Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/702

682 bones of other yet extant animals also, viz., the aurochs, reindeer, and stag.

Most of the human relics of any sort have been found in the more recent layers of the drift. They have been discovered, however, not only in the older drift, but also, though very rarely, in the underlying Tertiary. For instance, in the upper Pliocene at St.-Prest, near Chartres, were found stone implements and cuttings on bone, in connection with relics of a long-extinct elephant (Elephas meridionalis) that is wholly lacking in the drift. During the past two years the evidences of human existence in the Tertiary period—i. e., previous to the age of mammoths of the Diluvial period—have multiplied, and by their multiplication give cumulative confirmation to each other. Even in the lower strata of the Miocene (the middle Tertiary) important discoveries of stone knives and bone-cuttings have been made, as at Thenay, department of Marne-et-Loire, and Billy, department of Allier, France. Prof. J. D. Whitney, the eminent State geologist of California, reports similar discoveries there also. So, then, we may believe that before the last great upheaval of the Alps and Pyrenees, and while the yet luxuriant vegetation of the then (i. e.,in the Tertiary period) paradisaic climate yet adorned Central Europe, man inhabited this region.

Such discoveries relegate the beginning of human life to a time the remoteness of which is to be estimated not by years, but by millenniums. It is of course difficult to even approximate to a date so distant, but there is reason to believe it must have been at least 50,000 years ago. Even the Indian, Persian, Assyrian, and Egyptian civilizations, with their languages, literatures, and architectural monuments, required a long, long time for their development from their rude beginnings, and hence a far longer time for the whole lifetime of that race. For a people remains a long time in its primitive condition, and its first progress is very slow, as the savage and semi-savage races of today prove to us. But the progress of a people well endowed being begun, it advances with giant strides, at a rate increasing in geometrical ratio.

It were vain to draw positive or detailed conclusions as to the grade of culture attained by the man of the Diluvial period from the comparatively few relics of his life as yet found in the drift and caves. These data are yet too few, slight, and disconnected, for that. For instance, while some of the skulls (that from the Neanderthal especially) indicate an ape-like race, of short stature, others are of a type far higher, and scarcely differing from those of European tribes yet living.

A human jaw-bone, of remarkable cast, was lately taken from the Trou de la Nanlette, a cave on the river Lesse, near Dinant, during