SKETCH OF GABRIEL BE MORTILLET. 549 



series of observations and deductions, to regard as certain the geo- 

 logical existence of a being intermediate between man and the 

 monkey, which they called the Anthropopithecus, and they were 

 trying to indicate, hypothetically, its leading characteristics. 



M. de Mortillet's reasons for believing in the existence of this pre- 

 cursor of man as a definite being were presented in the Revue 

 d 'Anthropologie, in an article which was translated and published in 

 the Popular Science Monthly for April, 1879. In this paper the 

 author summarized the evidence, already copious, in favor of the 

 existence of Quaternary man, and then took up the question, " Did 

 there exist in the Tertiary age beings sufficiently intelligent to per- 

 form a part of the acts which are characteristic of man ? " He then 

 reviewed the researches of the Abbe Bourgeois at Thenay in the 

 light of a collection of fire-marked flints which he had exhibited at 

 the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology and Anthro- 

 pology held in Paris in 1867, and deduced from the result that " dur- 

 ing the Middle Tertiary there existed a creature, precursor of man, 

 an anthropopithecus, which was acquainted with fire, and could make 

 use of it for splitting flints. It also was able to trim the flint flakes 

 thus produced, and to convert them into tools. This curious and in- 

 teresting discovery for a long time stood alone, and arguments were 

 even drawn from its isolated position to favor the rejection of it. 

 Fortunately, another French observer, M. J. B. Rames, has found in 

 the vicinity of Aurillac (Cantal), in the strata of the upper part of 

 the Middle Tertiary — here, too, in company with mastodons and 

 dinotheriums, though of more recent species than those of Thenay — 

 flints which also have been redressed intentionally. In this case, 

 however, the flints are no longer split by fire, but by tapping. It is 

 something more than a continuation, it is a development. Among 

 the few specimens exhibited by M. Rames, whose discoveries are 

 quite recent, is one which, had it been found on the surface of the 

 ground, would never have been called in question." The evidence 

 afforded by these flints was confirmed by a collection of flints from 

 the Miocene and the Pliocene of the valley of the Tagus shown by 

 Sehor Ribeiro in the same exhibition, a considerable proportion of 

 which bore evidence of intentional chipping. 



Bearing upon this point was a chart of the Palaeolithic Age in 

 Gaul, drawn up by M. de Mortillet in 1871, and published in the 

 Bulletin de la Societe aV Anthropologic de Paris — " the only work of 

 the kind extant " — in which were recorded five localities in which 

 occurred supposed traces of man in the Tertiary, forty-one alluvial 

 deposits in the Quaternary yielding human bones and industrial re- 

 mains, and two hundred and seventy-eight caverns containing Qua- 

 ternary fauna with traces of prehistoric man. 



