II. 



Miocene Man in India/ 



BY Professor Prestwich's explanation of the mode and relative date 

 of the occurrence of the plateau flint implements in Kent,^ we 

 clearly understand that Man inhabited the region comprising what is 

 now the South-eastern part of England at a very remote period ; so 

 far back, indeed, in the earth's history as to require of us the recogni- 

 tion of a vast lapse of time, measured by the duration of slow natural 

 processes, forming, elevating, and removing extensive deposits of 

 marine, estuarine, and fluviatile materials. In the geological 

 chronology, as marked out by fossils and strata belonging to certain 

 stages in the recognised succession of periods and their characteristic 

 formations, that of the " Red Crag" of Essex (formed in a shallow 

 sea in " Pliocene " times, just before the " Glacial Period " began), 

 has been indicated by Professor Prestwich's researches as having 

 been contemporaneous with the condition of things existing in what 

 is now Kent when Men of some primaeval kind existed on hill-sides 

 far above where Crowborough and other ridges in the Wealden area 

 now rise to a much lower elevation. 



In France flint flakes more or less worked (chipped), said to have 

 been discovered in the Miocene strata, have been adduced as indicative 

 of Man's existence there at that still earlier period ; but some cautious 

 geologists and archaeologists have declined to accept the evidence. 



We have now, however, to notice the finding of artificially 

 prepared flint flakes, of human manufacture, in a Miocene formation 

 of Further India. 



Lately, when mapping the Yenangyoung Oilfield, in Burma, 

 Dr. Noetling was interested in collecting remains of Vertebrate 

 animals, particularly in a ferruginous conglomerate upwards of lo feet 

 thick, persistent as a dull-red band across the ravines and hills. This 

 rock, lying beneath 4,620 feet of Pliocene strata, contains numerous 

 fossil bones, especially of Rhinoceros perimensis and Hippotherium 



1 " On the Occurrence of Chipped (?) Flints in the Upper Miocene of Burma." 

 By Dr. Fritz Noetling, F.G.S., Palaeontologist, Geological Survey of India. Records 

 of ihe Geological Survey of India, vol. xxvii., part 3, 1894, pp. 101-103, with a plate 

 [marked I.]. 



2 See Natural Science, October, 1894, page 269, for special references to 

 Professor Prestwich's several memoirs on this subject. 



