478 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



man species. Similarly, as to characters which can- 

 not be measured or weighed, it is obvious that it is 

 the mind of a Fuegian and not that of a Newton 

 which should be compared with that of the higher 

 animals. 



Although anthropologists are not in a position at 

 present to do more than speculate in regard to the 

 factors which may account for the evolution of man's 

 big l}rain } the great majority are unhesitating in their 

 acceptance of the general conclusion of Darwin's 

 Descent of Man, that man arose from an ancestral 

 stock common to him and to the higher apes. 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 



" Man's immense antiquity is now accepted by a 

 vast majority of the most thoughtful men." * The 

 word " immense " is suitable, for it remains impos- 

 sible to arrive at incontrovertible data by which to 

 measure the prolonged period which has certainly 

 elapsed since the human race began. We have al- 

 ready referred to the uncertainty which besets any 

 estimate of the age of the earth, and similar remarks 

 apply to the case of man. There are traces of man, 

 or of some immediate precursor in the New or Late 

 Pliocene deposits, along with remains of the mam- 

 moth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave-lion, the cave- 

 bear, the Irish elk, and other extinct mammals once 

 wide-spread throughout Europe and Britain. That 

 man appeared before the last of the Pleistocene ice- 

 ages seems undeniable, and it is possible that he had 

 appeared before the first of them. " The most ra- 

 tional hypothesis," Mr. Keane says, " seems that of 



* Dr. Robert Munro, Address Anthropological Sec., Rep. Brit. 

 Ass., 1893. 



