374 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



. 



rarity of the natural pre- 

 servation of bones that we 

 never find more than a few 

 of those of extinct animals 

 of various degrees of anti- 

 quity, and never more than 

 a very few of those of the 

 ancient men who lived in 

 caverns and made " flint im- 

 plements." 



As a preliminary to deal- 

 ing below with the story of 

 " the Neander Men " to 

 which race the newly-found 

 skull and bones from the 

 Correze belong it will help 

 to make the importance of 

 that skeleton obvious if I 

 very briefly and dogmatically 

 state what are the great 

 periods in the prehistoric 

 record of man, and the pro- 

 bable distance in time from 

 us of those periods. It 

 must be remembered that 

 what I have to say applies 

 only to the " prehistoric his- 

 tory " of man in Western 

 Europe and the Mediter- 

 ranean region, for it is only 



FIG. 66. -An unpolished but beauti- this P art of the world which 

 fully chipped flint knife, of the has been sufficiently care- 

 Neolithic Age, from Denmark. f u n y examined to yield any 



j e ., i T 



defimtG Conclusions. Let 



US suppose that VVC Can 



(This figure and Fig. 67 are from 

 theguidetotheantfquitiesofthe 

 Stone Age in the British Museum). 



