A CHAPTER OF CONCLUSIONS 503 
We have seen that, in mid-Pleistocene times, the 
brain of Neanderthal man, in point of size, was equal 
to that of contemporary forms of modern man. His 
cuhure, that of the Mousterian age, was not a low one. 
We might suppose that the common Pliocene ancestor 
of these two species of man was of a low type, and that 
afte- their separation from the common stem each became 
gradually endowed with a large brain and acquired a 
separate form of culture. The more feasible explanation, 
however, is to suppose, not that a large brain was an 
independent acquisition on the part of Neanderthal and 
the modern species of man, but that it was a common 
inheritance from their Pliocene ancestor. That is the 
most reasonable explanation which is available at the 
present time — the one which presumes that Pliocene 
man had already reached a brain standard far beyond 
that of any simian type of animal. 
When we come to fix the place which must be assigned 
to Eoanthropiis in the human phylum, we find further 
evidence in support of man's great antiquity. We have 
seen that in the opinion of Mr Charles Dawson the 
" minimum geological age of the fossil cannot be of 
later date than the early part of the Pleistocene period." 
He is also open to the conviction that it may be much 
older, and on the evidence given in a former chapter we 
may reasonably presume that Eoanthropus represents 
a Pliocene type of man. 
The problem we have now to solve is this : Does 
Eoanthropus represent the stage of evolution reached 
by modern man about the commencement of the 
Pleistocene period, or does the Piltdown type, like the 
Neanderthal, represent a separate human species or genus 
which became extinct and left no progeny ? Dr Smith 
Woodward's answer to this question is given in his 
original communication to the Geological Society.^ " It 
seems reasonable," he writes, "to interpret the Piltdown 
skull as exhibiting a closer resemblance to the skulls 
of the truly ancestral mid-Tertiary apes than any human 
' Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 191 3, vol. Ixix. p. 139. 
