402 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



size (l m , 63), dolichocephaly of 74 and especially a short face, broad and 

 disharmonic, of a character absolutely analogous to the conformation of 

 the crania of Cromagnon. They are not blonds. 



"Another race of large size (l m , 69, about), very dolichocephalic, 

 mesorhine to 75, etc., were probably the descendants of the men who 

 worked the silver in this region, and they represent the most ancient 

 ethnic layer existing in the country." He adds that in Tunisia, as in 

 Europe, there was a gradual transition from the Chellean to the Mous- 

 terian epoch, and also down through the Magdalenian epoch to the 

 Neolithic. Flint implements were still used during the Eoman occu- 

 pation, though the nomadic Getulse or Numidians used metal pur- 

 chased of the Phoenicians and Eomans. 



It is now tolerably well settled that at the time of the paleolithic or 

 old stone epoch in Egypt and Nubia, the Nile was much larger and 

 wider than now, as the paleolithic axes and scrapers, precisely like 

 those of France, have been found on the river gravels out on the 

 desert as high as 400 feet above the present level of the Nile. On the 

 other hand, the polished axes or celts, the arrow-heads and flint knives 

 and scrapers of the neolithic epoch found under the temples and in the 

 sand about the towns built within historic times, though extending back 

 2,500 to 4,000 years, preceded the bronze period, which may have begun 

 about 1,500 years b. c. Since the opening of the neolithic epoch in 

 Egypt, the Nile has assumed its present size, the country having be- 

 come dry and rainless. There are everywhere, as we ascend the Nile to 

 the first cataract, evident traces in the eroded hills on either bank of 

 the Nile of a rainy and cooler climate during paleolithic times. 



And everywhere in Morocco, Algeria and Tunis, and on the edge of 

 the Sahara Desert, we saw evidences of an originally moist, rainy, cooler 

 climate. Old lake-bottoms, on the Tell, where the rivers, now dry, 

 had widened into lakes; conical hills, outstanding pinnacles and ancient 

 water-worn courses extending down the sides of the now dry and barren 

 cliffs or slopes, told the story of a climate more favorable than now for 

 the sustenance of a comparatively large population; one fond of uplands, 

 forest clad, cool and shady in the summer, and whose farms suffered less 

 from the parching heats of summer. During the tertiary period, at 

 least until the pliocene, the Sahara was a Mediterranean sea; northern 

 Africa belonged then more to Europe than to central and southern 

 Africa. 



Eabourdin asserts that the desert of the central Sahara was formerly 

 a fertile and inhabited country, and afforded pasturage for cattle. 

 Herodotus states that the cattle had larger and thicker hides. There 

 are rock pictures representing cattle with large horns. 



Weisgerber states that according to local traditions the Sahara was 

 formerly not a desert; that there were springs, streams and a luxuriant 



