2l8 LLOYD'S NATURAL HISTORY. 



FAMILY HOMINID^ {supm, p. 203) 

 GENUS HOMO {siiprh, p. 203). 



Although, as has been stated above, the Primates^ repre- 

 sented by lowly Lemuroids evincing relationship with the 

 ancestors of the hoofed animals ( Ungulata)^ first appeared in 

 Eocene times, it would be a hopeless quest, as Professor Boyd- 

 Dawkins points out, to seek for a highly specialised Man in a 

 fauna where no living genus of Mammals was present. 



The earliest appearance of Man on the globe has been con- 

 sidered by Dr. Hamy and M. de Mortillet to be in France in 

 the middle of the Miocene age. They base their belief on flint 

 fragments supposed to be artificially made, and on a cut upon 

 the bone of an extinct Manatee considered to be of human 

 handiwork. The evidence is, however, doubtful and unsatis- 

 factory. In this age appeared such Anthropoids as PHopithe- 

 cus and the highly-developed Dryopitliecus (p. 216), when the 

 climate was tropical in mid-Europe, and warm and genial even 

 within 8° 15' of the North Pole. Professor Boyd-Dawkins 

 believes that notwithstanding the favourable climate and the 

 existence of so highly-developed an Ape as Dryopithecus^ " were 

 any Man-like animal living in the Miocene age, he might 

 reasonably be expected to be not Man, but intermediate be- 

 tween Man and something else." 



The Pliocene, i.e.^ that portion of the Tertiary period in 

 which the genera of mammals are mostly the same as those now 

 living — only one species is known to be identical, — is the 

 next horizon in which human remains have been asserted to 

 have been found. The evidence is based on a skull found in a 

 railway cutting in France after a landslip, and on a supposed arti- 

 ficially incised bone; but both these data require confirmation. 

 Senhor Ribeiro has, however, obtained in Portugal implements 



