ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 101 



large shark, the sawn rib of a manatee, and a beaming full face 

 carved on the shell of a pectunculus ! 



In an address to the Anthropological Section at the Leeds meet- 

 ing of this association in 1890 I dealt somewhat fully with these 

 supposed discoveries of the remains of human art in beds of Tertiary 

 date; and I need not here go further into the question. Suffice it 

 to say that I see no reason why the verdict of " not proven," at 

 which I then arrived, should be reversed. In the case of a more 

 recent discovery in upper Burma in beds at first pronounced to be 

 upper Miocene, but subsequently " definitely ascertained to be Plio- 

 cene," some of the flints are of purely natural and not artificial 

 origin, so that two questions arise: First, were the fossil remains 

 associated with the worked flints or with those of natural forms? 

 and second, were they actually found in the bed to which they have 

 been assigned, or did they merely lie together on the surface? Even 

 the Pithecanthropus erectus of Dr. Eugene Dubois from Java meets 

 with some incredulous objectors from both the physiological and 

 the geological sides. From the point of view of the latter the diffi- 

 culty lies in determining the exact age of what are apparently al- 

 luvial beds in the bottom of a river valley. 



When we return to paleolithic man it is satisfactory to feel that 

 we are treading on comparatively secure ground, and that the dis- 

 coveries of the last forty years in Britain alone enable us to a great 

 extent to reconstitute his history. We may not know the exact 

 geological period when first he settled in the British area, but we 

 have good evidence that he occupied it at a time when the configura- 

 tion of the surface was entirely different from what it is at present, 

 when the river valleys had not been cut down to anything like their 

 existing depth, when the fauna of the country was of a totally differ- 

 ent character from that of the present day, when the extension of 

 the southern part of the island seaward was in places such that the 

 land was continuous with that of the continent, and when in all 

 probability a far more rainy climate prevailed. We have proofs 

 of the occupation of the country by man during the long lapse of 

 time that was necessary for the excavation of the river valleys. We 

 have found the old floors on which his habitations were fixed, we 

 have been able to trace him at work on the manufacture of flint 

 instruments, and by building up the one upon the other the flakes 

 struck off by the primeval workman in those remote times we have 

 been able to reconstruct the blocks of flint which served as his ma- 

 terial. That the duration of the paleolithic period must have ex- 

 tended over an almost incredible length of time is sufficiently proved 

 by the fact that valleys, some miles in width and of a depth of from 

 one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet, have been eroded since 



