The Antiquity of Man

Abstract

THE letter of Sir John Lubbock in your issue of March 27, in luces me to call attention to what seems to me to be an anomaly in the state of our evidence concerning fossil man. Sir J. Lubbock has insisted, and with much reason, on the parallelism between the condition of existing savage races and that of fossil man; but, I would ask, is there any existing savage race capable of delineating animals in the masterly way in which the elephant is delineated on the plate of bone figured at page 326 of NATURE (February 27, 1873)? Such a life-like representation as is here produced by a few rough scratches would not discredit a modern artist. Unless I am under a misapprehension, the best figures that living savages can produce are but uncouth things, in which case either the parallelism between the intelligence of existing savage races and of fossil man fails in one important particular, or else a suspicion arises as to the contemporaneity of these engraved bones with palæolithic man; and a doubt is thrown on the supposed antiquity of the Troglodytes to whose hands this engraving is ascribed.