CHAPTER IV
PALÆOLITHIC TYPES OF MAN—THEIR CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION
Of the comparatively large number of the fossil remains of man hitherto discovered and reported on by experts, only a few are of capital anthropological value. But, after eliminating from the records all doubtful or incomplete specimens, there remains a sufficient number to show that there were five or six human types living in Western Europe during some portion of the Pleistocene period, without counting the brachycephalic people who are supposed to have commenced to immigrate into Europe, during or about the close of the last phase of Palæolithic civilization.
1. Man of the River Drift Period.—Until the discovery of the Piltdown human skull and mandible, described in last chapter, the few osseous remains of the people who inhabited Britain and other parts of Europe when the swollen rivers were excavating their present valleys were too fragmentary to give much information as to their physical characters. Portion of a skull was found in brick-earth at Bury St. Edmunds, and figured in Man the Primeval Savage, but all that could be affirmed of it was that it was greatly elongated and especially developed in the occipital region. The flint implements associ-
