Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/222

212 you see, is easily distinguished from species now living; by its size, first, for it is much larger than they; then by the form of its remarkably recurved [sic] tusks; finally and chiefly because, in place of the naked skin of the elephants we know, he was covered with a thick wool and very long hairs.

Of all this we are certain; for this elephant has been found preserved whole, with his skin and his hairs. At different times they have discovered in the frozen earth of Siberia the dead bodies of these animals. That country contains in such great numbers the tusks of these antediluvian elephants, to employ a vulgar expression, that the commerce in fossil ivory constitutes a considerable source of revenue, and the state reserves a monopoly of it.

I call special attention to this elephant, and we shall presently see why.

The Quaternary period ended as those that preceded it; and then began the present period. Since the time of its commencement, the continents, the flora, and the faunæ [sic], have not undergone any considerable modifications.

Nobody has ever questioned the existence of man at the beginning of the present period, and some have even considered his appearance as the characteristic feature of this period. But did man exist before? To employ the common expression, were there antediluvian men? In other words, and to return to scientific language, is man the contemporary of those animal species among which appears the mammoth? May he be found, like the mammoth, in a fossil state?

Such is the question that has been often put, and which was long answered in the negative. Down to these later times, the most eminent men in Natural History, in Geology, in Paleontology, were all agreed on this point, and I need only state that Cuvier, in particular, never admitted the existence of fossil man.

To-day we are led by many well-ascertained facts to answer this question very differently. We are forced to admit that fossil man does really exist, and that man was contemporary with those species of animals I have been speaking of, especially with the mammoth.

This is certainly one of the most beautiful discoveries of modern times! The ground for it was laid by the establishment of a certain number of facts observed in England, in Germany, in France. But the honor of having brought decisive proofs, which convince everybody, belongs incontestably to two Frenchmen—to M. Boucher de Perthes, and to M. Edouard Lartet.

M. Boucher de Perthes, the eminent archaeologist of Abbeville, while inspecting the excavations made in the earth around his native village, at Menchecourt, and at Moulin-Quignon, discovered stones fashioned in a peculiar manner, and the same form was constantly reproduced. It was soon evident to him that this circumstance was not accidental, but that these stones owed their form to human industry.