220 FOSSIL MEN. 



in the north. Had a civilized traveller visited one of 

 these Swiss villages in the Stone age, he would have 

 been told of highly civilized agricultural countries to 

 the south, and of rude tribes to the north, just as the 

 Hochelagans could give similar information to Cartier. 

 This much being settled, we may enter on the con- 

 sideration of the absolute antiquity of the age of Stone 

 in Europe. The evidence of the high antiquity claimed 

 for the early Stone age, extending even to 100,000 

 years, or as an enthusiastic advocate of human anti- 

 quity has recently inferred, possibly to 500,000 years, 

 resolves itself into two theses which were held by Sir 

 C. Lyell to be proved, or at least rendered somewhat 

 probable, by the evidence obtained : 



1. Man existed in western Europe at the same time 

 with the mammoth and its contemporaries, or in the 

 later Post-pliocene period of geology. 



2. Man existed in western Europe before certain 

 great physical changes of denudation and elevation 

 and subsidence, which must have required a vast lapse 

 of time. 



We may take these up in succession, premising that 

 neither gives any positive date in years. 



Long before the present inquiries into the antiquity 

 of man began, it was known that certain animals con- 

 temporary with our ancestors in early historic times 

 were now extinct, at least locally. In the British 

 Islands, for instance, and over large portions of Europe, 

 the beaver and the wolf, once plentiful, have disap- 

 peared. The urus, or great wild bull, and the rein- 



