Animals Before Man 



burden nor one that might be domesticated to 

 furnish food. 



The bison was too big, lumbering, and in- 

 tractable for domestication by primitive man, 

 and only the dog in the north and the llama 

 in the south were used for beasts of burden 

 and these were so small that they added little 

 to the resources of mankind. In the great tem- 

 perate portion of America there was no animal 

 suitable for draught purposes, and this may 

 have had its influence in retarding the develop- 

 ment of man in America. 



It might possibly be argued in the case of 

 the mammoth, that he was an inhabitant of a 

 cold region, and when the Glacial period came 

 to an end was unable to stand prosperity in 

 the form of a milder climate. But aside from 

 the fact that the elephant family is quite at 

 home in the tropics, the climate of the north 

 was and is cool enough for any animal, and yet 

 the woolly elephant not only vanished from this 

 continent, but from the Old World as well. 



The extinction of the mastodon is equally 

 puzzling. It certainly was not exterminated 



270 



