SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude subsequent review.]
Just as a study of astronomy emphasizes the smallness of man as nothing else can, so, if any one feels justified in mini- mizing the present struggle of nations, let him study anthro- pology and see in a new perspective the relative importance of an individual and his generation on earth. If he can bear to seek any such comfort, the Hunterian Professor, Dr. Arthur Keith, offers a very pleasant statement of to-day's theories upon The Antiquity of Man (Williams and Norgate, 10s. 6d. net). We cannot here criticize the controversial side of all the induction based upon a few bones and the strata in which they were found. Professor Keith is an anatomist first and foremost, and a palaeontologist with enough knowledge of geology to know what laws are binding in that sphere. The evidence of accompanying details, stoneworking, &c., he only treats as corroborative of the conclusions that he bases on his own special knowledge. Briefly, his main conclusions are that the human stem divided in the Pliocene age, nearly a million years ago ; that the famous Neanderthal man with his simian characteristics was not a direct ancestor of ours, but that his race died out in the middle of the Pleistocene age. The Piltdown man, representing another stem parallel to the Neanderthal man and our own ancestors, he believes also to have become extinct. Nearly half the book is devoted to this fascinating skull, and Professor Keith would like to think that it is a genuine Pliocene relic four hundred thousand years old. Yet it had a brain capacity equal to that of many a head now on living shoulders. Equal brain capacity does not, of course, mean equal knowledge, and even the power of speech cannot certainly be attributed to tho mandible that was found with the skull. But the appalling conception is brought before us that man, like ourselves, homo sapiens, did exist far back into the Pliocene age, perhaps three-quarters of a million years ago or more. Darwin would have been as delighted as he would have been astonished at modern knowledge in this sphere. It is a comparatively small thing that no one now believes that we are " descended from monkeys." What dumbfounds us is that it is possible to have reasonable belief that gibbons, gorillas, &c., and the human race can be traced back upon lines almost parallel till they meet in a common stem which split perhaps three million years ago. The author describes the finding of the most famous prehistoric " men," usually poor fragments of a man, with an almost sporting zest that should incite a new race of " resurrec- tion men." His accounts and clear illustrations make a skull absorbingly interesting, and even jawbones and teeth cease to be repulsive.
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