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But Sergi (1912) later wrote that Issel was mistaken. Despite his views on the 1889 skeleton, Sergi said he had never given up his conviction that the 1880 bones were Pliocene. “Today I declare that the one thing does not invalidate the other” (Cousins 1971, p. 54). Sergi (1912) then added: “In any case this new pseudo-discovery [of 1889] gave a decisive blow to the first, and from this a deeper silence, like that of a grave, fell on the Castenedolo man; I had neither heart nor reason to exhume him. . . . Since then no one has spoken any more of the Castenedolo man [except to cast doubt upon him]” (Cousins 1971, p. 54).

A good example of the unfair treatment given to the Castenedolo finds may be found in Professor R. A. S. Macalister’s Textbook of European Archaeology, written in 1921. Macalister (1921, p. 183) admitted that the Castenedolo finds “whatever we may think of them, have to be treated seriously.” He noted that they were “unearthed by a competent geologist, Ragazzoni . . . and examined by a competent anatomist, Sergi.” Still he could not accept their Pliocene age. Faced with the uncomfortable facts, Macalister (1921, p. 183) claimed “there must be something wrong somewhere.” First of all the bones were anatomically modern. “Now, if they really belonged to the stratum in which they were found,” wrote Macalister (1921, p. 184), “this would imply an extraordinarily long standstill for evolution. It is much more likely that there is something amiss with the observations.” Macalister (1921, p. 185) also said: “the acceptance of a Pliocene date for the Castenedolo skeletons would create so many insoluble problems that we can hardly hesitate in choosing between the alternatives of adopting or rejecting their authenticity.” Here once more we find a scientist’s preconceived ideas about evolution influencing him to reject skeletal evidence that would otherwise be considered of good quality.

Equally unfriendly to Tertiary stone tools, Macalister (1921, p. 185) protested: “On the one hand, we are asked to believe in eoliths; on the other hand we are introduced to highly advanced and intellectual people like those of Castenedolo. The two are incompatible. The quest for Tertiary Man is a game at which the player must be fair; he cannot win both ways. Let him become an Eolithist if he see fit, but let him then give up all expectation of finding a Tertiary man with a fully-developed mental equipment. Or let him seek a Tertiary Man, but he must then throw his eoliths and all the rest of his ballast overboard.”

There is, however, no fundamental incompatibility between advanced intellectual capabilities and the manufacture of crude stone tools—even today tribal people in various parts of the world, with the same brain capacity as modern city dwellers, make such implements.Also, there is no reason why anatomically modern humans could not have coexisted with more apelike creatures in the Tertiary, just as humans today coexist with gorillas, chimpanzees, and gibbons.

Macalister cited Issel (1889) in support of his attempt to discredit the Castenedolo finds, apparently not aware that according to Sergi (1912) Issel’s 1889 report discredited only the 1889 skeleton. For example, Macalister (1921, p. 184), referring to all of the Castenedolo finds, wrote: “examination of the bones and their setting, by Issel of Geneva, revealed the fact that the strata were full of marine deposits, and that everything solid within them, except the human bones, shewed marine incrustations.” While it is true that Issel (1889, p. 108) reported that the bones of the skeleton uncovered in 1889 were smooth and free of incrustations, the same cannot be said of the earlier discoveries, which both Ragazzoni (1880, pp. 120, 122) and Sergi (1884, pp. 311, 312) said were incrusted with blue Pliocene clay and pieces of shells and coral.

Another example of the unfair treatment given the Castenedolo discoveries is found in Fossil Men. In this book, Boule and Vallois (1957, p. 107) stated that “it seems certain that at Castenedolo, as at Savona [Section