FURTHER EXAMPLES 89 
that Palaeolithic races of men shared their fate. Hence I 
kept searching for evidence which would justify me in 
assigning the Langwith skull to the Neolithic period. In 
the second place, I failed to perceive how completely Mr 
Mullins had proved that the skull was contemporaneous 
with the deepest horizon and that the culture of that 
horizon was truly Palaeolithic. My third prejudice 
related to the condition of the skull ; it was brown in 
colour, dense and heavy, but so fresh in its composition 
that I could not think it to be really ancient. The 
following note (February 27th, 191 1) from Mr Mullins 
will explain how my doubts on this head were removed. 
1 made a careful examination, and also records of the 
skull, and returned it to the discoverer, expressing my 
doubts as to its antiquity. Mr Mullins sent the skull 
back to me accompanied by bones of the bison, cave-bear, 
woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, and a bone awl, with the 
accompanying information : " These are sent for Dr 
Keith to note their state of preservation. They all come 
from the same side of the cave and the same horizon, 
except the bone awl, which 1 believe came from the north- 
west passage of the cave — upper horizon." 
I had, therefore, to abandon the belief that people 
with heads of the river-bed type did not transcend the 
Neolithic period. Langwith cave revealed the fact that 
this type goes far back into Palaeolithic times. The type 
is infinitely older than we had originally supposed. The 
discovery made by Dr Schmerling revealed this river-bed 
type in a cave of Aurignacian date in Belgium. The 
discovery at Hailing was not made until 19 12. At Pavi- 
land, the skull of the Aurignacian skeleton was not found. 
Here, then, we have the most positive evidence of the 
persistence of certain human types. The river-bed form 
of skull still abounds in Europe — particularly in England ; 
we find it also in the Pleistocene epoch, twenty-five 
thousand years ago or more. 
The characters of the skull do not require minute de- 
scription. In fig. 33, the skull is set in the conventional 
frame of lines and viewed from the side and the front. 
