54 Dr J. W. Dawson on the Antiquity of Man. 



America and Australia. It is also doubtful whether this 

 skeleton really indicates a race at all. It may have be- 

 longed to one of those wild men, half crazed, half idiotic, 

 cruel and strong, who are always more or less to be found 

 living on the outskirts of barbarous tribes, and who now 

 and then appear in civilized communities, to be consigned 

 perhaps to the penitentiary or to the gallows, when their 

 murderous propensities manifest themselves. Still, as we 

 shall show under our third head, this Neanderthal man is 

 nearer in some respects to our historical idea of antediluvian 

 man than any other of these very ancient examples ; though, 

 as Lyell properly suggests, there is no absolutely valid reason 

 for assuming that he may not even have belonged to the 

 same nation with the Engis man ; since nearly as great 

 differences are found in the skulls of individual members of 

 some unmixed savage races. 



One remarkable conclusion, however, deducible from the 

 answer to this our first question, must not be omitted. Of 

 all the criteria for the distinction of races of men, the skull 

 is probably the most certain, and, as any one may perceive 

 who reads Dr Wilson's book, it affords, in really reliable 

 hands, the best possible evidence of distinctness or of unity, 

 except where great mixtures have occurred. Now man is 

 one of the most variable animals ; and yet it would seem 

 that, since the Post-pliocene period, he has changed so little 

 that the skulls of these Post-pliocene men fall within the 

 limits of modern varieties ; and this, while so great changes 

 have occurred that multitudes of mammals, once his con- 

 temporaries, have utterly perished. Now, if these men are 

 so ancient as many geologists would assume, nay, if they 

 are even 6000 years old, surely the human race is very per- 

 manent, and Professor Huxley may well say that " the 

 comparatively large cranial capacity of the Neanderthal 

 skull, overlaid though it may be with pithecoid bony walls, 

 and the completely human proportions of the accompanying 

 limb-bones, together with the very fair development of the 

 Engis skull, clearly indicate that the first traces of the 

 primordial stock whence man proceeded need no longer be 

 sought, by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of 

 development, in the newest tertiaries, but that they may 



