286 THE AURIFEROUS GRAVELS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. 
of Southern India has been raised 600 feet vertically, and then subjected to 
immense denudation, after which the coast was depressed again; and all 
since the appearance of man, indicating a lapse of time which may have - 
been even greater than that required for the denudation of Table Mountain. 
There is hardly any portion of the globe, however remote, which has not 
afforded some evidence of the long-continued existence of man in his primi- 
tive condition ; even Japan and Australia have their testimony to offer. 
What, then, is this primitive condition of man? Nothing, it may be 
replied, in any important respect different from what we see exhibited by 
the lowest types of the human race now existing on the earth. All the 
investigations of geologists and ethnologists thus far have failed to obtain 
satisfactory evidence of the existence at a previons epoch of any type of 
being connecting man with the inferior animals, or decidedly lower in grade 
than races now inhabiting portions of the earth, or anything that we fail to 
recognize instantly as man. In fact, we cannot conceive of man’s existence 
at all at any lower stage. The implements of the paleolithic age are sim- 
ply the implements necessary for the support of life to a being having the 
requirements of man, but destitute of strong claws and powerful teeth. They 
consist of the rudest possible implements of attack and defence, fashioned in 
the simplest manner, and of the only material which nature everywhere offers 
suitable for the purpose, namely, certain varieties of rock which are tough 
and heavy, and which can be fashioned into shape without the aid of fire, 
and with the smallest conceivable amount of intelligence, certainly not 
more if as much as we in repeated instances see displayed by animals we are 
accustomed to call inferior to man. Next to weapons and instruments of 
defence, or perhaps even before them, would come implements for procur- 
ing and preparing food, and possibly for cooking it. No doubt man for an 
immense period of time has been in the habit of cooking his food ; but how 
long the human race existed before the use of fire we have no means of 
knowing or of even guessing. Probably the desire for some kind of per- 
sonal ornament was early implanted in the human breast ; and man may 
have had a ring in his nose, or women a similar appendage in their ears, 
before the art of cooking was introduced. 
The discoveries in California, India, and elsewhere seem clearly to indi- 
cate that the human race must have existed, over a large portion of the 
world at least, for an immense period of time, in the primitive condition, 
that is, at the lowest possible stage of humanity, — civilization it cannot be 
