ARCHEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION. 119 



Of course any supposed trace, later than the first ap- 

 pearance of fully-developed man, Avould be only doubtful 

 evidence, since it would be possible to attribute any such 

 to personal deformity, or else to tribal deformity, such as 

 that practised by the old Bretons, the Aanyara, Flathead 

 Indians, and other races ; or to some peculiar habits of life 

 led by a particular tribe, such as we know to be a possible 

 medium of slightly altering the skeleton of man. Many sucli 

 instances are noted in Prescott's Natu7xd History of Man, 

 and other anthropological works. I should perhaps notice 

 the few supposed remains of man, or something like man, 

 wliich are ascribed to a date earlier than that of the cave 

 and river drift men. Of these, with the exception of two 

 flakes found at Cra;)dbrd and Erith, none have been satis- 

 factorily proved to belong to undisturbed strata of the age 

 assigned to them ; and as regards these two exceptions, as 

 no trace of bone has been discovered in connection with 

 them, they are of no value to evolutionists. 



With the accounts of Miocene man I need scarcely linger ; 

 they are too utterly wanting in anything like an accurate 

 account of their discovery. As regards the supposed remains 

 of Pliocene man, they, too, are gravely wanting in anything 

 like strict scientific proof, and are disbelieved in by so many 

 high authorities that at present they are practically worthless. 

 I may, however, be allowed to point out that even those 

 who claim for them their great antiquity assert also that 

 they are the work of actual men. 



Thus, if we put these accounts aside, as we safely may 

 do, we find man as well-developed man appearing suddenly 

 late in the Pleistocene period, without any trace of a pre- 

 decessor. Here we ai-e met by the answer that man is 

 not a native of Europe or America, but of Southern Asia ; and 

 this is, as far as we know, true ; indeed, both the study of 

 prehistoric and of historic times points so clearly to this that 

 there can hardly be a doubt of it in any mind, especially if 

 we consider that the Biblical account also asserts it. Here 

 arises the grave difficulty of choosing a site on which the 

 first stages of evolution took place ; to meet which problem 

 Haeckel and his followers have supposed the existence of a 

 tract of land, either islanded or connected Avith Southern 

 Asia, and situated where is uoav the Indian Ocean, which 

 they have named Lemuria. This is possible, but it is a 

 theory which shows the weakness of the " evolution of man" 

 more than [)erhaps any direct disproof could do. Neither 



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