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area. These bones were found as if disseminated across a single flat surface. Not all of the bones were found for each individual, but some only, which doubtlessly means that the others were dispersed elsewhere. By some circumstance, the last skeleton happened to come to rest at one spot, where, as could be seen when it was excavated, it was covered by layers of sedimentary deposits. Professor Ragazzoni told me that he found the bones in a uniform, compact mass of clay, like a fly that happened to fall into soft soap, where it remained caught.”

Sergi (1884, pp. 314–315) noted: “the almost entirely preserved female skeleton was not found in a posture indicating ordinary burial, but overturned; I saw the front part of the skull with the face inside the posterior cavity, and all the head entangled in the greenish clay, from which I patiently separated it. The other parts of the skeleton were also like this, and I still have the vertebral column with the ribs in a mass of clay, and the bones of one hand in the same clay.”

Sergi (1884, p. 316) concluded: “From all that I heard and saw, I came to the conclusion that the skeletons of Castenedolo are from the geological era to which the strata of blue clay and the marine shell bed may be referred, and they are an irrefutable document for the existence of man in the Tertiary epoch, man of a character fully human, and not a precursor.” To Sergi, the Castenedolo skeletons suggested that the creatures responsible for the Tertiary flints and cut bones found by other researchers (Chapters 2–5) might have been fully human rather than apelike ancestors, as scientists such as de Mortillet had proposed.

Sergi pointed out that the scientific community had recognized the existence of human beings in the Pleistocene only after great controversy. “But no sooner than that fact was accepted,” wrote Sergi (1884, p. 303), “human artifacts from the Tertiary began to appear. This development was, however, confronted with obstacles and opposition arising not only from the prejudice expected of common men, but also from prejudice within the scientific community. Science has no problem finding existing species of shells in strata millions of years old, and some living mammals are also represented in the Tertiary, but man himself, it is thought, must be quite recent.”

Sergi (1884, pp. 303–304) stated: “There were presented at various academies and congresses the artifacts of Tertiary man, consisting of impressions, incisions, cuts, and scraping on bone and stone, including flints chipped by the hand of man, and there followed only negativity. And when there was no other reason to negate, it was simply said: ‘I don’t believe it.’ The reporting of actual human remains—crania and other bones—was received with irony and rejected with dogmatic incredulity.”

Sergi (1884, p. 304) then recounted how the artifacts of Tertiary man gradually won a degree of positive recognition: “One set of facts was not able to be rejected, although it took much time to be accepted, and that was the chipped flints discovered in Tertiary deposits at Thenay (Loire-et-Cher) by Bourgeois. At the congress at Paris in 1867, Bourgeois was not believed; but Worsae soon declared his support, and shortly thereafter de Mortillet and others did the same. At the congress in Brussels in 1872, the question was discussed, and the adherents increased. This prepared the way for Rames, who discovered worked flint and quartzite in the conglomerates of Cantal at Aurillac.”

Continuing his review, Sergi (1884, p. 304) said: “The Tertiary flints of Portugal also encountered great resistance. But C. Ribeiro did research of unequaled value and effect. Yet only at the congress of 1880 at Lisbon did his discoveries achieve complete recognition, especially after a commission of scientists, in the course of a visit to Monte Redondo at Otta, found a flint implement in place, still embedded in the conglomerate. Professor Bellucci had the fortune to make this discovery and report it.” It is quite remarkable that most modern students of paleoanthropology are