And 

 if that is so, we are warranted in the supposition 

 that the genus Homo, if not the species which the 

 courtesy or the irony of naturalists has dubbed 

 sapiens, was represented in pliocene, or even in 

 miocene times. But I do not know by what 

 osteological peculiarities it could be determined 

 whether the pliocene, or miocene, man was suffi- 

 ciently sapient to speak or not ; 2 and whether, or 

 not, he answered to the definition " rational ani- 

 mal " in any higher sense than a dog or an ape does. 

 There is no reason to suppose that the genus 



1 "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 fossilised bones of an Ape more 

 anthropoid or a Man more pithecoid than any yet known await 

 the researches of some unborn palaeontologist I " P. 208 supra. 



2 I am perplexed by the importance attached by some to the . 

 presence or absence of the so-called "genial " elevations. Does 

 any one suppose that the existence of the genio-hyo-glossus 

 muscle, which plays so large a part in the movements of the 

 tongue, depends on that of these elevations '* 



