g in the Miocene, equally obscure in its
connection with the preceding, introduces the man-like apes to the
geologist. Primitive gibbons (Pliopithecus and Pliobylobates),
primitive chimpanzees (Palaeopithecus), and other early anthropoid
apes (Oreopithecus, Dryopithecus, etc.), lived in the trees of Southern
Europe in the second part of the Tertiary Era. They are clearly
disconnected individuals of a large and flourishing family, but from the
half-dozen specimens we have yet discovered no conclusion can be drawn,
except that the family is already branching into the types of anthropoid
apes which are familiar to us.

Of man himself we have no certain and indisputable trace in the Tertiary
Era. Some remains found in Java of an ape-man (Pithecanthropus),
which we will study later, are now generally believed, after a special
investigation on the spot, to belong to the Pleistocene period. Yet no
authority on the subject doubts that the human species was evolved in
the Tertiary Era, and very many, if not most, of the authorities believe
that we have definite proof of his presence. The early story of mankind
is gathered, not so much from the few fragments of human remains we
have, but from the stone implements which were shaped by his primitive
intelligence and remain, almost imperishable, in the soil over which he
wandered. The more primitive man was, the more ambiguous would be
the traces of his shaping of these stone implements, and the earliest
specimens are bound to be a matter of controversy. It is claimed by many
distinguished authorities that flints slightly touched by the hand of
man, or at least used as implements by man, are found in abundance
in England, France, and Germany, and belong to the Pliocene period.
Continental authorities even refer some of them to the Miocene and the
last part of the Oligocene.

The question whether an implement-using animal, which nearly all would
agree to regard as in some degree human, wandered over what is now
the South of England (Kent, Essex, Dorsetshire, etc.) as many hundred
thousand years ago as this claim would imply, is certainly one of great
interest. But there would be little use in discussing here the question
of the "Eoliths," as these disputed implements are called. A very keen
controversy is still being conducted in regard to them, and some of the
highest authorities in England, France, and Germany deny that they show
any trace of human workmanship or usage. Although t