With the appearance of the Mediterranean race the Azilian-Tardenoisian draws to its close and with it the entire Paleolithic Period. It is safe to assign for the end of the Paleolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic or Polished Stone Age, the date of 7,000 or 8,000 B. C. The races of the Paleolithic Period, so far as we can judge from their remains, appear successively on the scene with all their characters fully developed. The evolution of all these subspecies and races took place somewhere in Asia or eastern Europe. None of these races appear to be ancestral one to another, although the scanty remains of the Heidelberg Man would indicate that he may have given rise to the later Neanderthals. Other than this possible affinity, the various races of Paleolithic times are not related one to another. III THE NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGES About 7,000 B.C. we enter an entirely new period in the history of man, the Neolithic or New Stone Age, when the flint implements were polished and not merely chipped. Early as is this date in European culture, we are not far from the beginnings of an elaborate civilization in parts of Asia and Egypt. The earliest organized governments, so far as our present knowledge goes, were Egypt and Sumer. Chinese civilization at the other end of Asia is later, but mystery still shrouds its origin and its connection, if any, with the Mesopotamian city-states. The solution probably lies in the central region of the Syr Darya and future excavations in those regions may uncover very early cultures. Balkh, the ancient Bactra, the mother of cities, is located where the trade routes between China, India and Mesopotamia converged and it is in this neighborhood that careful and thorough excavations will probably find their greatest reward. However, we are not dealing with Asia but with Europe only and our knowledge is confined to the fact that the various cultural advances at the end of the Paleolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic correspond with the arrival of new races. The transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic was formerly considered as revolutionary, an abrupt change of both race and culture, but a period more or less transitory, known as the Campignian, now appears to bridge over this gap. This is only what should be expected, since in human archæology as in geology the more detailed our knowledge becomes the more gradually we find one period or horizon merges into its successor. For a long time after the opening of the Neolithic the old-fashioned chipped weapons and implements remain the predominant type and the polished flints so characteristic of the Neolithic appear at first only sporadically, then increase in number until finally they entirely replace the rougher designs of the preceding Old Stone Age.