CASTENEDOLO— MODERN MAN 249 
wide (103 mm.) and almost vertical. There is a complete 
absence of supra-orbital ridges. The lower jaw is small, 
the chin pointed, the angle between the ascending ramus 
and body very obtuse (130°), as in women with long, 
narrow, oval faces. It is a long, narrow skull, with not a 
single character we can identify as primitive. Indeed, if 
tested side by side with the skulls of modern women be- 
longing to primitive races, we should select the Castenedolo 
skull as representing the more highly evolved example 
of the modern type. Yet there is also this striking fact 
to be kept in mind : it is an exact counterpart of the 
skull found at a depth of 50 feet in a Pleistocene deposit 
at Olmo, which lies a hundred and fifty miles to the 
south of Brescia. The Olmo skull is that of a male, the 
Castenedolo that of a female, but both are of the same 
race. The discovery at Castenedolo convinced Professor 
Sergi that men of the modern type were already evolved 
in the Pliocene period. His sincere and intrepid advocacy 
compelled the attention of his contemporaries. The 
leading; anthropologists of Paris gave it a mixed reception. 
Quatrefages believed in the Castenedolo discovery, and 
he and Hamy gave it a place in that Valhalla of ancient 
skulls — the " Crania Ethnica." Gabriel de Mortillet and 
Topinard refused to believe in it. Sergi, however, has 
never faltered in his belief. Even, as he himself relates, 
when Ragazzoni summoned him and Professor Issel to 
examine another Castenedolo skeleton exposed in situ in 
1888, and when both were convinced that the skeleton 
represented a comparatively late interment, his faith in 
Ragazzoni's former discoveries did not waver. To him 
those early discoveries were guarantees that men of the 
modern type were evolved as long ago as the beginning 
of the Pliocene period. 
Castenedolo is a test case : it raises all the issues relating 
to the antiquity of modern man. Are we quite sure Sergi 
is mistaken } Let us review briefly the principal facts 
on which our knowledge of the antiquity of man rests 
— man as we know him to-day — separating "certainties" 
from the " probabilities " and the " possibilities." Beyond 
