260 



to bear witness to that great break in time between the two 

 already alluded to ; to use a geological expression^ no well- 

 defined passage-beds are known, and Neolithic man appears 

 as a new and strange race coming in after the disappearance, 

 account for it as we may, of his Palgeolithic forerunners. The 

 Abbe Hamard, in his recently-published " Age de la Pierre, 

 &c.,^'' suggests that the Neolithic race formed the first incom- 

 ing of the Aryans in Europe. This view, however, is alto- 

 gether in opposition to that which has been advocated by 

 Professor Boyd Dawkins and other authorities who consider 

 the Neolithic population to have been a Non-Aryan race allied 

 to the dark-skinned dolicho-cephalic Basques and other cog- 

 nate peoples yet existing, whilst the Aryan race would be 

 represented by the brachycephalic Celts. 



Another very interesting question is whether these early 

 men of Europe were always in the condition in which they 

 appear to have been when living in this part of the world. If 

 we may look upon them as offshoots from the parent stem 

 of humanity, had their ancestors no higher civilisation than 

 that of which they appear to have been possessors ? Were 

 the stone axes and knives the typical implements of the 

 race when it originated, or were these wanderers reduced by 

 isolation and privation to the state of barbarism in which they 

 seem to have lived ? Who shall say ? It is a difficult matter 

 also to determine whence the Neolithic stage of human pro- 

 gress originated. Polished implements are said to be very 

 seldom met with in Asia Minor, and the makers of this type 

 of implement do not seem to have entered Europe by this 

 route. The same also is said of Egypt. The fact is, we 

 know as yet far too little of the Prehistoric antiquities of the 

 East, and more especially of that part of the Asiatic continent, 

 which seems, as far as is at present known, to have been the 

 cradle of mankind, and our discoveries in Europe, valuable in 

 themselves as they are, really throw very little light upon the 

 original condition of the human race ; and it is quite possible 

 that those facts of Prehistoric archaeology which hold good 

 for this quarter of the globe, may not prove equally true for 

 all other parts of the world. At the same time it must be 

 admitted that implements of stone of various sorts do appear 

 to have been in use amongst men in all lands where man has 

 lived, and that in all probability the general history of the 

 race has been one of general progress in civilisation, but a 

 progress broken from time to time through various causes by 

 relapses or falls into a more or less barbarous state. 



