CHAPTER XVII 
EARLY SOUTH AMERICANS 
At the time Boucher de Perthes was striving to convince 
his contemporaries that man had existed in Europe with 
extinct forms of animals, a famous Danish traveller and 
naturalist, Dr Lund, was exploring caves in Brazil and 
coming to a similar conclusion as regards the antiquity 
of man. He left Europe in 1835 when the tide of 
curiosity in man's antiquity was rising. In 1844 he 
was able to report that he had examined eight hundred 
caves, in the limestone hills of Lagoa Santa, in the 
Brazilian province of Minas Geraes. Six of these caves 
yielded remains of man — some so abundantly that they 
must have served as ancient sepulchres, as was the case 
in early Europe. Up to 1844, Dr Lund remained un- 
convinced that these early Brazilians, whose bones he 
found in the caves, had been contemporaries of the 
extinct animals, represented so plentifully in cave deposits. 
In one of the caves he at last found the bones of man 
and of extinct animals, mingled together, and in a like 
condition of fossilisation. If the bones had been of any 
animal other than man, their antiquity would never have 
been questioned, but being human all sorts of doubts 
were raised as to how and when they became mixed with 
remains of extinct animals. 
The final result of his investigations Dr Lund gave 
as follows :^ — 
' See Dr Hrdlicka's excellent, if somewhat critical, account of Lund's 
discoveries : " Early Man in South America," Bulletin No. 52, Bureau of 
American Ethnology, 1912, p. 159. 
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