Of Western Europe. 27 



ness of the bones and the development of the muscular 

 ridges show that the man must have had great physical 

 strength. It is, of course, impossible to say whether 

 this remarkable skull was an individual instance, or the 

 ordinary type of some race. It is undoubtedly very 

 ancient, but nothing found in the cave with it, and 

 nothing in the manner in which it seems to have been 

 deposited there, warrants the statement that it is en- 

 titled to belong to the post-pliocene -period. It may 

 have been cotemporary with the mammoth, but it may 

 be much more recent. 



The Engis skull, however, was found so associated 

 with other fossils, that it is accepted as an unquestion- 

 able relic of the days of the mammoth and the cave 

 bear. This skull is in no wise peculiar. Its dimen- 

 sions are almost precisely identical with two modern 

 skulls, one Australian, and one an English skull, noted 

 in Hunterian museum as typically Caucasian. So tar 

 as the scanty human fossil remains give indication, the 

 physical structure of man has undergone no change 

 since he first appeared on earth. Like existing ani- 

 mals that have come down from the post-pliocene 

 period, his type remains the same. 



During that whole era, man made little advance in 

 civilization in Western Europe. In the last few thou- 

 sand years, civilization has accelerated in a geometrical 

 ratio. But as we dimly peer into the conjectural past, 

 the advance appears to have been, with occasional fluc- 

 tuations, more sluggish, till we get back to a uniform 

 degree lasting through cycles. The data we have are 

 certainly* scanty. The stone implements then used, so 



