Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/542

526 For instance, the reality and authenticity of the "human remains and works found in the Danish shell mounds and peat mosses, in the lake dwellings, in the coral reefs of Florida, in the cromlechs, barrows, and kistvaens, and in the rock shelters," were at first disputed, and when fully established by repeated discoveries it was then claimed that they all fell within the historic period. This contention was, however, quickly overshadowed and swept away by the more recent and numerous discoveries of stone implements, carvings, and human remains found in England, France, Belgium, Sicily, and America.

"Many of these discoveries were made in the valley of the Somme, the caves of the Dordogne, the valley of the Ouse, the basin of the Seine, the valley of the Thames; in the clay of the Hoxne, in the gravel of Icklingham, in the caves of Engis, Engihoul, and Neanderthal; in the cavern of Wells, in the caves of Gower in Glamorganshire, in the Grotto di Maccaquone in Sicily"; in the aqua-glacial deposits of the Delaware, of southern Ohio, of Mississippi, in Minnesota, and also in the old river bed under Table Mountain in California, and in many other localities, carrying back, in some instances, the age of man as a human being probably to the first or great Glacial period, and certainly to the beginning of the Quaternary, "for many of these remains are found intermingled with the bones of that large class of extinct animals which passed away with the telluric conditions to which these animals were organically related."

Now, since the almost immeasurable antiquity of man, as such, has been thus shown and placed beyond reasonable doubt, a new and popular objection has come to the front which brings us face to face with the subject in hand.

It is claimed by an immense number of people who-are but slightly acquainted with the subject in its broadest significance, that the cranial capacity of these early men is found to be nearly equal to that of modern savages; that the cranial capacity of the modern savage is nearly equal to that of the average routine laborer among the civilized of to-day; and that these facts are inconsistent with the alleged progressive and developing character of man structurally and organically. And it is also urged that these discoveries really show affirmatively that man, as a human being, has always been mentally, structurally, and organically just what he is now, at least as far back as we have been able, with all our research, to trace him.

Now, these objections merged in one are, as-we have stated, based upon an alleged comparative uniformity, or nearly equal cranial capacity, at present and during all the past ages, whenever and wherever man has been revealed.

This objection is what it appears to be, a random shot, or a