92 KANSAS CITY RE VIE IV OF SCIENCE. 



as veritable fossils — the name sounded so ancient — to be studied in precisely the 

 same way, and with the application of the same methods of reasoning as were 

 brought to bear upon the remains of a paleotherium from the tertiary, or upon 

 an ammonite from the Jura, then, and not till then, could his high antiquity be 

 realized. And not until rude stone implements from the river-gravels and similar 

 deposits were brought to hght in France, Portugal, Germany, Brazil, India, New 

 Jersey, and other widely separated countries, was the inconceivably long dura- 

 tion of man upon the earth acknowledged. The recognition of these evidences 

 has been, and is at this time, hampered and retarded 'by a rigid and almost 

 ridiculous scrutiny of every object bearing upon this subject. The study of other 

 fossil mammals goes on unimpeded. Professors Marsh and Cope collect their 

 fossils and assign them to their proper geological horizons unchallenged save by 

 the hostile Indian. The archaeologist, on the contrary, has (for his best good it 

 must be confessed) standing over him one set of critics, generally theological, 

 who deny his facts, or call his evidences spurious. He is belabored by another 

 set, -generally theological also, who claim for man peculiarities which separate 

 him from all considerations which would apply to other mammals below him. By 

 another set still, who, ignoring the doctrine of probabilities, are ready to call 

 every skull, or other remains showing quadrumanous features, abnormal or patho- 

 logical. Thus, the ape-hke skull of the Neanderthal cave was looked upon as a 

 synostotic cranium. The extreme improbability that, in these frequently occur- 

 ring and widely distributed cases, only idiotic or abnormal forms should come to 

 light, never seems to trouble these critics. 



While the general acceptance of the theory of man's origin from the lower 

 animals has induced the present activity in archseological research, it is equally 

 true that the study has contributed valuable evidence to the general correctness 

 of Darwin's views. 



The divisions of the tertiary, though artificial, are recognized by the varying 

 percentages of the species of mollusks which are now extinct. If we are fortu- 

 nate enough to get the remains of the very early man — not his works, but his 

 bones — we shall, in the same way, estimate his degree of savagery and bestial 

 features, and, possibly, his age, by the proportion of those characters which are 

 not only outgrown by man at the present day, but which bring the widely diverg- 

 ing lines of man and the apes a little closer. 



Now, as we have to do with the remains of man, not in the beds of the ter- 

 tiary, where superposition is well established, but with his remains found in modi- 

 fied drift, river-gravels, and other rocks, whose age and synchronism are so diffi- 

 cult to establish, it would seem that here the trained osteologist must take up the 

 investigation. 



The recognized sequence of rude stone implements, polished implements, 

 bronze, and iron, while holding good for hmited areas, becomes of less value for 

 larger fields when it is known that tribes with rude stone implements are existing 

 to-day. A few hundred years ago the European combatted with gunpowder the 

 inhabitants of a vast continent who belonged to the neolithic age. 



