EVOLUTION OF MENTAL CHAEACTEKS 387 



cut short this inquiry and turn to consider tradition in the 

 following two chapters. Only when this subsidiary inquiry has 

 been made shall we be able to complete our estimate as to the 

 part played by changes in the germinal constitution so far as 

 they affect mental characters. 



2. The indications as regards mental development obtainable 

 from a study of fossil remains are, of course, very vague. Such 

 as they are, however, considerable interest attaches to them. 

 In the later part of the first period, in the Upper Palaeolithic, 

 that is to say, we meet with types of men whose cranial capacity 

 and the formation of whose brain, so far as it can be judged from 

 skulls, do not indicate any difference in mental capacity as 

 compared with modern man. It must be emphasized that this 

 is a very rough method of comparing intellectual capacity. 

 Something, however, may be deduced from such observations, 

 and it is probable that, though there may have been noteworthy 

 differences between Cro-Magnon and modern European intellectual 

 capacity, as we judge differences to-day, nevertheless looking at 

 human evolution as a whole, we cannot escape the conclusion 

 that by the end of the first period, before man had learnt to 

 support himself otherwise than by hunting and fishing, by far 

 the greater part of the journey from the condition of our pre- 

 human ancestor to that of European man had been accomplished. 

 This is a very important deduction, because, inasmuch as the 

 greater part of the progress in skill had still to come, it means 

 that progress in intellectual capacity and progress in skill did 

 not go hand in hand. 



What we should like to be able to do, but cannot at present 

 do, is to follow the evolution of the cranial capacity and the 

 shape of the brain of the ancestors of Upper Palaeolithic man. 

 But all we have in the Middle Palaeolithic are representatives 

 of the peculiar Neanderthal type, which apparently died out. 

 Judging from the cranial capacity, the intellectual development 

 of Neanderthal man must have been considerable and probably 

 not inferior to that of the Australians. If Eoanthropus is to be 

 assigned to the Lower Palaeolithic, it is the only skull of that 

 period that we have. Judging not so much from the cranial 

 capacity as from the formation of the brain, the intellectual 

 capacity of Eoanthropus was clearly much less than that of 

 Neanderthal man and of any other type of man now living. 



Bb2 



