The latest word on this subject is by Professor F. Boas, who believes that the negro in his physical and mental make-up is not similar to the European. “There is, however, no proof whatever that these differences signify any appreciable degree of inferiority of the negro ... for these racial differences are much less than the range of variation found in either race considered by itself.... The anatomy of the American negro is not well known; and, notwithstanding the oft-repeated assertions regarding the hereditary inferiority of the mulatto, we know hardly anything on the subject.”[50] The real problem in America is the mulatto, since “the conditions are such that the persistence of the pure negro type is practically impossible.” Footnote 50: Franz Boas, “Race Problems in America,” _Science_, N.S. xxix., p. 848, 1909. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV. THE UNFOLDING OF THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN [Sidenote: =Fossil Man.=] IGNORANCE and prejudice combined to assert that man was created a few thousand years ago in a state of physical perfection. The possibility of the discovery of fossil man was therefore inconceivable to most people, and those earlier writers who entertained the idea were generally inclined to deny it. Cuvier, limiting the age of the earth to the orthodox 6,000 years, had stated that fossil bones of man did not exist. Moreover, up to the time of his death (1832) nothing had been found to disturb this generally received opinion. More than a hundred years before (1726) Professor Scheuchzer, of Zürich, had discovered his famous “_Homo diluvii testis_”—“Man, witness of the Flood”—and had described it as a “rare relic of the accursed race of the primitive world,” exclaiming piously: “Melancholy skeleton of an old sinner, convert the hearts of modern reprobates!” His fossil was proved later to be that of a gigantic salamander, and fossil man was allowed to sleep for more than a century. When the question was again raised, in the middle of the nineteenth century, evidence of human remains which had been hitherto disregarded assumed a new importance, and earlier finds were re-examined. [Sidenote: =Cannstadt.= Neanderthal.] First there was the Cannstadt cranium, found in 1700 by Duke Eberhard of Würtemberg, which remained undescribed for 135 years in the Stuttgart Museum. Later it was claimed as belonging to the prehistoric “race,” proofs of whose existence were so rapidly accumulating. In 1856 a fresh stimulus was given by the discovery of a cranium and some other remains in the Feldhofen Cave, at the entrance to a small ravine called Neanderthal, on the right bank of the river Düssel, in Rhenish Prussia.