Page:The Last link.djvu/159

according to some, in the Late Pliocene, according to others in the Early Plistocene, period—that is to say, somewhere about the beginning of our last Glacial epoch, some 270,000 years ago. Assuming that he and his like reached puberty at sixteen to twenty years of age, about 17,000 generations would lie between him and ourselves, or, to put it more forcibly, between him and the lowest living human races—say the Ceylonese Veddahs. Only 250 generations, at twenty years, carry us back to 3000 B.C. (i.e., beyond the ken of history); and if it be objected that the differences between the oldest inhabitants of Egypt, the Naquada, and the present Fellahin are very slight, we are welcome to multiply these differences sixty or seventy fold, in order to arrive at the Pithecanthropus level. But these Naquada had no metal implements, and there cannot be the slightest doubt that the development of the human race went on by leaps and bounds after certain discoveries had been made—to