CHAPTER XXVIII 
A CHAPTER OF CONCLUSIONS 
Those of us who set out some thirty years ago to search 
for evidence which would throw light on the antiquity 
of man believed we had to deal with a simple problem. 
We started under the conviction that there was only 
one kind of man — man of the modern type. We were 
certain that he was, like all other living things, subject to 
the laws of evolution, and that as we traced him, by means 
of fossil remains, into the remote past, we should find 
him assuming a more and more primitive shape and 
structure. The discovery of the remains of Neanderthal 
man in deposits of a mid-Pleistocene date confirmed us 
in our beliefs. With his great eyebrow ridges and his 
numerous simian traits. Neanderthal man was just such 
a being as we had pictured as our ancestor in the 
Pleistocene period. Then came the discovery of 
Pithecanthropus — an older and infinitely more primitive 
type of human being. He also answered to our 
expectations, and we adopted him as our late Pliocene 
or early Pleistocene ancestor. It will be thus seen that 
we set out prepared to find that man as we know him 
now was of recent origin, that in the course of a short 
geological period — one which is estimated at less than 
half a million of years — a semi-human form of being 
became endowed with all the attributes of man. 
Then came the discoveries of the last ten years. 
Explorations at Combe Capelle and at Mentone revealed 
men of the modern type who, if not actually the 
contemporaries of Neanderthal man, were so closely 
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