HUMAN HISTORY 119 



Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene. Many archaeologists believe 

 that they are the remains of a primitive form of culture which 

 preceded the Palaeolithic form of culture. The matter is still 

 under debate. 



We may note that eoliths exhibit very httle variation. The 

 same types appear from the Oligocene onwards, and if there was 

 an eolithic culture it must have lasted some millions of years and 

 been accompanied by little or no progress in the fashioning of 

 implements. An exception must be made in the case of the so- 

 called ' rostro-carinate ' implements described by Mr. Reid Moir, 

 and attributed to the late Pliocene.^ These stones are of a dis- 

 tinctive type, and apparently do not occur in the Oligocene and 

 the Miocene.2 There are several considerations which make it 

 difficult to accept eoHths as genuine remains of an early culture ; 

 some of these considerations do not apply to the rostro-carinate 

 type, and some apply with less force, (a) Breuil has pointed out 

 that as good eoliths occur in the Eocene as in the later strata.^ 

 Apart from this, the occurrence of eoliths in the Ohgocene, taken 

 together with the immense length of the period during which 

 no progress in skill was made, is almost incompatible with what 

 we must suppose to have been the course of human evolution. 

 The various classes of mammals were in rapid evolution at this 

 time, and it is difficult to understand how, before this period of 

 mammalian expansion, man alone could have evolved to some- 

 thing akin to the type of the early Pleistocene, and then for so 

 long a period have failed to progress.* If indeed Propliopithecus, 



» Reid Moir, Pre- Palaeolithic Man. Rostro-carinates are found in the Red 

 Crag which is a Pliocene formation. Mr. Reid Moir holds that they were evolved 

 from eoliths (p. 66). ^ Sollas, Ancient Hunters, ch. iii. ' Breuil, 



U Anthropologie, vol. xx, 1910. 



* Professor Wood Jones, basing his conclusions on comparative anatomy, has 

 lately put forward a view of the course of human evolution somewhat at variance 

 with that outlined above. He sums up his view by saying that ' Homo is not 

 descended from the anthropoid apes preceded by a series of Primate forms 

 represented by Old World Monkeys, New World Monkeys, and Lemurs. For 

 we have seen that the anatomical characters of man demand rather a recognition 

 of the finding that his stock branched off from the very root of the Primates ; 

 that man has evolved entirely by generalized development of the brain, and that 

 he retains the bodily simplicity only found in some such far distant progenitor 

 as the Tarsius stock : that no matter what may be the relation of the New World 

 and Old World Monkeys, the human race combines, in some instances, a blend 

 of their characters ; that the anthropoid apes retain a certain, and a varying, 

 amount of the basal simplicity that belongs to man, but that the Old World 

 Monkeys have specialized far away from this simplicity. Regarded in this way 

 we may say that the line of Homo springs from the base of the (non-Lemurine) 

 Primate stem and not from its systematic apex ' (' Origin of Man ', p. 126, in Animal 

 Life and Human Progress, edited by Dendy). In this view therefore the human 



