PREHISTORIC MAN IN AMERICA. 93 



It is assumed by archaeologists of great repute that since, in Europe, pleis- 

 tocene deposits have yielded only the rudest of worked stone, therefore in no de- 

 posits older than the pleistocene can we expect to find evidences of a more prim- 

 itive workmanship. This postulate may be admitted in regard to certain parts of 

 Europe, for nothing more \ rimitive than the rude celts can be imagined. Before 

 this time, man, in that region at least, must have used natural fragments of stone 

 and sticks, and even the faculty to use these indicates an advance far above his 

 progenitors, who had not yet acquired this faculty. 



It is again assumed that since man is the most highly specialized mammal, it 

 is not conceived that he could have lived in the upper and middle tertiaries, be- 

 cause, of a large number of mammals living at that time, the species, and lower 

 down the genera and families, are extinct; and, therefore, man, so far above these 

 in organization, must have come in at a later date. . On the other hand, it does 

 not seem improbable that the single living species of man may be the sole sur- 

 vivor of a number of fossil species, and even genera, now extinct. Such a con- 

 dition of things would find its parallel in many, if not in all, of the hving species 

 of mammals to day who represent the survivors of a line of species and genera far 

 back in the tertiary. 



In regard to the other assumption— that man is the most highly specialized 

 mammal — we think even this is open to suggestive doubt. In that he possesses a 

 highly convoluted brain, with all its capabilities and possibilities as we find him 

 to-day, he certianly is highly specialized; but as a mammal — and only as a mam- 

 mal must we regard him — he belongs to a more generalized type. If we consider 

 him only in relation to those mammals nearest related to him, we find all his 

 characters held by no one ape, and to find his resemblances one has to consult a 

 variety of forms. His structural relations are found in the gorrilla, chimpanzee, 

 orang, gibbon, Simiadce, and even in the half apes, the lemuroids. It is true that 

 most of his resemblances are with the higher apes, but these are not of sufficient 

 weight to assure us that any of. them are his progenitors. Indeed, if we care to 

 credit such high authorities as Mortillet, Dr. Hamy, and others, man existed in 

 the middle miocene associated with the first anthropoid ape, Dryopiihims, and in 

 later beds still with Onopithicus, which, according to Gervais, had affinities with 

 the anthropoid apes, macaques, and baboons. 



Professor Cope, in considering man's relations to the tertiary mammals, says 

 that "the mammals of the lower eocene exhibit a greater percentage of types 

 that walk on the sole of their feet, while the successive periods exhibit an increas- 

 ing number of those that walk on their toes, while the hoofed animals and car- 

 nivora of recent times nearly all have the heel high in the air, the principal ex- 

 ceptions being the elephant and bear families." He then goes on to show the 

 successive osteological changes of the foot from the earlier types to the later ones, 

 through several lines of descent, and says : "The relation of man to this history is 

 highly interesting. Thus in all generalized points, his limbs are those of a primi- 

 tive type so common in the eocene. He is plantigrade; has five toes; se arate 



