animals prior to the elephas primigenius, and to the other mammalia whose remains are found in company with the vestiges of man in the transported or quaternary beds of the great valleys or of the caves; lastly, that the deposit of Saint Prest is, as far as we yet know, the earliest example in the geological period at which man co-existed in Europe with extinct species.' These bold but logical conclusions were received, as might have been expected, with considerable caution, even by the members of the Institute. An odious calumny, soon condemned by public opinion, attempted to annul or to destroy the importance of the discovery given to the world by M. Desnoyers. On the other hand, M. Ed. Lartet gave it the modest and loyal support of his testimony and authority. Sceptical men of science demanded, however, the production, if possible, of stronger proofs in support of so momentous an assertion as that of the contemporaneity of man and pleiocene species. Another discovery, equally unlooked for, soon excited in the scientific world an interest equal to that created by the communication made by M. Desnoyers to the Academy, namely, that of the carved flints (arrow heads and scrapers) found beneath the meiocene deposits of Thenay, in the department of Loir-et-Cher. However extraordinary and unexpected this new discovery might appear, the Abbé Bourgeois asserted it as a fact without the smallest hesitation before the Prehistoric Congress assembled at Paris in 1867. The presence of carved flints at the bottom of the chalk in Beauce,' says the learned abbé, 'is a remarkable fact, and hitherto without precedent; but it is in my opinion authentic and of great importance.' He even attempts to trace, by means of data collected on the spot, the order of the appearance of the various species which succeeded each other in Beauce and Orleanais after the J. Desnoyers, Sur les indices matériels de la coexistence de l'homme avec l'elephas meridionalis dans un terrain des environs de Chartres plus ancien que les terrains de transport quaternaires des vallées de la Somme et de la Saône. (Comptes-rendus de l'Institut, 8 juin 1863.) date of the flints found below the meiocene beds in these districts. On the shores of the lake of Beauce,' he says, 'man lived in the midst of a fauna which completely disappeared (aceratherium, tapir, mastodon). With the fluviatile sands of Orléanais came the anthropomorphous monkey (pliopithecus antiquus), the dinotherium Cuvieri, the mastodon angustidens, the mastodon tapinoides, the mastodon Pyrenaicus, &c. These species, which probably persisted during the epoch of the shell deposits, then made way for the quaternary fauna which I found near there in the breccia of Villiers (rhinoceros tichorhinus, hyæna spelaa, felis spelaa). Lastly, it was succeeded by the contemporary fauna.'1 In spite of these distinct assertions of the learned abbé, his meiocene flints inspired in Paris and elsewhere an almost universal distrust, and they met with no better reception at the Prehistoric Congress held at Brussels in 1872. While Worsaë, Englehardt, Waldemar, Schmidt, Capellini, De Quatrefages, De Mortillet, Hamy, and Cartailhac are inclined to see upon some of them the traces of human handiwork, Steenstrup, Virchow, and Desor cannot recognise upon these stones the indication of any work whatsoever, Van Beneden declares that he can come to no decision, and Hébert absolutely denies all belief in them. On the other hand, M. de Mortillet says: "The flints of Thenay bear unmistakeable trace of the work of human hands. . . . And, moreover, the specimens bear in themselves the seal which denotes their origin and their authenticity. They are made of a species of flint totally different to that found on the surface. It is impossible to confound them. Besides, as I have already said, the means employed in shaping them were entirely different. Hitherto we have only been acquainted with the mode of chipping them by blows; those of Thenay were splintered by fire. This is a well-marked and characteristic indus In Italy, Professor Capellini drew the same conclusions from incisions which he believed to be intentional on the bones of pleiocere Cetai. But the nature of these incisions is strongly disputed. PROBLEM OF TERTIARY MAN. 179 trial distinction which denotes a widely different prehistoric epoch, more ancient than the quaternary, since in the latter period percussion was universally and exclusively employed. (G. de Mortillet, 'Promenades au musée de Saint-Germain, p. 76.) This is all very well, but here we meet with a slight difficulty. Who kindled the fire which served to splinter the flints? Was it man himself, or the lightning from heaven? And in either case where are the cinders and the ashes? While allowing the authenticity of the splinters of flint found by the Abbé Bourgeois, M. Albert Gaudry does not admit the existence of man during the meiocene epoch, and it must be confessed that the facts on which he grounds his opinion have considerable weight. There was not,' he says, 'in the middle of the meiocene epoch a single species of mammal identical with species now extant. Considering the question merely from a palæontological point of view, it is difficult to believe that the flint carvers of Thenay remained uninfluenced by this universal change.' The eminent professor alludes here to the modifications which have, since the above-mentioned epoch (mean meiocene), taken place in the successive fauna and in the geological phenomena. 'After the fauna of the chalk beds of Beauce and of the shell deposits, came that of the upper meiocene beds of Eppelsheim, of Pikermi, and of Liberon, which differs from it. The fauna of the lower pleiocene of Montpellier, that of the pleiocene of Perrier, of Solilhac, of Coupet, succeeded that of the upper meiocene beds. Afterwards followed the epoch of the forest beds of Cromer, succeeded in its turn by the glacial epoch of the boulder clay, which endured a long time, to judge from the Norfolk deposits; the epoch of the boulder clay was followed by that of the diluvium; then came the reindeer age; and, lastly, the present geological age.' (Albert Gaudry, p. 240.) We very well understand M. Gaudry's disbelief in 'Albert Gaudry, Les enchaînements du monde animal dans les temps géologiques, p. 240, Paris, 1878. man of the meiocene age, since we are not ourselves entirely convinced on this head; but he will doubtless permit us to differ from his opinion that the famous Thenay flints were carved by the dryopithecus. The question of tertiary man (meiocene or pleiocene) is not as yet completely solved: Adhuc sub judice lis est; but in my opinion there is nothing impossible in this hypothesis. Since two anthropomorphous monkeys (pliopithecus antiquus and dryopithecus fontani) could live, the one at Sansan in the department of Gers, the other at Saint Gaudens in Haute Garonne, as early as the meiocene epoch, I do not see that there is sufficient reason for denying the existence of man during this same epoch either in Beauce or Orléanais or in Languedoc. But in such questions proof by analogy cannot supply the place of direct proof, and the latter is not hitherto forthcoming. CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF MAN. ALL nations have an innate tendency to attribute to their race a great antiquity. Thus the Arcadians styled themselves more ancient than the moon, πроσέληvol, and the inhabitants of Attica boasted that they were created before the sun.' The idea that the human race had giant ancestors is also widely spread. The bones of the mammoth and mastodon, long mistaken for human remains, seemed to confirm this most erroneous opinion. A still greater and more deplorable error was the attributing these bones to saints, and as such they were paraded with great pomp through the towns and in the country as late as 1789, in the hope of thereby obtaining rain from heaven in years of prolonged drought. Everyone knows the audacious imposition practised by a certain Mazoyer upon his contemporaries, including Louis XIII. of France. He pretended that the bones of a mastodon, found in 1613 near the château of Chaumont. in Dauphiné were the remains of the giant Teutobochus, king of the Cimbri, who after having invaded Gaul, were conquered by Marius in the neighbourhood of Aix in Provence. All the science and discernment of Cuvier were needed to show in the clearest way that the pretended homo diluvii testis of Scheuchzer, found in 1725 in the clayey Ante Jovem genitum terras habuisse feruntur Ovid, Fusti, ii. vv. 289–290. |