EVENING DISCOURSES. toy 
the Oligocene—the Miocene—many teeth and jaws of a form of gibbon, which 
differ only in slight and trivial details from the teeth of living gibbons, have 
been discovered during the past fifty years. Here, then, we have the assurance 
that an animal which springs closely from the stock which gives rise to man 
has come down to us with but little change through the leagues of time marked 
by the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene formations. By the middle of the 
Miocene we know the great anthropoids were in existence; it is most unlikely that 
the traces we have discovered mark their first appearance. With the evolution 
of the great anthropoids the appearance of a human ancestry as a separate stock 
is possible. From every point of view it is most probable that the human stock 
became differentiated at the same time as the great anthropoids. On the evidence 
afforded by our very imperfect knowledge of fossil forms of apes we are justified 
in assuming that a very primitive form of man may have come into existence 
during the Miocene period ; at the very latest during the early part of the Pliocenc. 
Thus, when we pursue the question of man’s antiquity by studying the forms of 
Primates contained in the Tertiary strata, we find reason to extend the possible 
date of his origin at least a geological epoch beyond what is allowed by the strictly 
orthodox. We are unable, however, to find evidence in support of the more 
extravagant claims of the ultra-heterodox represented by M. Rutot. 
There is still another and a very important line of evidence bearing on the 
antiquity of man. We have, in the most cursory manner, followed the evolution 
of various ancestral forms of ape and anthropoid from the past towards the 
present ; I propose now to follow the history of man’s evolution, so far as we yet 
know it, from the present into the geological past. We are all evolutionists 
nowadays, and it is but natural that everyone of us should expect man to 
become more anthropoid and more brutal the further we trace him into the past. 
What have we found? At the close of the Pleistocene period, which even 
orthodox and conservative geologists admit to have come to an end some 15,000 
years ago, the men of Europe in stature and in size of brain were at least our 
equals. In tooth, limb, and bone they were more robust. When, however, we 
turn our eyes to France and pass backwards in the Pleistocene to the epoch 
marked by the last or fourth of the cold cycles which subdivided that period, 
modern man disappears; his place is taken by a human being of an altogether 
different kind—a human race or species to which the name of Neanderthal has 
been given by international consent. During the last six years, thanks to the 
enthusiasm, industry, and genius of French anthropologists, the remains of four 
individuals of this race have been unearthed. The strata in which these remains 
were found contain stone implements of the type known as Mousterian and 
remains of animals belonging to a cold climate. Neanderthal man appears sud- 
denly in this later part of the Pleistocene, and as suddenly disappears, to be 
replaced by modern man. It is impossible to conceive that, just at the close of 
the Pleistocene period, Neanderthal man was suddenly converted into modern 
man. Think for a minute of the interpretation you would give of the Australian 
strata that are being laid down now. The older deposits contain the remains of 
aborigines ; the newer, Europeans. You do not suppose that the aborigines are 
suddenly transformed to Europeans. You must apply the same interpretation to 
the human remains found in the later Pleistocene. There was a supersession, not 
a transformation of races. We must infer, then, that at the end of the Pleisto- 
cene period there were two distinct races of mankind—Neanderthal and modern. 
That is a fact which our French colleagues seem to grasp with difficulty. 
To follow the history of modern man into the past we shall return to England. 
It is a mystery why Neanderthal remains have not been discovered in England ; 
they ought to be found, and a rumour is now current that they have been found. 
The oldest remains so far unearthed in England all belong to the modern type 
of man. They take us a long way further into the Pleistocene than the era of 
Neanderthal man. The skull fragment, known as the Bury St. Edmunds, was 
found in strata containing Acheulean flints and remains of the Mammoth; the 
90-foot terrace of the Thames, in which the Galley Hill man was found, contains 
flints of the Chellean type. The Acheulean and Chellean flint civilisations are 
attributed by Professor Boule—a most reliable authority—to the long temperate 
interval which lies between the last two of the glacial cycles of the Pleistocene, 
or, if we accept the evidence of Professor Penck, between the second and third 
