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•serve as the totem or tribe sign of some chief. But it sets at res^ 

 all question as to the co-existence of Man and the Mammoth. 



THE DISAPPEAEANCE OF THE MAMMOTH. 



We now come to consider the cause of the extinction of this 

 liuge elephant and of its contemporaries. Some, however, may be 

 disposed at this stage to put the question — why should we do this 

 for the Mammoth particularly, more than is done for other ancient 

 forms of life? The answer to this is, that the disappearance of the 

 Mammoth, and some at least of its contemporaries) seems to have 

 been totally unlike that of other previously existing creatures. The 

 old lizards of the sea, and of the Weald of Kent and Sussex, among 

 the rest, disappeared as far as we know gradually, and owing to 

 the ever- varying change going on in their surroundings. In the 

 life history of their order we can trace a regular progress ; the 

 beginnings were small; there was a crescendo, a diminuendo, a 

 final disappearance. But these old elephants, the origin of which 

 is as I have said so difficult for the evolutionist to trace seem to 

 liave died out as suddenly as they came. They vanish abruptly, 

 and we might say almost simultaneously, in their wide distribution, 

 in the plenitude of their numbers, in the zenith of their physical 

 development. The remains of older creatures lie singly, scattered; 

 they are rare, and their separate deaths can generally be readily 

 accounted for ; whereas the skeletons and carcases of Mammoths 

 lie scattered over northern Asia by thousands, on, or at a very short 

 distance below the surface, unpetrified. This is so with no other 

 creature if we except their immediate associates. Hence the extinc- 

 tion provokes special enquiry and research. 



In the opinion of many very thoughtful men the destruction of 

 the Mammoth was closely connected with the disappearance of 

 Palaeolithic Man from his former haunts ; but in what I have to 

 say, although I cannot help alluding to the human contemporaries 

 of the Mammoth I wish to keep that question quite apart from our 

 present one. 



Between the deposits in which the remains of the Mammoth are 

 found, associated with those of the earliest men — men of the 

 Palaeolithic Age, and higher deposits containing traces of the men 

 of the Polished Stone Age (Neolithic) there is a " great gap," a very 

 abrupt change. There is no gradation, no evolution traceable, no 

 connection whatever ; and this is the case whether the deposits in 

 question occur in caves or in the open grounds. The men of the 

 Early Stone Age were a race of hunters and fishers ; they had no 

 domestic animals, and they knew nothing of agriculture ; and so 

 far as we know they have left behind no representative races of 



