RECENT DISCOVERIES BEARING ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN EUROPE.
[With 18 plates.]
By George Grant MacCurdy, Yale University.
INTRODUCTION.
Every ten years our Government takes a census. This happens to be the year in which it is done. It is also good policy for a science, especially if it is a relatively new one, to take a periodical account of stock. The science of prehistoric anthropology need have no fear of the satisfactory outcome of such a test at this time. I have been asked to be the census taker for the European field, and consider myself fortunate, not only in the field, but also in the period to be covered. Nowhere else has the prehistoric, the whole problem of man's antiquity, been studied with such thoroughness and with such happy results. Of the nearly one hundred years since prehistoric archeologv began to take shape and to grow into what is now becoming a real science, no decade has shown a more satisfactory record than the one just closed. To its achievements the present paper is devoted.
How are we to measure the growth of the decade in question? The correct result requires a knowledge not only of what is now known but also of what was known in 1900. The annual output in the way of publications is one of the best gauges of activity, of the rate of progress in a given subject. Ten years ago the prehistoric output was well provided for in the journals dealing with anthropology in general, in the proceedings of periodical congresses, the transactions of local societies, and occasional special publications. These channels continue to be utilized in increasing ratio, which ordinarily would meet the requirements of a healthy, steady growth. But they have not sufficed. New and more highly specialized journals have sprung into existence, new prehistoric societies and congresses have been organized, and special publications financed. At this moment I do not recall a single purely prehistoric European journal of importance
