CHAPTER VIII. 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 



IT is difficult to arrive at any conclusion as to the 

 duration of the human period in America. If we 

 were to accept without question the statements which 

 have been made as to the finding of flint implements 

 and a human skull in the ancient gold gravels of 

 California, we might carry back the human occupancy 

 of America even into the Pliocene age, or further than 

 any authentic remains have yet carried it in Europe. 

 But these reports so require confirmation that we 

 cannot rest on them. The same remark may be made 

 with regard to the discovery of implements and 

 human bones in those more modern .estuarine and 

 lacustrine deposits in which the bones of the mastodon 

 are entombed, though a sufficient number of probable 

 indications appear to make it not unlikely that man 

 had reached America before the disappearance of the 

 mastodon. If so, there was an ancient American 

 population little known to us, and coeval with the 

 oldest cave-men of Europe, and who possibly, like 

 these old cave-men, may have been swept away before 

 the advent of the more modern races. It is remark- 

 able, however, that some of the indications relied on 



