Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/817

Rh into the quaternary deposits by the torrents which, in seasons of heavy rainfall, carry to the Nile the waters from the mountains of Libya.

Thus, then, thanks to the Exposition of the Anthropological Sciences, we are in a position to show that the oldest Egyptian civilization—that of the earliest dynasties—which dates back 4,000 years before our era, was preceded by an age of polished stone, and that before that period Egypt, like all the rest of the world, was occupied by quaternary man.

—Important as are the results of the Anthropological Exposition from the point of view of quaternary man, they are still more so from the point of view of tertiary man.

But first let us understand what is meant by the terms quaternary man and tertiary man.

The fauna of the mammals serves clearly to determine the limits of these later geological periods.

The Tertiary is characterized by terrestrial mammals entirely different from extant species; the Quaternary by the mingling of extant with extinct species; the present period by the extant fauna.

The man of the early Quaternary, he who made the St. Acheul hatchets and used them, is the man of Neanderthal, of Canstatt, of Enggisheim, of La Naulette, of Denise. He is indubitably a man, but differing more widely from the Australian and the Hottentot than the Australian and Hottentot differ from the European. Hence unquestionably he formed another human species, the word species being taken in the sense given to it by naturalists who do not accept the transformation doctrine.

Tertiary man, therefore, must have been still more distinct—of a species still less like the present human species—indeed, so different as to entitle it to be regarded as of distinct genus. For this reason I have given to this being the name of man's precursor. Or he might be called anthropopithecus—the man-monkey.

The question of tertiary man should therefore be expressed thus: Did there exist in the Tertiary age beings sufficiently intelligent to perform a part of the acts which are characteristic of man?

So stated, the question is settled most completely by the various series of objects sent to the Anthropological Exposition.

The first and oldest of these collections was that made by the late Abbé Bourgeois, at Thenay (Loir-et-Cher). At the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology and Anthropology, held in Paris in 1867, the Abbé Bourgeois exhibited tertiary flints which, he claimed, had been chipped intentionally. These early specimens were not very conclusive, lost as they were amid a multitude of other specimens which certainly had not been fashioned intentionally, unless one can suppose that they had been intentionally split by the action of fire. The result was, that the abbé's communication won to his side but few adherents.