PROCEEDINGS OF THE OHIO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 405 



■developed from the Neanderthal type of man were for a long 

 time in Europe contemporaries of Neanderthal man. The brain 

 capacity, however, both of Neanderthal man and of his con- 

 temporaries of the European type was if anything a little larger 

 than that of the average modern European, while the artistic 

 capacity of both was about equally developed and to a high 

 degree. But the differences between the Neanderthal man and 

 his contemporaries of the European type were so great as to 

 compel them to be regarded as different species having their 

 •origin, according to the theory of evolution, in a human stem 

 from which they branched oft" early in the Pliocene period. 



The antiquity which Dr. Keith would give to early man is 

 extreme, owing to the fact that he accepts without question the 

 uniformitarain theory of development which still has possession 

 of the majority of geological and biological authorities in Europe. 

 "From what we know," he says, "and what we must infer of 

 the ancestry of Eoanthropus, of Neanderthal man, and of modern 

 -man we have reasonable grounds for presuming that man had 

 reached a human standard in size of brain by the commence- 

 ment of the Pliocene period," which he estimates to cover a 

 period of about one million years, (p. 510). 



The type from which the present races of man have been 

 developed is thought by Dr. Keith to be found in some of the 

 lower tribes of Australia whose cranial capacity is less than that 

 'of the smallest of the Pleistocene skulls that have been found 

 in Europe, and scarcely larger than that of the Pithecanthropus 

 ■erectus attributed by him to Pliocene deposits of Java. In view 

 'of what has already been said it is needless to add that the time 

 •estimates of Dr. Keith are needlessly extravagant, especially in 

 view of the abnormal conditions which characterized the pas- 

 sage from the Pliocene epoch to that of the Pleistocene. These 

 time estimates, also, overlook the necessary plasticity of a species 

 in its early history as compared with that of its mature develop- 

 Ttient. For example, the early adventurers of the human race 

 who went from the original center into new regions of the earth 

 were free to develop in any direction of variations that were 

 .adapted to the natural conditions, but when the world has be- 



