XLI 

 THE MOST ANCIENT MEN 



IN the winter of 190809 a very interesting discovery 

 was announced in the daily newspapers the dis- 

 covery of a human skull and some bones buried in a 

 cave called the Grotto of the Chapelle-aux-Saints, in 

 the central department of France, known as the Correze, 

 not very far from Perigueux, in the Dordogne. An 

 account was given of this discovery by Professor Marcelin 

 Boule, of the Paris Museum, to the Academic des 

 Sciences, and the description of the bones, which had 

 been carefully pieced together, and were exhibited to 

 the meeting of the Academy, was sent by him to me 

 (see Fig. 65). Some exaggerated statements as to the 

 monkey-like character of the race to which these bones 

 belonged (exaggerated, but not altogether devoid of 

 truth) were circulated by imaginative correspondents 

 in the newspapers. It is the fact that these human 

 remains are of enormous antiquity, and belong to a very 

 peculiar and primitive race known as the Neander Men, 

 so called because a skull and some bones of this same 

 race were found fifty years ago in a cave in the Neander 

 valley, 1 near Elberfeld, on the Rhine. 



The French archaeologists, or " prehistorians," as we 



1 So named after one Neumann, a religious enthusiast, who in- 

 habited the cave. 



37' 



