ANCESTRAL MAN. I 7 



The flints found in Mid-meiocene strata by the Abbe Bourgeois 

 are very different from the palaeolithic implements of the drift. 

 They were fashioned in the rudest manner by some unknown 

 beings, the Archseolithic Race, who indeed were not men, for no 

 land mammal of that period is still existent. All have changed. 

 " Man," that is, man as we know him, " the most highly specialised 

 " of all creatures, had no place " says Prof. Dawkins, " in a fauna 

 " which is conspicuous by the absence of all the mammalia now 

 " associated with him." 



But though the exact form and structure of these pre-men are, 

 at present, only conjectural, we may reasonably consider that 

 during their prolonged environment by an equable climate, newly 

 developed bodily characteristics would tend to become fixed ; but 

 at the same time an intellectual growth would be stimulated by an 

 increased resort to flesh-eating and by the continual struggle for 

 existence that is due to a rivalry for food, and to ceaseless efforts 

 to escape carnivorous foes. The climatal uniformity, however, 

 was interrupted by the Meiocene eccentricity, during which 

 Europe was cut off from America, and further changes in their 

 structure became possible, if not necessary. 



Of all the mammals that inhabited Europe in the early Pleiocene 

 age, the hippopotamus is the only survivor. We are, therefore, 

 compelled to believe that man's ancestors were still pre-human. 

 But when they had been sifted' and selected by the climatal 

 rigours which introduced this era, and when favourable varieties 

 had become established during a long subsequent lapse of more 

 even temperature, we are prepared to find that ere its close, 

 before the occurrence of the last glaciation, they had appeared in 

 Europe with the characteristics that we recognise in man. 



The latter portion of the Pleiocene is now called the Pleistocene 

 age ; and this age Prof. Dawkins has divided into Early, Mid and 

 Late Pleistocene, and has founded his division on the presence or 

 absence of animals more or less arctic. As a method of arrange- 

 ment this seems to be somewhat uncertain ; because there must 

 necessarily have been a considerable zoological overlap, and 

 because, during the last glacial epoch, which the Pleistocene age 

 includes, there were several alternations of arctic and genial 

 climate. Indeed Prof. Dawkins himself, in commenting on the 

 fact that flint implements are often found associated in the same 

 cave with arctic and with tropical animals, says, " it must not be 

 " supposed that the southern animals migrated from the Mediter- 

 ranean area as far north as Yorkshire, and the northern as far 

 " south as the Mediterranean, in the same year. There were 

 " secular changes of climate." 



It is for such reasons as these that, for our present purpose, we 

 may venture to base the triple division of the Pleistocene period 

 on the stag es of the last European glaciation. 



