398 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



veloped from a lower type of men we have at present 

 no indication. 



A very remarkable discovery of the last five years 

 made in the course of the careful excavation of the four 

 caverns of Mentone by the Prince of Monaco, where as 

 many as sixteen human skeletons of the Pleistocene Age 

 have been brought to light, gives us a new point of view 

 as to the presence of more than one race in Europe in 

 these immensely remote times, as in later periods. In 

 one of the caves, and in a position showing them to date 

 from the deepest layer of the middle Pleistocene, or late 

 Glacial Age, two complete skeletons have been found (and 

 may be seen alongside those of the Cromagnon race in 

 the museum at Monaco), which are obviously different 

 from those of both the Neander and the Cromagnon 

 people. They have skulls which decidedly resemble that 

 of the modern negro race, so that they have been definitely 

 assigned to a new race hitherto unknown in European 

 caves, and are spoken of as " the negroid skeletons " and 

 " the Grimaldi race." This is indeed a startling fact. There 

 was land stretching across the Mediterranean in those 

 days, and these skeletons suggest that already there was 

 a negroid race in Africa, individuals of which had 

 wandered north as far as the maritime Alps. 1 Two or 

 three negroid skulls of Neolithic (therefore very much 

 later) Age have been found in Brittany and in Switzerland. 

 When we reflect that the negroid skeletons of Mentone 

 and those of the contemporary Neander Men are probably 

 more than 100,000 years old, we are at once impressed 

 with the important conclusion that already in that remote 

 period three great branches of the human race had come 



1 In this connection it seems to be important to note the 

 " Ethiopic " character of the arrangement of the hair in the little 

 carving of a woman's head from the Brassempouy Cave (dep. 

 Landes), shown in Fig. 7. 



