Equally valueless would be a comparison between the intellectual activity of the Greeks or Romans and ourselves, taking as a test say the number of distinguished writers per million of population; for the Greek and Roman people are not related to us in direct line of descent, but are remote cousins. We can, however, obtain information which is of the greatest value as to the intellectual power of our direct forefathers at dates which may be counted back by thousands of years. Although they have left no written records behind them--for writing, even at the later part of the period referred to, was a rough implement, and placed in the hands of very few--yet they have left behind them, buried in their sepulchral mounds, their skulls, silent witnesses of the power and activity of the minds that once inhabited them. _The Neolithic compared with the Modern English Skulls._ The skull is the bony covering to the brain and the great organs of sense placed in the head; it develops with them, and is adapted with them as these organs during growth assume their proper racial and family characteristics. By an exhaustive examination and comparison of the skulls of different individuals of different races, the anthropometrist is able with certainty to affirm regarding the skulls of unknown persons their race and their general position in the scale of intellectual development. In a race where brain power is great, the brain pan is large and capacious, to accommodate the organ within it; it is a large-brain-small-jaw skull. In a race in which the brain power is limited, we have the small-brain-big-jaw skull. In races on much the same intellectual level, but who differ from each other in special physical and mental characters, the skull is generally a recognisable feature, and one can pick out at once the long skull of an Aryan from the broader skull of a Finn or Magyar. Many of the sepulchral mounds just alluded to have been opened, notably by General Pitt-Rivers and Canon Greenwell, and the remains of well-preserved skulls have in several hundreds of instances been found. These go back to very remote antiquity, in many instances to the Stone Age, which we may place at least before the Christian era. When these skulls are examined, they are found to be similar to many of our own. When we look at them, we feel that there is no reason to assume that they are of a lower type than our own, or that the men and women of whom they are the remains would not, were they possessed of our advantages of education, etc., take an equal status in society with us. Some of them, especially those removed from the Vikings’ graves, must have belonged to magnificent specimens of humanity. _Abeyance of Brain Development since Neolithic Times._