130 HUMAN HISTOEY 



any period in the Pleistocene beyond placing them before the 

 Middle Palaeolithic. No definite conclusions can be drawn as to 

 the relation of these three forms one to another, or to the forms 

 which follow. 



Pithecanthropus may or may not be on the direct line leading 

 to all the higher races. There is some probabihty that Heidelberg 

 man is a forerunner of Neanderthal man, whereas Eoanthropus 

 would seem to be related on the one hand to the hypothetical 

 Pliocene ancestor, and on the other hand to the Late and not to 

 the Middle Palaeohthic races. It is quite possible that, as Europe 

 was not the scene of human evolution, Piltdown and Heidelberg 

 men represent varieties which have died out, and not stages 

 from the main line of human evolution. This is certainly the case 

 Avith the Neanderthal race. In the Upper Palaeolithic we find 

 races of as high a physical type as those of the present day, but 

 we have no certain knowledge of their direct ancestors. 



By far the most remarkable feature of the whole process has 

 been the speeding up of the rate of progress of the evolution of 

 culture. This speeding up would be very much emphasized if 

 we could accept eoliths as genuine, as indicating, that is to say, 

 the existence of an eolithic culture before the Palaeolithic culture 

 extending over an immense period of time. As it is, the accelera- 

 tion of the rate of progress is striking enough. The whole Palaeo- 

 lithic period probably lasted at least 100,000 years. Eegarding 

 this period as a whole, we can observe a noteworthy speeding up 

 of progress in the last part of the period. A few thousand years 

 only separate the early from the late divisions of the Upper 

 Palaeolithic and the progress exhibited is very considerable, 

 whereas but relatively little progress is visible during the huge 

 length of time which the Lower Palaeolithic must have occupied. 

 The whole progress made, however, up to the opening of the Bronze 

 Age is insignificant compared with that made since. Neverthe- 

 less, progress has not been uniform within the historical era. 

 There have been periods of stagnation and even of decadence. 

 Little progress in command over nature was made between the 

 time of the later Egyptian civilization and the later Middle Ages 

 as compared with the progress made in the last hundred years. 

 Progress in skill gathered speed in the thirteenth century, and the 

 speeding up became very marked in the eighteenth century. 

 There has been a similar lack of uniformity in the evolution of 



