ANATOMICAL PECULIARITIES 159 
we should probably give Neanderthal man, not only 
separate specific, but even a separate generic, rank, and 
distinguish varieties or even species of Neanderthal men. 
Further, in most of the points in which the Neander- 
thal man departs from modern man he approaches the 
anthropoids. His peculiarities are pronouncedly simian. 
But not all of them ; he has also his own peculiar 
adaptations and specialisations. 
It is when we survey the great assemblage of his 
simian characters that we understand how he came at 
first to be regarded as our Pleistocene ancestor. Evolu- 
tion was in the air — evolution from a simian ancestor. 
Here was a human form with simian characters swarming 
in the details of his structure. The belief in man's 
recent origin was also, in those early days, dominant. 
Neanderthal man presented himself to the pioneers of 
evolution as a later or Pleistocene stage in man's 
evolution. When, however, it was realised that men 
of the modern type, just as highly evolved in structure 
of bone and brain as men are now, must have been in 
existence when Neanderthal man was still living, it was 
apparent that if the Neanderthal type did at any stage 
become converted into a man of the modern type, that 
stage of evolution must have occurred before the 
Mousterian period, the one we are now dealing with. 
Further, in size of brain Neanderthal man was not a 
low form. His skill as a flint-artisan shows that his 
abilities were not of a low order. He had fire at his 
command, he buried his dead, he had a distinctive and 
highly evolved form of culture — Neanderthal man was 
certainly not a dawn form of humanity. To find that 
form we must go to a period which lies far beyond the 
mid-Pleistocene age. 
