This cut, though an ideal restoration, is a restoration made in accordance with the results of careful study of fragmentary skulls found in various localities in Europe. The head and the face present a savage aspect; the body harmonized with the head; the height was not more than five feet and a half; yet the bones are very thick in proportion to their length, and were evidently supplied with a powerful set of muscles, since the little protuberances and depressions where the muscles are attached are remarkably well developed.46 Huxley and Quatrefages have both pointed out that representatives of this race are to be found among some Australian tribes. Among the races of this great island there is one, distributed particularly in the province of Victoria, in the neighborhood of Port Western, which reproduces in a remarkable manner, the characters of the Canstadt race.”47 Not the least interesting result of this discovery is the similarity of weapons and implements. “With Mr. Lartet, we see in the obsidian lances of New Caledonia the flint heads of the lower alluvium of the Somme. The hatchet of certain Australians reminds us, as it did Sir Charles Lyell, of the Abbeville hatchet.48
Yet some hesitate about accepting these interesting inferences, thinking that the portions of the human skeleton thus far recovered, which are beyond a doubt referable to this period, are too fragmentary to base such important conclusions upon. This is the view of Boyd Dawkins, who thinks “we can not refer them to any branch of the human race now alive.”49 “We are without a clew,” continues he, “to the ethnology of the River Drift man, who most probably is as completely extinct as the woolly rhinoceros or the cave bear.”50 Future discoveries will probably settle this point.
It is yet a much disputed point to what particular portion of the Glacial Age we can trace the appearance of man. We can profitably note the tendency of scientific thought in this direction. But a short time has elapsed since a few scholars here and there began to urge an antiquity for man extending back beyond the commonly accepted period of six thousand years. Though it is now well known and admitted that there are no good grounds for this estimate, yet such was its hold, such its sway over scientific as well as popular thought, that an appeal to this chronology was deemed sufficient answer to the discoveries of DePerthes, Schmerling, and others. It was but yesterday that this popular belief was overthrown and due weight given the discoveries of careful explorers in many branches, and the antiquity of man referred, on indisputable grounds, to a point of time at least as far back as the close of the preceding geological age.51
It seems as if here a halt had been called, and all possible objections are urged against a further extension of time. It is, of course, well to be careful in this matter, and to accept only such results as inevitably follow from well authenticated discoveries. But it also seems to us there is no longer any doubt that man dates back to the beginning of that long extended time we have named the Glacial Age.52
In the first place, we must recall the animals that suddenly made their appearance in Europe at the beginning of this age. Though there were a number of species, since become extinct, the majority of animal forms were those still living.53
These are the animals with which man has always been associated. There is therefore no longer any reason to suppose the evolution of animal life had not reached that stage where man was to appear. We need only recall how strongly this point was urged in reference to the preceding geological epoch, to see its important bearings here. Mr. Boyd Dawkins has shown that the great majority of animals which invaded Europe at the commencement of this age, can be traced to Northern and Central Asia, whence, owing to climatic changes, they migrated into Europe.54
Inasmuch as man seems to have been intimately associated with these animals, it seems to us very likely that he came with them from their home in Asia. We think the tendency of modern discoveries is to establish the fact that man arrived in Europe along with the great invasion of species now living.55
Turning now to the authorities, we find this to be the accepted theory of many of those competent to form an opinion.