THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 35 



more vigorous Asiatics. The Cro-Magnon race has also 

 ceased to exist as such, although in the Dordogne region, 

 within the limits of their ancient home, there dwell individuals 

 which possess many of the physical traits of their probable 

 Aurignacian ancestors. We have to go to Asia to the region 

 north and south of the Himalayas to find peoples whose facial 

 characteristics best resemble those of Cro-Magnon man, while 

 the stature and bodily build are best displayed in the Sikhs. 



The decline of the Cro-Magnons, Osborn says (1916, page 

 450), 



may have been due partly to environmental causes and the 

 abandonment of their vigorous nomadic mode of life, or it 

 may be that they had reached the end of a long cycle of psychic 

 development. . . . We know as a parallel that in the history 

 of many civilized races a period of great artistic and indus- 

 trial development may be followed by a period of stagnation 

 and decline without any apparent environmental causes. 



There are yet a number of remains pertaining apparently 

 to Homo sapiens. These are the Galley Hill skull in the 

 Thames gravels, and the remains from Dartford, Clichy, 

 Moulin Quignon, Grenelle, Denise, Olmo, and Castenedolo. 

 All of these have been in dispute as to their antiquity, prin- 

 cipally because of their very modern character. But Keith 

 groups them collectively under the head of pre-Mousterian 

 man, accepting Galley Hill, Clichy, and Olmo as certainties, 

 and believes that they may well be cited to prove the great 

 antiquity of our own species. Other competent authorities, 

 however, consider the above cited as "impossible and not 

 proven." Keith's contention is that Homo sapiens appeared 

 at a remote time, flourished for a while, and disappeared, to 

 be replaced by the more primitive but not ancestral Neandertal 

 man of Mousterian time. This last was in turn deposed from 

 human dominance and replaced by the higher race again in the 

 character of Cro-Magnon man. He feels, therefore, that the 



