For vast. epoch& alter the appearance of man upon the earth no redord of his presence exists or can exist except a paleontological his bones. He doubtless 'wrenched off tree branches and threw or hammered with stones, like the higher simians, but we cannot prove a broken branch or Scratches.on a stone to be artificial, or due to man rather than to orang. When; however, a stone is rubbed, or evidently bruised from repeated' use, still more when a number of these are found near together, we know that something more.than casual use by an animal has produced the result; but it may mark only the , utterly unrisen savage, who lives on nuts and fruits and sleeps under any casual tree or bank and has not, thought of im proving on nature.
The distinction must be kept in mind, how ever, between. an implement and an artifact and the former is even more durable dm. any skeleton or part thereof ; but no-amount of use of a pebble as a baluster can distinguish its abraded surface from that of one in use by the latest aborigines, This is peculiarly true-of quartzite pebbles, that seem to take on no ap preciable patinations, that sure guide to. the antiquity or lack of it, Qf an artifact. The first identifiable stage of real culture is: The Eolithic probably begat} (probably elsewhere also) in Kent, England, where loose flints lay about or might be easily dug from the chalk. These were very roughly hammered into an edge that would bruise off a stick or into a grip for the hand; so roughly, indeed, that their having received deliberate art at all was long bitterly contested. They are found in river deposits on the top of hills 600 feet above the present• streain-beds, which must therefore have been excavated since. Even in this remote antiquity man was no new organism on the earth, and this stage of cul ture, from the excessive slowness of progress in the early stages, must have lasted for a long period.
The eolithic implement will always be a sub ject for dispute, because so like in every char acteristic the unfinished implement of a more specialized type. Wherever the unmistakable polarlithic artifact is found, there will also be a still cruder object, yet distinctly aftificial, which comes within the classification of °eo lith?' It may or may not be, under such cir cumstances, but such objects tell quite another story when they are found in deposits of gravel older than the latest glacial drift, and unassociated • with any other trace of man's handiwork. This occurs in North America and serves the double purpose of establishing the geological antiquity of man on this continent and demonstrating the fact of an eolithic culture in Europe and presumably in Asia and Africa.
The Paleolithic Age succeeded; the former till recently was reckoned a part of it. It is now further divided into two chief periods, from the anthropological differences implied, those of the river gravels and of the cave dwellers ; and the latter again into three others, with well-marked stages of culture. More spe,
cifically: 1. River gravels up to 200 feet above pres ent hods ("Achuleen"). The remains are mas sive flints stareely less rude than the former, but unmistakably worked. They still antedate any permanent dwelling• or shelter.
2. Cave-dwellers. Man now has: a perma- • nent though not artificial dwelling, and the germ of family life is born. (a) "Moustd rienir Flint flakes split off (the first true ar tificial tool), and massivellints hammered into definite shapes, with others rude like • the for mer. (b) °Solutrien": Flints carefully worked and finely shaped. (c) °Magdalenian": Well shaped flint tools, plentiful bone-working with them, and drawings on implements and the walls of caves.
All these remains have been found, along with fossils of the mammoth, cave-bear, cave lion, sabre-toothed tiger and other extinct forms, in ancient river deposits, deep under stelagtnitic .accumulations in caves, beneath American lava-beds, etc. The age assigned to these deposits by geologists is from 100,000 to 300,000 years. Another clue of the same sig nificance is the circumstance that in Egypt flints are found together, of which the latest, neolithie, were. dug and worked• fully 7,000 years ago, and are tinged only a faint brown, while others, palteolithic, have turned nearly black. The most conservative estimate is 100, 000, B.C. for, the beginning of the eolithic per clod; the paleolithic had not ended yet, but in the advanced regions it began to be dist placed by the ,neolithic perhaps • a.c. Roughly speaking, the 014 Stone •periods cover a space 10 times as long as all, those since put together, the latter succeeding each other with relative swiftness,, as progress accelerates by its own development. In some respects the 19th century has shown more advance than all the previous half-million years of man's exist" enpe. The rate of progress has depended greatly also on the natural advantages offered: the flint mines of the English chalk hills with the early savage perhaps, corresponded to the coal and iron mines of the present, producing rapid advance in skill and also competition of tribes, the stronger' expelling the weaker from the coveted districts. On the- other band, the lack of doneesticpble animals in America had much to do with its slight progress under barbarism. • The occurrence of a Paleolithic Agt in North America gave rise, when first suggested, to intemperate opposition and as this was based on ignorance, the illogical position was more amusing than convincing; but the evidence of a geological antiquity accumulated un til now the existence of man in North America in what is accepted as the palaiolithic culture is a commonplace in the world's range of knowledge.