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BEY. D. GATH WHITLEY, ON 



was felt at once to be good and proper, and has been universally 

 retained. There has been a disposition to place an Eolithic Age 

 before the Palaeolithic Period. In this Eolithic Era men used 

 the rudest splinters of stone, which were so rude and unformed 

 that only " the practised eye " of the long-trained archaeologist 

 could detect in them any traces of human origin. I reject this 

 so-called Eolithic Age altogether. I have nothing whatever to 

 do with it: I do not believe it ever existed: and numbers of 

 our best geologists and archaeologists reject it entirely. 



Next, I must explain the limits of the Palaeolithic Age, or 

 further confusion will ensue. The source of error is found in 

 the constant practice oflooking only at the form and fashioning 

 of the stone weapons to decide the limits of the Stone Age. 

 This has led to much confusion and to erroneous statements. 

 The form of stone weapons is similar in all ages, and many 

 stone implements from the Drift gravels, the Neolithic barrows 

 and the mounds of the North American Indians, as well as 

 those which lie on the surface of the ground in India, Africa, 

 and Japan (and which may be of any age) are shaped in precisely 

 the same manner, and are chipped in precisely the same way. 

 This has led some geologists to reject the division between the 

 two Stone Ages completely. Sir William Dawson in one of 

 his earlier books was inclined to reject this division,* and some 

 French geologists have followed in his steps. But this is an 

 error. The Palaeolithic Age is a distinct era in the history of 

 the Human Pace, and it rests on a foundation that can never be 

 shaken. The epoch is to be characterised not so much by 

 weapons as by animals. Thus the Palaeolithic Age in Western 

 Europe was the time when Man lived in that region with the 

 lion, the tiger.tthe hyaena, the elephant; the rhinoceros, and the 

 hippopotamus. All these animals became extinct in Western 

 Europe at the close of the Pleistocene Period, and not a single 

 one of them is found in this region in later times. If, then, we 

 find the remains of Man associated with these animals in Great 

 Britain, or in the neighbouring countries, no matter what kind 

 of stone implements occur with them, we may be quite certain 

 that the men whose bones lie alongside the remains of these 

 animals lived in the Palaeolithic Age. There are some writers 

 who speak of the Men of the First Stone Age as Quaternary 

 Men. This is somewhat vague. The Quaternary Period 

 includes every deposit and all human remains from the end of 



~ Fossil Men, p. 218. 

 t i.e., The MachcUrodus. 



