68 WILSON 



They were followed by a number of French scientists, and the 

 fact of the existence of man in Quarternary times was 

 thoroughly established in the scientific world. 



A new impulse was thus given the subject, and new enthu- 

 siasts came into the field, old finds were viewed with renewed 

 interest, and given a new interpretation. Henry Christy, an 

 Englishman, and Edward Lartet, a Frenchman, associated 

 themselves and became very prominent for their discoveries, 

 Lartet particularly for his explorations of the now famous 

 caverns and rock shelters of Dordogne in southwestern France. 

 The term "palaeolithic" has been suggested by Sir John 

 Lubbock to designate that period of man's development which 

 was contemporaneous with the great Quaternary mammals 

 and it has been generally adopted, as well as his term " neo- 

 lithic " for the later stone age which followed. 



Palaeolithic man has probably descended from an ancestor liv- 

 ing in the Tertiary period, but thus far no positive evidence ot 

 his existence has been discovered in any deposits or formations 

 older than the second glacial period. 



It is perfectly reasonable to suppose that man existed as man 

 before this time, and indeed, the variety of types represented by 

 the few skeletons, especially the skulls, which have been found 

 belonging to Quarternary man make it difficult to escape from 

 this belief It is the same way as with the oldest languages of 

 which we have any knowledge. No matter how old we may 

 know the language to be or how simple its forms, we recognize 

 that it is still too complex and varied to be a primitive tongue ; 

 that centuries and perhaps thousands of years of development 

 have gone before in order to bring it to the comparatively com- 

 plex form in which we find it. When in examining the skulls 

 and other parts of the skeletons still preserved for us of glacial 

 man, we find several distinct types, it can not be mere chance- 

 these types signify distinct races, and different races of man in, 

 dicate that a vast period of time has gone before, that ages have 

 rolled away in order to make it possible for primitive man, the 

 original Homo sapiens to have developed and evolved by envi- 

 ronment and later by inheritance into the distinct races we find 

 in glacial times. 



