EARLY MAN 467 



The Pliocene and Pleistocene show living species, though in 

 the former these are very few and exceptional, while in the 

 latter they become the majority. 



With regard to the geological antiquity of man, no geologist 

 expects to find any human remains in beds older than the 

 Tertiary, because in the older periods the conditions of the 

 world do not seem to have been suitable to man, and because 

 in these periods no animals nearly akin to man are known. 

 On entering into the Eocene Tertiary we fail in Hke manner to 

 find any human remains ; and we do not expect to find any, 

 because no living species and scarcely any living genera of 

 mammals are known in the Eocene ; nor do we find in it 

 remains of any of the animals, as the anthropoid apes, for in- 

 stance, most nearly allied to man. In the Miocene the case is 

 somewhat different. Here we have living genera at least, and 

 we have large species of apes ; but no remains of man have 

 been discovered, if we except some splinters of flint found in 

 beds of this age at Thenay, in France, and some notched 

 bones. Supposing these objects to have been chipped or 

 notched by animals, which is by no means certain in the case 

 of the flints, the question remains, Was this done by man? 

 Gaudry and Dawkins prefer to suppose that the artificer was 

 one of the anthropoid apes of the period. It is true that no 

 apes are known to do such work now ; but then other animals, 

 as beavers and birds, are artificers, and some extinct animals 

 were of higher powers than their modern representatives. But 

 if there were Miocene apes which chipped flints and cut bones, 

 this would, either on the hypothesis of evolution or that of 

 creation by law, render the occurrence of man still less likely 

 than if there were no such apes. The scratched and notched 

 bones, on the other hand, indicate merely the gnawing of sharks 

 or other carnivorous animals. For these reasons neither Daw- 

 kins nor Gaudry, nor indeed any geologists of authority in the 

 Tertiary fauna, believe in Miocene man. 



