EUROPE BEFORE ARRIVAL OF MAN 



man. But in an epoch when many modern gen- 

 era had come into existence in all the principal 

 orders, and when in particular there existed an 

 ape as high, or higher, in organization than the 

 modern chimpanzee or gorilla, I can see no 

 such overwhelming improbability of the exist- 

 ence of man himself. No doubt, however, if the 

 remains of Miocene man are ever to be found 

 they will disclose a type of humanity quite dif- 

 ferent from, and very likely much lower than, 

 any that we now know. It is not at all im- 

 probable that such remains will by and by be 

 discovered in some part of the earth, if not in 

 Europe. By the time the strata of Africa have 

 been explored with anything like the minuteness 

 with which those of France and England have 

 been examined, we shall be very likely to meet 

 with clear indications of the former presence of 

 half-human man, and it will not be strange if 

 such indications lead us far back into the Mio- 

 cene epoch. 



In the Pliocene period the geographical 

 structure of Europe began to be much more 

 like what it is to-day. Hitherto, during the 

 greater part of the Tertiary epoch, large por- 

 tions of Russia and Siberia had been submerged, 

 so that the continent of Asia did not extend 

 nearly so far north as at present. A belt of sea 

 appears to have stretched from the eastern Bal- 

 tic across to the Persian Gulf, including the areas 



