608 



PSYCHOZOIC ERA— AGE OF MAN— RECENT EPOCH. 



the interglacial epoch. There are some geologists who think they find 

 evidence of a much earlier existence of man. We will, therefore, very 

 rapidly review the evidences of the antiquity of man. In doing so, 

 however, we shall accept none but thoroughly reliable evidence. There 

 has been recently far too much eagerness to find facts which overthrow 

 accepted beliefs, and to accept them on this account alone. We will 

 take up European localities first, because the subject has been more 

 carefully studied there. 



Primeval Man in Europe. 



Supposed Miocene Man — Evidence unreliable. — The earliest period 

 in the strata of which any supposed evidences of the existence of man 



have been found is the Mio- 

 cene. These evidences, 

 however, are confessedly 

 meager, and by all careful 

 investigators considered un- 

 reliable. Some flint-flakes 

 (Fig. 971), so rough that 

 they may be the result of 

 physical instead of intelli- 

 gent agencies; some bones 

 of animals, marked with 

 parallel scratches, as if 

 scraped, but the scratches 

 may have been produced by 

 currents, or, as Lyell thinks, 

 by the teeth of Eodents ; 

 some more positive evi- 

 dences of man's agency, 

 but in strata of doubtful 

 age, or else the result of 

 accidental mixture not con- 

 temporaneous with the de- 

 posit itself — such is, m 

 brief, the evidence. The 

 Miocene man is not ac- 

 knowledged by a single 

 careful geologist. Mortillet 

 thinks that there may have existed in Miocene times a tool-making 

 animal, but not true man. 



Supposed Pliocene Man.— The evidence of the existence of man 

 during the Pliocene period is, if possible, still more meager and unre- 

 liable. M. Hamy thinks he has found undoubted evidence of human 



Fig. 971.— Flint Flakes collected by Abbe Bourgeois from 

 Miocene Strata at Thenay (after Gaudry) 



Natural size. 



