Sept. 8, 1882.1 



• KNOWLEDGE 



243 



drift hunter may have lived either before, during, or after 

 the southern counties became an island. When, however, 

 he hunted the woolly and leptorhine rhinoceros, the 

 mammoth, and the horse, in the neighbourhood of 

 Brighton, he looked down upon a broad expanse of 

 sea, in the spring Hecked with small icebergs such as 

 ■those -which dropped their burdens in Bracklesham 

 Bay. At Abbeville, too, he hunted the mammotli, 

 reindeer, and horse down to the mouth of the Sonime on 

 the shore of the glacial sea. The e\idence is equally 

 •clear that the River-drift hunter followed the chase in 

 Britain after it had emerged from beneath the waters of 

 the glacial sea, from the fact that the river deposits in 

 •which his implements occur either rest upon the glacial 

 'days, or are composed of fragments derived from them, 

 as in the oft-quoted cases of Hoxne and Bedford. Further, 

 it is very probable that he may have wandered close up to 

 the edges of the glaciers then covering the higher hills 

 of Wales and the Pennine chain. The severity of the 

 climate in winter at this time in Britain is proved, not 

 merely by the presence of the Arctic animals, but by the 

 numerous ice-bome blocks in the river gravels dropped in 

 the spring after the break-up of the frosts. 



The Eiver-drift man is proved, by the implements which 

 he left behind, to have wandered over the whole of France, 

 and to have himted the same animals in the valley of the 

 Loire and the Garonne, as in the valley of the Thames. 

 In the Iberian peninsula he was a contemporary of the 

 African elephant, the mammoth, and the straight-tusked 

 elephant, and he occupied the neighbourhood both of 

 Madrid and Lisbon. He also ranged over Italy, leaving 

 traces of his presence in the Abruzzo, and in Greece he was 

 a contemporary of the extinct pigmy hippopotamus (//. 

 Pentlamli). South of the Mediterranean his implements 

 have been met with in Oran, and near Kolea in Algeria, 

 and in Egjpt in several localities. At Luxor they have 

 been discovered by General PittRivers in the breccia, out 

 of which are hewn the tombs of the kings. In Palestine 

 they have been obtained by the Abb^ Richard between 

 Mount Tabor and the sea of Tiberias, and by Mr. Stopes 

 between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Throughout this 

 wide area the implements, for the most part of flint or of 

 •quartzite, are of the same rude types, and there is no 

 ■diflerence to be noted between the haches found in the 

 caves of Cresswell, in Derbyshire, and those of Thebes, 

 or between those of the valley of the Somme and those of 

 Palestine. The River-drift lumter ranged over the Indian 

 peninsula from Madras as far north as the valley of the 

 Nerbudda. Here we find him forming part of a fauna in 

 which there are species now living in India, such as the 

 Indian rhinoceros and the arnco, and extinct types of o.xen 

 and elephants. There were two extinct hippopotami in the 

 rivers, and living gavials, turtles, and tortoises. It is 

 plain, therefore, that at this time the fauna of India stood 

 in the same relation to the present fauna as the European 

 fauna of the late Pleistocene does to that now living in 

 Europe. In both there was a familiar association of 

 extinct and living forms, from both the genus Hippo- 

 folamns has disappeared in the lapse of time, and in both 

 man forms tlie central figure. 



We are led from the region of tropical India to the 

 banks of the Delaware, in New Jersey, by the recent dis- 

 coveries of Dr. 0. C. Abbott. Here, too, living and extinct 

 species are found side by side. 



Thus in our survey of the group of animals surrounding 

 man when he first appeared in Europe, India, and North 

 America, we see that in all three regions, so widely removed 

 from each other, the animal life was in the same stage of 

 evolution, and " the old order " was yielding " place unto 



the new." The River-drift man is proved by his sur- 

 roundings to belong to the Pleistocene age in all three. 

 The evidence of Palaeolithic man in South Africa seems to 

 me unsatisfactory, because as yet the age of the deposits in 

 which the implements are found has not been decided. 



The identity of the implements of the River-drift 

 hunter proves that he was in the same rude state of 

 civilisation, if it can be called civilisation, in the old and 

 new worlds, when the hands of the geological clock 

 pointed to the same hour. It is not a little strange that 

 his mode of life should have been the same in the forests 

 to the north and south of the Mediterranean, in Pales- 

 tine, in the tropical forests of India, and on the western 

 shores of the Atlantic. The hunter of the reindeer in the 

 valley of the Delaware was to all intents and purposes the 

 same sort of savage as the hunter of the reindeer on the 

 banks of the Wiley or of the Solent. 



It does not, however, follow that this identity of imple- 

 ments implies that the same race of men were spread over 

 this vast tract. It points rather to a primeval condition of 

 savagery from which mankind has emerged in the long ages 

 which separate it from our own time. It may further be 

 inferred, from his widespread range, that the River-drift 

 man (assuming that mankind sprang from one centre) 

 must have inhabited the earth for a long time, and that his 

 dispersal took place before the glacial submergence and the 

 lowering of the temperature in Northern Europe, Asia, 

 and America. It is not reasonable to suppose that the 

 Straits of Behring would have oftered a free passage, 

 either to the River-drift man from Asia to America, or to 

 American animals from America to Europe, or vice versH, 

 while there was a vast barrier of ice or of sea, or of both, 

 in the high northern latitudes. I therefore feel inclined 

 to view the River-drift man as having invaded Europe in 

 pre-glacial time along with the other living species which 

 then appeared. The evidence, as I have already pointed 

 out, is conclusive that he was also glacial and post-glacial. 



In all probability the birthplace of man was in a warm, 

 if not a tropical, region of Asia — in " a garden of Eden ;" 

 and from this the River-drift man found his way into 

 those regions where his implements occur. In India he 

 was a member of a tropical fauna, and his distribution in 

 Europe and along the shores of the Mediterranean prove 

 him to have belonged either to the temperate or the 

 southern fauna in those regions. It will naturally be 

 asked, to what race can the River-drift man be referred? 

 The question, in my opinion, cannot be answered in 

 the present stage of the inquiry, because the few frag- 

 ments of human bones discovered along with the imple- 

 ments are too imperfect to aflbrd any clue. Nor can 

 we measure the interval in terms of years which separates 

 the River-drift man from the present day, either by 

 assuming that the glacial period was due to astronomical 

 causes, and then proceeding to calculate the time necessary 

 for them to produce their result, or by an appeal to the 

 erosion of valleys, or the retrocession of waterfalls. The 

 interval must, however, have been very great to allow of 

 the changes in geography and climate, and the distribution 

 of animals which has taken place — the succession of races, 

 and the development of civilisation before history began. 

 Standing before the rock-hewn tombs of the kings at Luxor, 

 we may realise the impossibility of fixing the time when 

 the River-drift hunter lived in the site of the ancient 

 Thebes, or of measuring the lapse of time between his days 

 and the splendour of the civilisation of Egypt In this 

 inquiry I have purposely omitted all reference to the suc- 

 cessor of the River-drift man in Enroi^e —the Cave man, 

 who was in a higher stage of the hunter civilisation. In 

 the course of my remarks you will have seen tliat the story 



