Reckoned by centuries, the remoteness of the quaternary, or pleistocene,
age from our own is immense, and it is difficult to form an adequate
notion of its duration. Undoubtedly there is an abysmal difference
between the Neanderthaloid race and the comely living specimens of
the blond long-heads with whom we are familiar. But the abyss of time
between the period at which North Europe was first covered with ice,
when savages pursued mammoths and scratched their portraits with sharp
stones in central France, and the present day, ever widens as we learn
more about the events which bridge it. And, if the differences between
the Neanderthaloid men and ourselves could be divided into as many parts
as that time contains centuries, the progress from part to part would
probably be almost imperceptible.