Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/71

Rh at various remote periods, were explored in Belgium and the south of France—lake-dwellings were examined in Switzerland refuse-heaps in Denmark and thus a whole series of remains have been discovered, carrying back the history of mankind from the earliest historic periods to a long-distant past. The antiquity of the races thus discovered can only be generally determined by the successively earlier and earlier stages through which we can trace them. As we go back, metals soon disappear, and we find only tools and weapons of stone and of bone. The stone weapons get ruder and ruder; pottery, and then the bone implements, cease to occur; and in the earliest stage we find only chipped flints, of rude design, though still of unmistakably human workmanship. In like manner domestic animals disappear as we go backward; and, though the dog seems to have been the earliest, it is doubtful whether the makers of the ruder flint implements of the gravels possessed even this. Still more important as a measure of time are the changes of the earth's surface of the distribution of animals and of climate which have occurred during the human period. At a comparatively recent epoch in the record of prehistoric times, we find that the Baltic was far salter than it is now, and produced abundance of oysters; and that Denmark was covered with pine-forests inhabited by capercailzies, such as now only occur farther north in Norway. A little earlier we find that reindeer were common even in the south of France, and still earlier this animal was accompanied by the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, by the arctic glutton, and by huge bears and lions of extinct species. The presence of such animals implies a change of climate, and both in the caves and gravels we find proofs of a much colder climate than now prevails in Western Europe. Still more remarkable are the changes of the earth's surface which have been effected during man's occupation of it. Many extensive valleys in England and France are believed by the best observers to have been deepened at least a hundred feet; caverns now far out of the reach of any stream must for a long succession of years have had streams flowing through them, at least in times of floods and this often implies that vast masses of solid rock have since been worn away. In Sardinia land has risen at least three hundred feet since men lived there who made pottery and probably used fishing-nets; while in Kent's Cavern remains of man are found buried beneath two separate beds of stalagmite, each having a distinct texture, and each covering a deposit of cave-earth having well-marked differential characters, while each contains a distinct assemblage of extinct animals.

Such, briefly, are the results of the evidence that has been rapidly accumulating for about fifteen years as to the antiquity of man; and it has been confirmed by so many discoveries of a like nature in all parts of the globe, and especially by the comparison of the tools and