ANTHROPOLOGY. 8 1 9 



The Americau Journal of Arcbaeology ami History of Fiue Arts was 

 founded at the Johns Hopkins University under the editorshii> of Mr. 

 A. S. Frothingham, The numbers which have appeared exhibit the 

 poHcy of the journal to be of the exalted standard adopted by the other 

 serial publications of the university. 



The discussion of the question, who were the mound-builders? has 

 received a fresh impetus from the ground taken by Major Powell and 

 the Bureau of Ethnology that the so-called mound-builders were none 

 others than the immediate ancestors of the Indians inhabiting the 

 United States at the time of its first exploration. Mr. Cyrus Thomas 

 has devoted several papers to the discussion of the subject. 



A course of Archaeology was endowed during the year in Lisbon un 

 der the patronage of Prince Charles, and in charge of M. da Silva. 

 Prizes to the amount of $250 will be divided among the students. 



llie Precursor of Man. — M. Gabriel de Mortillet is the author of the 

 theory that the flints of Thenay were the workmaushi[> not of man at 

 all but of his precursor, the anthropopithecus. The argument of this 

 distinguished archajologist is somewhat as follows: The study of pa- 

 leontology acquaints us with the succession of animals. We know 

 that animals have varied from one epoch to another, and tliat these 

 variations are the more profound as the epochs are removed in time. 

 We know also that the higher the organism the more rapid have been 

 the variations. 



The mammals of the upper Tertiary are diflerent from those of to- 

 day. Man cannot have escaped this law. If evidences of workman- 

 ship exist in the Tertiary, they i)rove the existence not of man but of 

 his precursor. 1. In Otta, Portugal, in the valley of the Tagus, at 

 the base of the Pliocene, have been found worked flints. 2. Puy 

 Courny, near Aurillac (Cantal), same horizon, has furnished silex both 

 wrought and transported. ?>. Thenay (Loir-et-Cher) reveals a being- 

 intelligent enough fco soften flint by fire in order to make it more tract- 

 able, although the beds are older than those of Otta or Puy Cournj^, in 

 fact they belong to the lower Miocene or the upper Eocene. M. Mor- 

 tillet examines carefully the question of natural cleavage of flint, and 

 d(HMdes that those of Thenay aflbrd unmistakable evidences of anthro- 

 popithecan workmanship. 



In reply to M. Mortillet several archieologists have taken the view 

 ^,hat the so-called crackled and retouched flints of Thenay are not the 

 products of human workmanship at all. On the other hand, M. de 

 Quatrefagcs, admitting for argument sake the existence of wrought 

 flints from the Tertiary, combats de Mortillet's theory of anthropopi- 

 thecus, alleging that man could have lived in that period. "It may 

 be true," says de Quatrefages, " that during the Tertiary and since 

 mammalian fauna may have been renewed again and again, and that 

 not one species belonging to that time survives, but the discoveries 



