human beings, which had accidentally perished in mossy bogs centuries ago, completely mummified by the preservative qualities of the matrix in which they were so long embedded. Then, again, man in the course of his progressive civilisation became a religious being, and purposely buried his dead in a cave or in a constructed chamber, so as to preserve the body; and as a further development of the same idea, he occasionally resorted to the process of embalming and scarnitura. The result of such fortuitous circumstances, though not intended for the instruction of the prehistorian, has not infrequently supplied him with valuable materials in the shape of the osseous remains of specimens of past humanity more or less fossilised.[1]
Missing Links.
On the supposition that man is a descendant of one of the higher vertebrates by a process of natural development, it necessarily follows that he must have passed through a series of physical changes, in the form of intermediary links, which connected him with the generic stock. Hence, one of the preliminary problems which anthropologists have to consider is, to ascertain if these connecting links have left any traces behind them which can throw light on the remarkable transformation man has undergone in his passage from brute to civilised life. It is for this reason that fossil remains of man are so important in the study of anthropology. But scarcely had a start been made in this kind of research when the evidence became partly discredited by the eagerness of its own votaries in admitting, as legitimate data, materials of a more or less doubtful character. In this category must be placed the so-called Eolithic implements hitherto advanced as evidence of the existence of Tertiary man. These objects are found in various places in the south of England, notably on the Kent plateau, and in the Tertiary deposits of Thenay (Loir-et-Cher) and Puy-Courny (Cantal), in France. That some of these "eoliths" may have been the rude beginnings of man's first
- ↑ The expression "fossil man" may be applied to any portions of the human body found in geological strata, but as it is only bone that continues undecayed for any length of time, it practically means the skeleton in a more or less fragmentary condition.
