THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



NEW SERIES. DECADE VI. VOL. IV. 



No. I.— JANUARY, 1917. 



ODRIGrlJST^^r, ARTICLES. 



I. — Early Man. 

 By Arthur Smith Woodward, LL.D., F.B.S. 



GEOLOGISTS and archaeologists are much indebted to Professors 

 Osborn and Obermaier l for useful up-to-date summaries of our 

 knowledge of early man, with extensive bibliographies which include 

 most of the latest papers. So much progress has been made in the 

 study of the subject during recent years — especially since the Prince 

 of Monaco's foundation of the Institute of Human Palaeontology in 

 Paris — that synoptical treatises of this kind are an indispensable 

 aid to further advance. Both are also intended, with their beautiful 

 illustrations, to arouse interest in a much wider circle than that of 

 students who are actually engaged in research. They should, indeed, 

 help in urging the educated public to take every opportunity of 

 "bringing to the notice of scientific men such casual discoveries 

 of human remains and traces of human handiwork as they happen to 

 meet with. It is lamentable to think how few of these discoveries, 

 even under existing circumstances, are rescued from destruction and 

 made available for study. 



Both authors deal with the geological qxiestions involved in 

 determining the relative ages and circumstances of life of the successive 

 races of men who inhabited Western Europe before the dawn of history. 

 Professor Osborn, however, treats these questions at greatest length, 

 and includes an elaborate summary of Penck & Bruckner's work, 

 Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter, with which he attempts to correlate all the 

 European discoveries of Palaeolithic man. He even goes further in 

 assigning dates to the successive episodes which he recognizes, and 

 we cannot refrain from protesting against the false appearance of 

 knowledge which he thus provides for the unwary reader who does not 

 understand geology. " Heidelberg man," Professor Osborn writes, 

 41 is nearly twice as ancient as the Piltdown man, while Pithecanthropus 

 (Trinil Race) is four times as ancient. Yet the Piltdown man must 

 still be regarded as of very great antiquity, for he is four times 

 as ancient as the final type of Neanderthal man belonging to the 

 Mousterian industrial stage." It is scarcely necessary to add that 

 there is no real scientific basis for any of these statements. 



All are agreed that among the remains usually claimed to be 



1 H. F. Osborn, Men of the Old Stone Age — their Environment, Life, and 

 Art. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915 (2nd ed., 1916). H. Obermaier, 

 El Hombre Fdsil. Madrid, Comisi6n de Investigaciones Paleontol6gicas 

 y Prehist6ricas, Memoria No. 9, 1916. 



DECADE VI. — VOL. IV. — NO. I. 1 



