in the arts of manufacture. Others have been found in
many parts of the earth. Many of them exist in America, proving that man
resided on this continent at a very distant era. When we consider that
late discoveries in Babylonia appear to carry back the age of
civilization and historical relics to some ten thousand years, and that
semi-civilization must have extended very considerably beyond that time,
the vista of man's gradual progress seems to recede interminably and the
era of primitive man to stretch backward to an enormously remote
period. In truth, discoveries have been made which are claimed to carry
man back beyond the Quaternary and into the Tertiary Period of geology,
since cut and scratched bones have been found in Pliocene deposits,
which some geologists of experience believe to have been the work of
human hands. Still more remote are some seemingly chipped flints and
bones cut in a way that suggests human action, which have been found in
deposits of the very far-distant Miocene Age. The immense remoteness of
this epoch and the rudeness of the work have cast much doubt on the
human origin of these remains, though their authenticity as the work of
man has been accepted by several competent observers, among them the
able anthropologist, Quatrefages.

If we confine ourselves, however, to the conclusions regarding ancient
man which are generally accepted, we must say that he has not been
clearly traced back beyond the Glacial Period, though some of the relics
found in the older river gravels and in the lowest cave accumulations
may well be of pre-glacial age. Many geologists believe that he reached
Europe as early as the extinct mammals with which he was contemporaneous
there, but how far back in time this would carry his advent it is
impossible to say.

Coming now to the consideration of more immediate human relics, the
bones of man himself, it must be said that well-authenticated remains
of palaeolithic or early neolithic man are not numerous. As long as man
left his bones to the unaided agencies of nature, they were little
likely to be preserved. Of the anthropoid apes of Europe, probably
numerous in individuals, a few remains of one or two species alone
survive. Of pre-glacial man none remain, but this may merely indicate
that he has shared the fate of numerous other species that died out and
left no trace. It was only when the growing cold drove man from the open
woods to seek shelter in caves that remnan