ANTIQUITY OF THE PILTDOWN RACE 311 
with the clash of expert opinion. Yet that difference is 
perhaps not so great as it appears. It will be remembered 
that Mr Lewis Abbot, who has given as much time as 
anyone to master the later geological history of the 
Weald, expressed the decisive opinion that in the Piltdown 
gravel two ages are represented. The lower or bottom 
stratum, which contained the Pliocene remains and human 
bones, is, in Mr Abbot's opinion. Pliocene in date ; the 
upper levels, in which the rude Palaeolithic implements 
lay, have been disturbed at a later time, and are to be 
regarded as Pleistocene in age. If Mr Abbot is right, 
and a survey o| the full evidence favours his inference, 
then the divergence of opinion is explicable : those who 
maintain that the Piltdown gravel is Pleistocene are 
right, and so are those who regard it as Pliocene. Indeed, 
in a subsequent communication Mr Dawson wrote of the 
" dark " or Eoanthropus stratum as follows : ^ " We 
cannot resist the conclusion that the third or ' dark ' 
bed is, in the main, composed of Pliocene drift, probably 
reconstructed in the Pleistocene epoch. . . . Putting 
aside the human remains and those of the beaver, the 
mammalian remains all point to a characteristic fauna of 
Pliocene age ; and, though all are portions of hard teeth, 
they are rolled and broken. The human remains, on 
the other hand, although of much softer material, are 
not rolled, and the remains of the beaver are in a similar 
condition." 
So far we seem to have gone a long way merely to 
reach the conclusion that the Piltdown man is probably 
of Pliocene age. To assign even the remains of man to 
the Pliocene period carries but a shadowy significance 
to most of us. If, however, we again visit Piltdown and 
survey the changes which have occurred in the Weald 
since fossil man was living there, we obtain some insight 
into his great antiquity. Mr bawson discovered and 
delimited the remains of a great sheet of gravel which, 
in former times, covered the Piltdown plateau. The 
sheet apparently extended (see fig. 96) for about twelve 
' Ouart. Journ. Geol., 1914, vol. Ixx. p. 85. 
