MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
last at the eve of the rapid rise of the mammals, and with 
them, of the rise of the mind. We find in the Eocene pe- 
riod herbivorous, carnivorous, and insectivorous mammals, 
among them the ancestors of the cats, dogs, squirrels, rab- 
bits, monkeys, and lemurs, the horse, and the rhinoceros. 
Ancestral forms of the elephant and mastodon arose in 
Africa and migrated through Eurasia and America. Some 
mammals of Eocene time were of elephantine size, though 
soon extinct. Also, the mammals went down to the sea as 
the reptiles had done previously, and were represented by 
whales, dolphins, manatees, seals, and sea lions. Indeed, 
the name Eocene is given because in this period, for the 
first time in all the long history of life, the world’s fauna and 
flora contained an appreciable percentage of orders that 
still exist. Thus the Eocene is the dawn of modern life. 
In the Miocene period, which succeeded the Oligocene, 
the approach toward the present fauna was marked by the 
advance of the cat and dog families, of the horse, the 
rhinoceros, the rodents, and by the development of the 
pigs and the camels, which as yet were confined to America. 
The deer and ox families migrated extensively. Most in- 
teresting, however, is the rise of the primates, nearest of 
all creatures in their form to man. 
The Miocene gave place to the Pliocene period, in which 
after an intermigration of New and Old World types, simi- 
lar to that which had taken place in the Eocene and other 
periods, pointing to the existence of ancient bridges across 
the ocean depths, there begins the divergence which separa- 
tion by the oceans has caused. The elephant family were 
the giants of this period. Mastodons occupied all conti- 
nents. Among the cats occurred the ferocious saber- 
toothed tiger, now extinct. The apes developed in south- 
ern Europe and other parts of the Old World. Dubois, in 
1891, found in Java portions of a skeleton of Pliocene age, 
about which paleontologists are in doubt as to whether it 
is more akin to the apes or to man, and so have called it 
Pithecanthropus erectus—the erect apelike man. 
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