366 MAN AND THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 



forward in Europe, and then to consider the significance of 

 certain discoveries on the Pacific coast of our own continent. 



Tertiary deposits in Europe are alleged to have supplied 

 three sorts of evidence of this fact : First, the bones of man 

 himself ; second, bones of animals showing incisions or 

 fractures supposed to have been produced by human 

 agency ; third, chipped flints believed to exhibit marks of 

 design in their production. 



A very complete survey of the question of the antiquity 

 of man was published in 1883 by M. Gabriel de Mortillet, 

 one of its most eminent investigators, under the title of Le 

 Prehistorique. In that work he subjected to a most rigid 

 examination all the evidence for Tertiary man, coming un- 

 der either of these three heads, that had been brought for- 

 ward up to that date. 



The instances of the discovery of human bones in Europe 

 were two — at Colle del Vento, in Savona, and Castenedolo, 

 near Brescia, both in Italy. At the former site, in a Pliocene 

 marine deposit abounding in fossil oysters and containing 

 some scattered bones of fossil mammals, a human skeleton 

 was found with the bones lying in their natural connection. 

 Mortillet, however, and many others regard this as an in- 

 stance of a subsequent interment rather than as proof that 

 the man lived in Pliocene times.* At Castenedolo, in a 

 similar marine Pliocene formation, on three different occa- 

 sions human skeletons have been discovered, but in different 

 strata. One investigator has accounted for these as the re- 

 sult of a shipwreck in the Pliocene period. This bold 

 hypothesis not only requires that man should have been 

 sufficiently advanced at that very remote period to have 

 navigated the sea, but it calls for two shipwrecks, at different 

 times, at the same point. It has, however, since been aban- 

 doned by its author in favor of the presumption of subse- 

 quent interments, as in the previous instance, t 



* This is also the opinion of Haray, Precis de Paleontologie Hu- 

 maine, p. 67. Professor Le Conte, Elements of Geology (third edi- 

 tion, 1891), p. 609, is wrong in attributing the opposite conclusion to 

 Hamy, on the evidence of " flint implements found in this locality." 



f Bullettino di Paletnologia Italiana, tome xv, p. 109 (August 

 18, 1889). 



