DISCOVERY OF PRE-NEOLITHIC MAN 49 
in the Welsh cave, but Dr Schmerling had found them 
in greater abundance and in greater variety. The same 
evidences of man's presence were found mingled with 
the fossil remains of animals — worked flint implements, 
weapons and ornaments in ivory and in bone. In one 
of the caves — that of Engis — Dr Schmerling found a 
human skull, besides other fragments in the same 
cemented stratum of stalagmite as contained the fossil 
bones. "The cranium," says Dr Schmerling,^ "was 
met with at a depth of a metre and a half (nearly 5 feet), 
hidden under an osseous breccia, composed of the 
remains of small animals, and containing one rhinoceros 
tusk. . . . The earth which contained this human skull 
exhibited no trace of disturbance ; teeth of rhinoceros, 
horse, hyena, bear, surrounded it on all sides." Dr 
Schmerling had thus advanced our knowledge of man's 
antiquity a point beyond that reached by the Rev. Mr 
MacEnery at Kent's Cavern. Not only had he found 
proof of man's existence with animals now extinct — 
animals which had disappeared from the face of Europe 
before the Neolithic age dawned — but he had actually 
discovered Palaeolithic man himself. Sir Charles Lyell 
was a true scientist, with an open and just mind, but 
he turned away from Dr Schmerling's discovery — still 
sceptical. Thirty years after the date just mentioned 
(1833), Sir Charles published a work which convinced 
thinking minds that man's antiquity was infinitely greater 
than usually believed. It took the scientific world thirty 
years to assimilate Schmerling's discovery. The discovery 
of the remains of a human being as the contemporary of 
extinct animals was more than even the open, well- 
balanced mind of Sir Charles Lyell could admit in 1833. 
Schmerling's work, like that of other pioneers, had to 
wait for a new generation. 
We shall examine presently the facts which afterwards 
convinced Sir Charles Lyell that Dr Schmerling had made 
a great discovery. Meantime, let us see what kind of man 
' Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles decouverts dans les cavernes dc 
la province de Lie's;e, 1833. 
4 
