DIFFICULTIES OF RECONSTRUCTION 355 
many technical and uninteresting details. My justifica- 
tion is that we are dealing with the only document in our 
possession which throws light on human conditions at a 
long past period of the earth's history — to a period which 
we have been in the habit of supposing as antecedent to 
the appearance of real man. We have therefore to scan 
that document with all the precision and critical acumen 
at our disposal if we are to lay our knowledge of early 
man on a sound basis. So far as we have gone, we see 
that, beyond any cavil, we are dealing with a human 
being with a head above average dimensions, and a brain 
very little, if any, below the amount allotted to the average 
European of to-day. Except for the thickness of his 
skull bones, the head was shaped and balanced as in us. 
Not only so, we see that asymmetry, which we believe to 
indicate a specialisation of the right hand, was already 
present. Further, we realise that, as regards shape of 
head, this early Pleistocene or Pliocene form of man was 
more like ourselves than was the Neanderthal type of man 
who survived to mid-Pleistocene times. 
