ARCHEOLOGY AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 105 



Somme of the Seine, the Thames or the ancient Solent. In the valley 

 of the Euphrates implements of the same kind have also been found, 

 and again farther east in the lateritic deposits of southern India they 

 have been obtained in considerable numbers. It is not a little re- 

 markable, and is at the same time highly suggestive, that a form 

 of implement almost peculiar to Madras reappears among imple- 

 ments from the very ancient gravels of the Manzanares at Madrid. 

 In the case of the African discoveries we have as yet no definite 

 paleontological evidence by which to fix their antiquity, but in the 

 Narbada Valley of western India palaeolithic implements of quartzite 

 seem to be associated with a local fauna of Pleistocene age, compris- 

 ing, like that of Europe, the elephant, hippopotamus, ox, and other 

 mammals of species now extinct. A correlation of the two faunas 

 with a view of ascertaining their chronological relations is beset with 

 many difficulties, but there seems reason for accepting this Indian 

 Pleistocene fauna as in some degree more ancient than the Euro- 

 pean. 



Is this not a case in which the imagination may be fairly invoked 

 in aid of science? May we not from these data attempt in some 

 degree to build up and reconstruct the early history of the human 

 family? There, in eastern Asia, in a tropical climate, with the 

 means of subsistence readily at hand, may we not picture to our- 

 selves our earliest ancestors gradually developing from a lowly 

 origin, acquiring a taste for hunting, if not indeed being driven to 

 protect themselves from the beasts around them, and evolving the 

 more complicated forms of tools or weapons from the simpler flakes 

 which had previously served them. as knives? May we not imagine 

 that when once the stage of civilization denoted by these palaeolithic 

 implements had been reached the game for the hunter became 

 scarcer, and that his life in consequence assumed a more nomad 

 character? Then, and possibly not till then, may a series of migra- 

 tions to " fresh woods and pastures new " not unnaturally have en- 

 sued, and these following the usual course of "westward toward 

 the setting sun " might eventually lead to a palaeolithic population 

 finding its way to the extreme borders of western Europe, where 

 we find such numerous traces of its presence. How long a term of 

 years may be involved in such a migration it is impossible to say, 

 but that such a migration took place the phenomena seem to justify 

 us in believing. It can hardly be supposed that the process that I 

 have shadowed forth was reversed, and that man, having originated 

 in northwestern Europe, in a cold climate where clothing was neces- 

 sary and food scarce, subsequently migrated eastward to India and 

 southward to the Cape of Good Hope. As yet our records of discov- 

 eries in India and eastern Asia are but scanty; but it is there that 



