ABSTRACT
In scientific circles, authorities were stressing the value of discoveries which were the results of long term planning and systematic investigations, such as those made at Mas d'Azil and on the Cote d'Azur. Other long-term investigations initiated in the previous century resulted in a number of remarkable discoveries in the first decade of the twentieth century. These discoveries constituted a major contribution to the story of the Neanderthalers, and also presented science with the fossil jaw of an individual whose status in the human family was to remain a matter for argument for many years to come. The differences which separated Neanderthal man from any modern man were held to be greater than those which separated the most divergent of modern human races from each other. The earlier idea that Neanderthal man might have evolved into Homo sapiens was widely abandoned and he began to be regarded as no more than an extinct side branch of the human family.
