Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/94

86 light, especially as regards the enormous size of the ascending ramus, which is nearly double that of a modern man (Fig. 18). The absence of the chin is also a prominent feature. As regards the arrangement and relative size of the teeth, this jaw seems to come nearer modern specimens than most of those hitherto recorded as Palæolithic. Some palæontologists profess to see a parallelism between it and that of Australian savages.

In the absence of positive chronology, every student of the pre-history of man will recognize the necessity of having some convenient method of tabulating the recorded phenomena in their order of succession, as geologists have so successfully done by collating fossils, and other organic remains, with the superposition of strata. In prehistoric archæology various methods have been suggested, of which the following may be noted as applicable to the Palæolithic period:

In 1869 Gabriel de Mortillet conceived the happy idea of classifying the industrial remains of the Palæolithic people in chronological sequence, according to the degree of culture disclosed by the relics found on certain stations which he regarded as typical. His mode of classification (with the recent addition of Aurignacien) is the most practical that has hitherto been suggested, and is therefore adopted in this work. According