EUROPE BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF MAN. 727 



such extremely specialized creatures as the horse and his rider seems odd to think 

 of ; yet the lemuroids of the Eocene furnish the link. And it is interesting to 

 remember that, owing to the closeness of relationship, the lemuroid adapts was 

 actually mistaken by Cuvier for an anofloiherium, or primitive antelope-deer. Of 

 all anatomical contrasts, what can be greater than the contrast between a solid 

 hoof and the flexible five-fingered hand of a Rubinstein ? Yet the Eocene great- 

 uncle of our modern pianists could be mistaken for his contemporary great-uncle 

 or great-grandfather of our hoofed quadrupeds ! And this instance is but one 

 fair sample out of many of the changes which the last five or six or eight million 

 years have wrought. 



Speaking generally, it may be said that in the Eocene age there were carniv- 

 ora, and there were ungulata, and there were primates ; but these orders were 

 not so clearly distinguished from each other as they are to-day, and they are not 

 so clearly distinguished from other orders, such as the rodents and insectivora, 

 while in many cases they had not ceased to bear the marks of their marsupial 

 ancestry. Or, to put the case in another way, in the Eocene peri d you have an 

 instance of hoofed quadrupeds, but you don't find an instance of any such special 

 form as horse or deer or camel; you find carnivora, but you don't find a c'ear 

 instance of felis or canis or ursus, — not even of hysena, an earlier type than either 

 of the others ; and you find primates, but among these there is nothing yet so 

 clearly distinguished as a monkey. In short, the present species, or genera of mam- 

 mals had not come into existence in the Eocene period, but only the present 

 orders and some of the present families ; and even the orders were not clearly 

 distinct from one another, as they are at present ; but they were closely inter- 

 locked, very much as species are at present. In other words, the whole class of 

 mammals in the Eocene age was far less highly specialized than it is at the pres- 

 ent time. 



From these premises Mr. Boyd Dawkins argues, with convincing force, that 

 man could not possibly have existed in Europe, and probably nowhere on the 

 earth, during the Eocene period. ' 



At a time when the order of ungulates had not clearly developed the dis- 

 tinction between camels and pigs and horses, and when the order of primates 

 was only just beginning to be distinguished from other orders, so that Cuvier 

 could even mistake a primate for an ungulate, — at such a time was it at all likely 

 that man, the most highly specialized of all primates, or of all animals, could 

 have existed ? Obviously, he could not have existed at such a time. The sup- 

 position is absurd on the face of it. As Mr. Boyd Dawkins says, "to seek for 

 highly speciahzed man in a fauna where no living genus of placental mammal 

 was present would be an idle and hopeless quest." 



Coming to the Miocene age, we find traces of extensive submergencies of 

 parts of the European continent, followed by re-elevations. Considerable por- 

 tions of Gaul and Italy were laid under water, and at one time the whole basin 

 of the Danube was covered by a sea which connected with the Mediterranean 

 near Berne, thus reducing Switzerland and Italy to an archipelago. The Alps^ 



