THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN 31 



Should this be established, the curious result will 

 follow that man must have been the witness of two 

 great continental subsidences, or deluges, that of the 

 early pleistocene and the early modern, the former 

 of which, and perhaps the latter also, must have been 

 accompanied with a great access of cold in the 

 northern hemisphere. It seems, however, more likely 

 that the facts will be found to admit of a different 

 explanation. 



Every reader of the scientific journals of the 

 United States must be aware of the numerous finds 

 of ' palaeolithic ' implements in * glacial ' gravels, 

 indicating a far greater antiquity of man in Ame- 

 rica than on other grounds we have a right to 

 imagine. I have endeavoured to show, in a work 

 published several years ago, 1 how much doubt on 

 geological grounds attaches to the reports of these 

 discoveries, and how uncertain is the reference of the 

 supposed implements to undisturbed glacial deposits, 

 and how much such of the * palaeoliths ' as appear to 

 be the work of man resemble the rougher tools and 

 rejectamenta of the modern Indians. But since the 

 publication of that work, so great a number of ' finds ' 

 have been recorded, that despite their individual im- 

 probability, one was almost overwhelmed by the coin- 

 cidence of so many witnesses. Now the bubble seems 

 to have been effectually pricked by Mr. W. H. Holmes j 

 of the American Geological Survey, who has published 



1 Fossil Man, London, 1880. 



