50 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



one million of these years must be assigned to the Pleistocene and the 

 other million and a half may be divided between the Pliocene and 

 Miocene. 



The evidence of man's presence throughout this long stretch 

 of time is now generally regarded as clear and unmistakeable. For 

 the later Pleistocene division it is absolutely indisputable. We find 

 not only evidence of his presence in the abundance of his skilfully- 

 fashioned stone and bone implements but also in the actual skeletal 

 remains of man himself, under such conditions and in such circum- 

 stances, as to make it impossible to doubt the antiquity claimed for 

 them. 



For the earlier division of the Pliocene and Upper Miocene the 

 evidence consists, in the main, of his stone implements. But the 

 character of these is such that it leaves no room for doubt concerning 

 their origin, and those investigators best qualified to express an 

 opinion upon such matters are now generally agreed that the stone 

 implements recovered from the Pliocene and Upper Miocene beds 

 are the undoubted products of human effort and are unmistakeable 

 evidence of man's presence on the earth in those remote times. 



It should perhaps be mentioned here that some authorities 

 claim that evidence of man's presence and his tool-making powers 

 is found as far back as the Lower Miocene and even into the Oli- 

 gocène. The human workmanship which, it is thought, is seen in 

 these stones, however, is still a matter of dispute, though more 

 recent discoveries in Upper Miocene beds at Aurillac in France of 

 implements closely resembling the earliest types of Palseoliths seem 

 to suggest that these claims may ultimately be sustained, but as 

 they are still matters of dispute they need not be taken into consid- 

 eration here. 



Regarding, then, man's antiquity as firmly established and his 

 presence as a tool-maker in those far-off Eolithic and Palaeolithic 

 days beyond dispute, let us now see what our researches have to tell 

 us about the races of men who lived in those successive cultural 

 epochs, their relations to one another and to the races of men on the 

 earth today. 



The human family as we know it today is commonly divided 

 into four great groups — the Australian, the i\frican, the Mongolian 

 and the European. Of the first three of these groups our investi- 

 gations have revealed to us little direct knowledge. What we have 

 learned of them has been mainly indirect and inferential. This is 

 because our records of Pleistocene man, if we except the pithecoid 

 creature from Java, are all confined to European lands and deal with 



