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llEPOUT — 1884. 



leavinj? tlie detailed treatment of the topics raised to come in tlie more specialised 

 papers and discussions which form tlie current business of tlic St'ctiou. 



Tiie term prehistoric, invaluable to anthropologists since Professor Daniil 

 Wilson introduced it more than thirty years ago, stretches back from times iust 

 outside the range of written history into the remotest ages where human remains 

 or relic.?, or other more indirect evidence, justifies the opinion tliat man existed. 

 Far hack in these prehistoric periods, the problem of Quaternary man turns on the 

 presence of his rude stone implements in the drift gravels and in caves, associated 

 w'th the remains of what may be called for shortness the mammoth-fauna. Not tn 

 recapitulate details which have been set down in a hundred books, the pnint 

 to be insisted on is how, in the experience of those wlio, like myself, have 

 followed tlicm since the time of Boucher de Perthes, the eileet of a quarter of 

 a century's researcli and criticism has been to give (Quaternary man a more and 

 more real position. The clumsy flint pick and its contemporary niiunmoth-tootli 

 have become stock articles in museums, and every year adds new localities where 

 paheolitliic implements are found of tins types catalogued years ago l)y Evans, and 

 in beds agreeing with the sections drawn years ago by I'restwich. It is generully 

 admitted that about tlie close of the Glacial period savage man killed tlie liiifre 

 maned elephants, or fled from the great lions and tigers on what was then foivst- 

 clad valley-bottom, in ages before the later waterUow had cut out the present wide 

 valleys 5(3 or 100 feet or more lower, leaving the remains of the ancient drift-heds 

 exposed high on wliat are now the slopes. To tix our ideas on the picture of ai; 

 actual locality, we may fancy ourselves standing with Mr. Spurrell on tiieoldsi .dy 

 beach of the Tliames near Crayford, o5 feet above where the river now flows two 

 miles away in the valley. Here we are on the very workshop-floor where paheo- 

 lithic man sat chipping at the blocks of flint which had fallen out of the ciialli cliff j 

 above his head. Tiiere lie the broken remains rtf his blocks, tlie flint chips he i 

 knocked oil", and which can be fltted back into their places, the striking-stones with 

 which the flaking was done ; and with tliese the -splintered bones of mammotii a)id i 

 tidiorhine rhinoceros, possibly remains of meals. .Moreover, as if to point the con- 

 trast between the rude palaeolithic man who worked these coarse blocks, and 

 apparently never troubled himself to .seek for bt'tter material, the modern visitor 

 sees within 50 yards of tlie spot the bottle-si laped pits dug out in later ages hy^ 

 neolithic man through the soil to a deptli in the chalk where a layer of goodl 

 workable flint supplied him with the material for his neat flakes and trimly-chipped J 

 arrow-heads. The evidence of caverns such as tho.se of Devon.shire and P'rigurd.j 

 with their revelations of early European life and art, has been suppk^mented byj 

 many now explorations, without .shaking the conclusion arrived at as to the agel 

 known as the reindeer period of the northern half of lOurope, when the mammothl 

 and cave-bear and their contemporary mammals liad not yet disappeared, but th"l 

 close of the Glacial period was merging into tlie times when in England and Frano'» 

 savages hunted the reindeer for food as the Arctic tribes of America do still.j 

 Human remains of these early periods are still .scarce and unsatisfactory for deter-^ 

 mining race-types. Among the latest And.'' is part of a skull from the loess, ati 

 Podbaba, near Prague, with prominent brow-ridges, though less remarkable in tbia 

 way than the celebrated Neanderthal .skull. It remains the prevailing opinion oJ 

 anatomists that these very ancient .skulls are not apt to show extreme lowne.s.s of typej 

 but to be higher in the scale than, for instance, the Tasmanian. The evidence iucreasef 

 as to the wide range of palajolithic man. lie extended far into A.sia, where !iij 

 characteristic rude stone implements are plent ifully found in the caves of Syria am 

 the fooi-iiills of Madras. The question which this Section may have espnial 

 means of dealing with is whether man likewise inhabited America with the gieal 

 extinct animals of the Quaternary jieriod, if not. even earlier. [ 



Among the statements brought forward as to this subject, a few are nienj 

 fictions, while others, though entirely genuine, are surrounded with doubts, makirJ 

 it diflicidt to use them for anthropological purpo.ses. We shall not discus.s tl.J 

 sandalled human giants, whoso footprints, l'O inches long, are declared to liavj 

 been found with the foot-prints of mammoths, among whom they walked, i-j 

 Carson, Nevada. There is something picturesque in the idea of a man in a pu-P 



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