Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/410

390 fossils found in them, the geologist has divided the history of our planet into five different periods.

The Iron age, the Bronze age and the Neolothic age come under the Recent or the Post-Glacial period while the Palaeolithic age is supposed to fall in the Pleistocene period. Various estimates have been made re- garding the time of the commencement of the Neolithic age but the oldest date assigned does not exceed 5000 B.C. Regarding the commencement of the Palaeolothic period, there are two different views entertained by the geologists, Prof. Geikie putting it between 50 to 60 thousand years ago and the American geologists at about 8000 years only.

As regards the races which inhabited Europe in these early ages, the evidence furnished by human remains or skulls shows that they were the direct ancestors of the races now living in the different parts of Europe. The question, whether the Aryans were autochthonous or went to Europe from some other place cannot be settled by these discoveries. But the Vedic and Avestic evidence proves that the Aryans were autochthonous neither in Europe nor in Central Asia but had their original home somewhere near the North Pole in the Palaeolithic times and that they migrated from this place southwards in Asia and Europe, not by any "irresistible impulse " but by unwelcome changes in the climatic conditions of their original home. From the geological evidence of fossil, fauna and flora, we find that in the early geological ages when the Alps were low and the Himalayas not yet upheaved and when Asia and Africa were represented by only a group of islands, an equable and uniform climate prevailed over the