TEANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. ANTIIROrOLOGT. 603 



had the opportunity of examining all the specimens found up to that time, and of 

 ■visiting the locality in company with Dr. Abbott and Professors Ilaynes and Lewis. 

 The implements are of the same type as those of the river gravels of Europe, and 

 occur under exactly the same conditions as those of France and Britain. Thej^ are 

 found in a plateau of river gravel forming a terruce overlooking the river, and 

 composed of materials washed down from the old terminal moraine which strikes 

 across the State of New Jersey to the westward. The large blocks of stone and 

 the general character of the gravel point out that during the time of its accumula- 

 tion there were ice-rafts floating down the Delaware in the spring, as in the Tliames, 

 the Seine, and the Somme. According to Professor Lewis it was formed during 

 the time when the glacier of the Delaware was retreating ('late glacial'), or at a 

 later period (' post-glacial '). The physical evidence is clear that it belongs to the 

 same age as deposits with similar remains in Britain. The animal remains also point 

 to the same conclusion. A tusk of mastodon is in Dr. Cooke's collection at Brunswick, 

 New Jersey, obtained from the gra-^-el, and Dr. Abbott records the tooth of a rein- 

 deer and tiie bones of a bison from Trenton. Here, too, living and extinct species 

 are found side by side. 



Thus in our survey of the group of animals surrounding man when he first 

 appeared in Europe, India, and North America, we see that in all three regions, so 

 widely removed from each other, the animal life was in the same stage of evolution, 

 and 'the old order ' was yielding ' place unto the new.' The Biver-drift man is 

 proved by his surroundings to belong to tbe Pleistocene age in all three. 



The evidence of Palaeolithic man in South Africa seems to me unsatisfactory, 

 because as yet the age of the deposits in which the implements are found has not 

 been decided. 



General CoNCLtrsioxs. 



It remains now for us to sum up the results of this inquiry, in which we have 

 been led very far afield. The identity of the implements of the River-drift hunter 

 proves that he was in the same rude state of civilisation, if it can be called civili- 

 sation, in the Old and New Worlds, when the hands of the geological clock pointed 

 to the same hour. It is not a little strange that his mode of life shoidd have been 

 the same in the forests to the north and south of the Mediterranean, in Palestine, 

 in the tropical forests of India, and on the western shores of the Atlantic. Tbe 

 hunter of the reindeer in the valle}^ of the Delaware was to all intents and purposes 

 the same sort of savage as the hunter of the reindeer on the banks of the Wiley or 

 of the Solent. It does not, however, follow that this identity of implements implies 

 that the same race of men were spread over tliis vast tract. It points rather to a 

 primeval condition of savagery from which mankind has emerged in the long ages 

 which separate it from our own time. 



It may further be inferred, from his wide-spread range, that the River-drift 

 man (assuming that mankind sprang from one centre) must have inhabited the 

 earth for a long time, and that his dispersal took place before the glacial submer- 

 gence and the lowering of the temperature in Northern Europe, Asia, and 

 America. It is not reasonable to suppose that the Straits of Behring would have 

 offered a free passage, either to the River-drift man from Asia to America, or to 

 American animals from America to Europe, or vice versa, while there was a vast 

 barrier of ice or of sea, or of both, in the high northern latitudes. 



I therefore feel inclined to view tlie River-drift hunter as having invaded Europe 

 in pre-glacial times along with the other living species which then appeared. The 

 evidence, as I have already pointed out, is conclusive that he was also glacial and 

 post-glacial. 



In all probability the birthplace of man was in a warm if not a tropical region 

 of Asia, in ' a garden of Eden,' and from this the River-drift man found his way 

 into those regions where his implements occur. In India he was a member of a 

 tropical fauna, and his distribution in Europe and along the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean prove him to have belonged either to the temperate or the southern fauna 

 in those regions. 



It will naturally be asked, to what race can the River-diift man be referred ? 



