K j The Outline of Science 



afterwards and suffering from gumboil too! There seems little 

 doubt that these vigorous Palaeolithic Cave-men of Europe were 

 living for a while contemporaneously with the men of Neander- 

 thal, and it is possible that they directly or indirectly hastened 

 the disappearance of their more primitive collaterals. Curiously 

 enough, however, they had not themselves adequate lasting power 

 in Europe, for they seem for the most part to have dwindled 

 away, leaving perhaps stray present-day survivors in isolated 

 districts. The probability is that after their decline Europe was 

 repeopled by immigrants from Asia. It cannot be said that there 

 is any inherent biological necessity for the decline of a vigorous 

 race many animal races go back for millions of years but in 

 mankind the historical fact is that a period of great racial vigour 

 and success is often followed by a period of decline, sometimes 

 leading to practical disappearance as a definite race. The causes 

 of this waning remain very obscure sometimes environmental, 

 sometimes constitutional, sometimes competitive. Sometimes the 

 introduction of a new parasite, like the malaria organism, may 

 have been to blame. 



After the Ice Ages had passed, perhaps 25,000 years ago, 

 the Palaeolithic culture gave place to the Neolithic. The men who 

 made rudely dressed but often beautiful stone implements were 

 succeeded or replaced by men who made polished stone imple- 

 ments. The earliest inhabitants of Scotland were of this Neolithic 

 culture, migrating from the Continent when the ice-fields of the 

 Great Glaciation had disappeared. Their remains are often 

 associated with the "Fifty-foot Beach" which, though now high 

 and dry, was the seashore in early Neolithic days. Much is known 

 about these men of the polished stones. They were hunters, 

 fowlers, and fishermen ; without domesticated animals or agricul- 

 ture ; short folk, two or three inches below the present standard ; 

 living an active strenuous life. Similarly, for the south, Sir 

 Arthur Keith pictures for us a Neolithic community at Coldrum 

 in Kent, dating from about 4,000 years ago a few ticks of the 



