In the Near East, archaeological excavation directed by Dr. Ralph S. Solecki, of the Smithsonian Institution, turned up yet more material that helps us date the Neanderthal. In the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq, at Shanidar Cave, in Shanidar Valley, there is a remarkable deposit of both the tools and the bones of early man. The cave contained a dozen feet or so of Upper Paleolithic remains overlying a deep Mousterian deposit. The bottom level of the Upper Paleolithic materials has been dated at over 34,000 years. How much older the Mousterian layers may be we cannot yet be sure. From depths of 14½ and 23 feet below the surface and within the Mousterian deposit, adult skeletons have been recovered. These seem to be Neanderthaloid, as does the skeleton of a child, recovered at a depth of 26 feet. The estimate is that the shallower of the skeletons may be about 45,000 years old, the lower adult perhaps 60,000.[21] Homo sapiens—_New or Old?_ The relationship of all these forms of early man is much disputed. For many, many years they were all supposed to be barren offshoots of our ancestral tree. Nobody could find the particular breed of ape-man from which we were descended. Now science is inclined to lump most of them together in one way or another. There are many theories and many genealogies. Swanscombe man plays grandfather to _Homo sapiens_. Java man and Peking man become the forebears of the Mongoloid. Other men from Java father the Australian, and even the Neanderthal. The Neanderthals breed out their crudeness in some sort of union with _Homo sapiens_. Or all of them are admitted to the ranks of Homo, with Neanderthal a degenerate offshoot without issue. The earlier picture was simpler and more dramatic. From _Pithecanthropus erectus_ to _Homo neanderthalensis_—Java man to the Neanderthal—these creatures bore no relation to our own happy breed. Then, quite suddenly, came _Homo sapiens_ in the person of the Cro-Magnon. He was the kind of tall fellow with a well domed, narrow Nordic head whom Hitler identified with the better class of human beings. Except for the “Red Lady of Paviland,” the first specimens were found at Aurignac, France, in 1852, though nobody recognized the outstanding quality of the skulls until the find at Cro-Magnon, France, in 1868 (see illustration, page 89). [Illustration: SCULPTURE OF THE OLD STONE AGE _Above, one of the carved and perforated reindeer antlers of the Magdalenians, which are sometimes described as bâtons de commandement; the Eskimos used a somewhat similar tool for straightening their arrows. Left, the Venus of Willendorf, an Aurignacian carving in stone, found near Spitz, Austria. The woman’s head from the Grotte du Pape, Brassempouy, France, may be either Aurignacian or Magdalenian. The horse’s head, made of reindeer antlers, from Mas d’Azil, France, is Magdalenian. (After Osborn, 1915.)_]