45 2 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



of pools or lakelets, by long eroded valleys and by other indica- 

 tions of the action of running waters. 



Nor could there be any lack of vegetable or animal life in 

 a favoured region, which was thus abundantly supplied with 

 natural irrigation arteries, while the tropical heats were tempered 

 by great elevation and at times by the refreshing breezes from 

 sub-arctic Europe. 



From these well-watered and fertile lands, some of which 

 continued even in Roman times to be the granary of the empire, 

 came that succession of southern animals hippopotamus, hyaena, 

 rhinoceros, elephant, cave-lion which made Europe seem like a 

 "zoological appendix of Africa." In association with this fauna 

 came primitive man himself, whose remains from the Neanderthal, 

 Spy, La Naulette, La Denise, Briix, Podbaba, Mentone, perhaps 

 Galley Hill (Kent), show that the substratum of the European 

 populations was of North African origin. So far, indeed, there 

 is scarcely room for much discussion, especially since in recent 

 years such abundant evidence has been brought to light of the 

 presence of early man all over North Africa from the shores of the 

 Mediterranean through Egypt to Somaliland. Thus one of M. J. 

 de Morgan's momentous conclusions is that the existence of civi- 

 lized men in Egypt may be reckoned by thousands, and of the 

 aborigines by myriads of years. These aborigines are identified 

 with the men of the Old Stone Age, of whom he believes four 

 stations have been discovered Dahshur, Abydos, Tukh, and 

 Thebes 1 . 



Of Tunisia the same story is told by M. Arsene Dumont, who 

 emphatically declares that "the immense period of time during 

 which man made use of stone implements is nowhere so strikingly 

 shown as in Tunisia." Here some of the flints were found in 

 abundance under a thick bed of quaternary limestone deposited 

 by the waters of a stream that has disappeared. Hence " the 

 origin of man in Mauritania must be set back to a remote age 

 which deranges all chronology and confounds the very fables of 

 the mythologies 2 ." 



1 Recherches stir les Origines de P Egypt e: L*Age de la Pierre et des Melaux, 

 1897. 



'' Bui. Soc. d? Anthrop. 1896, p. 394. This indefatigable explorer remarks, 



