TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. ANTHROPOLOGY. 399 



horse of the Iliad, which was shown by au antique bronze horse found in the plains 

 of Argos, of exactly the same shape. A water-jug from Ephesus, made in that 

 locality alone, was as much in the form of Diana of Ephesus as Dr. Schliemann's 

 jugs were of Minerva, and modern jugs gave the form of the latter. A large Italian 

 water-jug he had represented the sun and serpent, without any intention of the 

 maker, but evidence of their worship abounded in the locality where the jug was 

 made. These were evidences quite as expressive as the etchings on bones from the 

 caves were of what the etchers saw being so portrayed by them. 



TUESDAY, AUGUST 26. 

 The following Papers were read : — 

 1. Tlie Profile of the Anient Greeks. By J. Park Harrison, M.A. 



Two theories have been propounded to account for the remarkable facial lines in 

 early Greek sculpture, one deriving them from Hellenic models, the other assuming 

 them to have been more or less ideal : and it is this latter view, in the absence of 

 any trace of the feature in modern Greece (except, perhaps in some of the islands), 

 joined with the fact that the ancient Greek crania are without the lines in 

 question, that is now most commonly accepted. 



The peculiarity in question consists in the absence of any nasal point, or, in 

 other words, in the continuity of the lines of the brow and nasal bone, and in the 

 close proximity of the mouth and nostril ; in addition to which the upper lip is 

 often curved, and the chin more or less massive. 



Now if any superior race in point of culture, and possessing these features, could be 

 shown to have had intercourse with the Greeks, when in a low state of civilisation 

 it would appear probable that the peculiarity was copied by them, rather than that 

 it represented any abstract ideal of beauty, or some divine attribute unconnected 

 with any living model. 



When then we find examples of the feature in early monumental frescoes, and 

 some of the more ancient crania from Egypt, in the portraits of Sidonians from the 

 tombs of the Pharaohs, and in the remarkable busts on the covers of the Phoenician 

 sarcophagi in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris, and the one from Sidon in the 

 British Museum, as well as in the terra cotta statuettes from Camirus, Panormus, 

 Tortosa, Calvi, Carthage, and other depots and towns established by the Phoeni- 

 cians, it seems probable that the early Greeks, who received their gods from the 

 Phoenicians, gave them the features of this remarkable race. With varieties for age 

 and sex, the images of the great gods in Greece all display the same facial lines. 

 Unfortunately there are no skulls of a sufficiently early date in Phoenicia to com- 

 plete the identification. 



2. On the Geological Evidence as to the Antiquity of Man. 

 By Professor W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A., F.B.8. 



The evidence which Geology has to offer as to the antiquity of man is as follows : 

 — In the Eocene age there were only families and orders of living mammalia, and 

 no living genera or species. It is, therefore, hopeless to look for man at this time 

 in the earth's history. In the succeeding or Meiocene age living genera of mam- 

 mals appear, but still no living species of mammalia. 



If the flints found at Thenay, and supposed to prove the existence of Meiocene 

 man, be artificial, and be derived from a Meiocene stratum, there is, to my mind, 

 an insuperable difficidty in holding them to be the handiwork of man ; seeing that 

 no living species of quadruped was then alive, it is to me perfectly incredible that 

 man, the most highly specialised of all, shoidd have been living at that time. The 

 flints shown to me in Paris by Professor Gandry appear to be artificial, while those 

 in the Museum of St. Germains appear to be partly artificial and partly natural, 

 some of the former, from their condition, having been obviously picked up on the' 



