THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN 35 



available indicates, they all belong to the modern 

 races of Indians, and, in one way or another, by 

 fraud or error, have had assigned to them a fabulous 

 antiquity. 



There still seems reason to believe that remains 

 of man and his works exist in beds which are over- 

 laid by boulders and gravel, implying a cold climate. 

 These may indicate the last portion of the glacial 

 period proper, in which case the beds with human 

 remains may be called inter-glacial, or they may 

 indicate a partial relapse to the cold conditions occur- 

 ring after the glacial age had passed away, and in 

 the early part of the modern period. My own view 

 is, that it is most natural to draw the boundary line of 

 the pleistocene and anthropic or modern at the point 

 where the earliest certain evidences of man appear, 

 and that the anthropic age will be found to include 

 not only an early period of mild climate succeeding 

 the glacial age, but a little later a return of cold, not 

 comparable with that of the extreme glacial period, 

 but sufficient seriously to affect human interests, and 

 which almost immediately preceded those physical 

 changes which carried away palaeocosmic man, or the 

 man of the earliest period, and many of his com- 

 panion animals, and introduced the neanthropic or 

 later human age. We shall find facts bearing on this 

 in the sequel. 



In the meantime, we may consider it as established 

 beyond cavil that man was already in Europe im- 

 mediately after the close of the glacial pc:;V\1 r>-d 



