CHAP. HI.] MAN NOT IN EUROPE IN MEIOCENE AGE. 67 



garden of Eden in which the first traces of man were 

 to be sought. Meiocene Europe was fitted to be the 

 birthplace of man, in its warm climate and in the 

 abundance of food. There is, however, one most im- 

 portant consideration which renders it highly improbable 

 that man was then living in any part of the world. 

 No living species of land mammal has been met with in 

 the Meiocene fauna. Man, the most highly specialised 

 of all creatures, had no place in a fauna which is con- 

 spicuous by the absence of all the mammalia now asso- 

 ciated with him. 



Were any man-like animal living in the Meiocene 

 age, he might reasonably be expected to be not man but 

 intermediate between man and something else, and to 

 bear the same relation to ourselves as the Meiocene apes, 

 such as the Mesopithecus, bear to those now living, such 

 as the Semnopithecus. If, however, we accept the evi- 

 dence advanced in favour of Meiocene man, it is incred- 

 ible that he alone of all the mammalia living in those 

 times in Europe should not have perished, or have 

 changed into some other form in the long lapse of ages 

 during which many Meiocene genera and all the Meiocene 

 species have become extinct. Those who believe in the 

 doctrine of evolution will see the full force of this argu- 

 ment against the presence of man in the Meiocene fauna, 

 not merely of Europe but of the whole world. 



On the other hand, it is maintained by very high 

 authorities Dr. Hamy, 1 M. de Mortillet, 2 and others 

 that man inhabited France as early as the middle of the 

 Meiocene age. This conclusion is founded partly on the 



1 Paltfontologie Humaine, par M. le Dr. Hamy, p. 45 seq., 8vo. Quart. 

 Journ. Science, 1879. 



2 Revue Prehistorique, 1879, p. 117. 



