PRE-ARYAN AMERICAN MAN. 51 
“read his recantation” of earlier opinions ; and—so far at least as Europe is concerned,— 
gave the full weight of his authority to the conclusions relative to the antiquity of man based 
on the discovery of flint implements associated with bones of extinct mammalia at Abbeville 
and in the valley of the Thames. The peculiar geological conditions accompanying the 
earliest evidence of the presence of palæolithie man in Europe proved, when rightly inter- 
preted, to be no less convincing than the long familiar sequence of more recent archæological 
indices by which antiquarian speculation has proceeded step by step back towards that 
prehistoric dawn in which geology and archeology meet on common ground. The chalk 
and the overlying river-drift, abounding with flint nodules, left no room for question as to 
the source of the raw material from which the primitive implements were manufactured. 
The flint is still abundant as ever, in nodules of a size amply suflicient for furnishing the 
largest palæolithie implements, in the localities both of France and England where such 
specimens of primitive art have been recovered by thousands. But there other disclosures 
tell no less conclusively of many subsequent stages of progress, alike in prehistoric and 
historic times. 
Dr. John Evans, in his “ Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain,” purposely begins 
with the more recent implements, including those of the Australian and other modern 
savage races; and traces his way backward, “ascending the stream of time,” and noting 
the diverse examples of ingeniously fashioned and polished tools of the neolithic age which 
preceded that palæolithic class, of vast antiquity and rudest workmanship, which now 
constitute the earliest known works of man; if they are not, indeed, examples of the first 
infantile efforts of human skill. But alike in Britain, and on the neighbouring continent, 
a chronological sequence of implements in stone and metal, with pottery, personal orna- 
ments, and other illustrations of progressive art, supplies the evidence by means of which 
we are led backward—not without some prolonged interruptions, as we approach the 
palzolithic age,—from historic to the remotest prehistoric times. 
The relative chronology of the European drift may be thus stated: first, and most 
modern, the superficial deposits of recent centuries with their mediæval traces of Frank and 
Gaul; and along with those, the tombs, the pottery, and other remains of the Roman 
period, scarcely perceptibly affected in their geological relations by nearly the whole inter- 
val of the Christian area; next, in the alluvium, seemingly embedded by natural accumu- 
lation at an average depth of fifteen feet, occur remains of a European stone period, corres- 
ponding in many respects to those of the recently discovered pfahlbauten, or pile villages 
of the Swiss Lakes; and, underlying those accumulations exceeding in their duration the 
whole historical period, we come at length to the tool-bearing drift, imbedding, along 
with the fossil remains of many extinct mammals, the implements of palæolithic man, 
fashioned seemingly when the rivers were only begining the work of excayating the valleys 
which give their present contour to the landscapes of France and England. 
There, as elsewhere, we recognize progression from the most artless rudeness of tool 
manufacture, belonging to an epoch when the process of grinding flint or stone to an edge 
appears to have been unknown; through various stages of the primitive worker in stone, 
bone, ivory, and the like natural products; and then the discovery and gradual develop- 
ment of the metallurgic arts. Yet at the same time it must not be lost sight of that mere 
rudeness of workmanship is no evidence of antiquity. Nothing can well be conceived of 
more artless than some of the stone implements still in use among savage tribes of America. 
