THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 195 



in the neighbourhood of Damietta, dis- 

 covered in the alluvial deposits of the Nile, 

 at a greater depth than in the previous 

 case, a brick bearing upon it the stamp of 

 Mehemet Ali, the ruler of Egypt in the 19th 

 century r , A.D.* ! ! ! 



But Bunsen, though he was sanguine 

 about Egypt having produced a colony of 

 pottery men as early as 20,000 years 

 B.C., until the Mehemet Ali brick dispersed 

 his theory to the winds, was a very 

 modest computer of the age compared 

 with the wilder speculations of Professor 

 Huxley, as he declared there was no 

 " valid reason" for allowing man a higher 

 antiquity than B.C. 20,000. At which bolder 

 sceptics laughed him to scorn, as one and 

 all affirmed this was not near long enough 

 for the human pedigree since his ancestor 

 had divested himself of his caudal ap- 

 pendage, as he passed, according to 

 Mr. Darwin's theory, from an old-world 

 monkey into the stage of uncivilized man ! 



* London Quarterly Review, No. li., p. 240. 



.02 



