16 Sir H. H. Howorth — Antiquity of Man. 



often without protection from talus-slope or vegetation. It would 

 therefore be more readily affected by changes of temperature, heavy 

 rainfall, and an inclement climate, and thus avalanches or torrents 

 of mud would be on a larger scale than now. As a rather dry 

 climate, according to Sir Martin Conway, is also distinctly 

 favourable to this kind of denudation, it may have been very active 

 in the ' Steppe Age ' which probably closed the Glacial Period. 

 But of this we perhaps hardly know enough to do more than 

 venture a suggestion. 



III. — The Origin and Progress of the Modern Theory of the 

 Antiquity of Man. 



By Sir Henry H. Howorth, K.C.I.E., F.R.S., F.G.S., F.S.A. 



WHEN Dr. Woodward asked me a few months ago to review 

 some pamphlets on early Man and his remains, I very 

 reluctantly promised to do so, because I felt that if I were to be 

 frank and sincere I must speak of some recent developments of the 

 study in unsympathetic terms, which would not be welcome in some 

 quarters. I little expected, however, that I should have been 

 overwhelmed by such a shower of peppercorns as I find on my 

 return from Italy was the case in the September number of the 

 Geological Magazine. 



If he thinks the subject worth ventilating and sufficiently 

 interesting, Dr. Woodward will perhaps afford me some space in 

 which to deal with my critics, more especially as the issue continues 

 to be, what Haeckel lately called it, the problem of problems. I also 

 wish to correct one or two slips which I made in consequence of 

 having to write so hurriedly before. 



My purpose is not so much criticism as to try and disentangle 

 the story of the growth of rational views in regard to the origin of 

 man and to define where the problem now stands. I must deal, 

 therefore, in rather more detail than has hitherto been done with the 

 history of the controversy. 



The first rational statement on the question known to me was the 

 famous verse of Lucretius — 



" Arma antiqua, manus, ungues, dentesque fuerunt, 

 Et lapides, et item sylvarum fragmina rami. 

 Posterius ferri vis est, aerisque reperta ; 

 Sed prior aeris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus." ^ 



This extraordinary statement (considering when it was written) 

 took a long time to fructify. The first actual fact recorded, so far 

 as I know, in support of it, viz. the discovery of the Palaeolithic 

 implement found in Grays Inn Lane, was not published until the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century. I gave details about it in my 

 previous paper. The interest of this stone, however, like that of the 

 Cannstadt jawbone found in the loess in 1700, is rather retrospective 



^ ' ' Ancient arms were hands, nails, teeth, and stones and also broken branches 

 of trees. Afterwards the virtue of iron and of bronze was discovered, but the use of 

 bronze preceded that of iron." 



