758 EVENING DISCOURSES 
cycles. If Mr. Reid Moir and I are right in regarding the human remains lately 
found at Ipswich as resting under a bed of undisturbed chalky boulder-clay— 
it is right to say that our inferences are contested—then we have carried the 
history of modern man a step still further back in the Pleistocene period, for the 
chalky boulder-clay is the product of the great cold cycle which preceded the 
Cheliean industry. So far as the evidence in England goes it indicates the 
existence of a modern type of man at least as far back as the middle of the 
Pleistocene period. } 
All we know of man in Europe near the beginning of the Pleistocene is the 
famous lower jaw found near Heidelberg in 1907. A complete lower jaw with 
its full complement of teeth can tell with certainty a great deal about the indi- 
vidual to which it belonged. There is not a shadow of doubt that the Heidel- 
berg man belonged to the Neanderthal type; perhaps he may best be described 
as pre-Neanderthaloid, for in strength and massiveness of jaw he foreshadows 
the Neanderthal men whose remains are found in Europe towards the end of the 
Pleistocene. Of the Neanderthal race in the middle phases of the Pleistocene 
we have, so far, discovered no trace. Although in many features Neanderthal 
man shows resemblances to the anthropoids, in others he is highly specialised. 
The teeth of an Australian native make a nearer approach to the anthropoid 
condition than those of Neanderthal man. 
We have knowledge of another fossil man belonging to the beginning of the 
Pleistocene. In 1891 Dr. Eugéne Dubois discovered in Java the fossil remains 
of a man who, in stature, posture, and gait must have been very similar to us, 
but so unlike us in head form that his discoverer named this new form of man 
Pithecanthropus. ‘The size of his brain (855 cubic centimetres) was little more 
than half the size of the brain of a well-developed modern man. The Neander- 
thal man described by Professor Boule had a cranial capacity of 1,600 or 1,625 
cubic centimetres. It is usual to accept the fossil man of Java as representative 
of his time and race, but if we do we have to suppose that in the early part of 
the Pleistocene, within a comparatively short space of time, the human brain 
developed at an astounding and almost incredible rate. I leave the matter there, 
simply. asking my audience to keep in mind that there did exist in the Far East 
at the beginning of the Pleistocene, or perhaps close of the Pliocene, a very low 
form of primitive man. 
Thus we have a knowledge—a very imperfect knowledge—of only two human 
individuals near the beginning of the Pleistocene period. ‘lhe one was brutal 
in aspect, the other certainly low in intellect. It is hard, then, to believe that 
in strata belonging to the period preceding the Pleistocene there could be found 
fossil remains of a man of quite a high and modern type. Yet the details relat- 
ing to the discovery of human remains by Professor Ragazzoni in early Pliocene 
strata of North Italy are so circumstantial and supported that one cannot place 
them lightly aside. In 1860 Professor Ragazzoni was searching in undisturbed 
Pliocene strata for fossil shells; he discovered remains of a human skull. His 
discovery was received with derision. Between 1860 and 1880 he found in the 
same strata remains of three further individuals. The only living anthropolo- 
gist authority, so far as I can learn, who accepts Ragazzoni’s discovery as 
authentic is the celebrated Italian anthropologist—Professor Sergi, of Rome. 
If the remains found in these strata had been of a primitive type their authen- 
ticity would never have been called in question, but as they represented indi- 
viduals as highly evolved as we are the easiest solution of the problem was to 
suppose that by some means these remains had been interpolated in ancient strata 
at a later date. ‘ 
Is it, then, possible that a human being, shaped and endowed as we are, may 
haye existed so early as the Pliocene period? If we accept as authentic all the 
evidence brought forward by those who have traced man backwards by means 
of flints which have the appearance of man’s work on them, then we must admit 
that Pliocene man is possible, for stones, apparently artificially fashioned, have 
been found in strata as old as the Eocene. If, on the other hand, we examine 
the evidence relating to that group of animals to which man belongs—the Higher 
Primates—the facts, so far as we know them, render the existence of man in the 
Eocene and Oligocene periods impossible, improbable in the Miocene period, but 
‘quite possible in the Pliocene. If, finally, we take into consideration all the 
a 
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