The age immediately preceding the glacial, and consequently the post-tertiary, is known as the pliocene epoch, the last of the tertiary. The tertiary period began with the close of the cretaceous. A map of the early tertiary period would represent parts of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, the whole of Florida, the lower parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, the whole of Louisiana, and the adjoining territory on both sides of the Mississippi, as far as Cairo, as covered with water. Also a great sea extending through Nebraska and the western part of Dacotah, and taking a north-westerly course until it emptied into the Pacific. In Europe, the great basin of Paris (excepting a zone of chalk), the greater part of Spain and Italy, the whole of Belgium, Holland, Prussia, Switzerland, Hungary, Wallachia, and northern Russia, as one vast sheet of water. England and France were connected by a band of rocks. About the middle of the tertiary, a tropical climate and tropical fauna and flora spread over the whole of Europe. Palms, cedars, laurels, and cinnamon trees flourished in the valleys of Switzerland, and more than thirty different species of oak adorned the forests of that time. In Europe, in the eocene, there have been found thirty species of crocodiles; many species of snakes, one twenty feet long; a dozen species of birds; tapirs (PalÆothere and Lophiodon), two species of hogs, some ruminants and rodents. In the miocene, among Pachyderms may be mentioned the mastodon, elephant, dinothere (an elephantine animal), rhinoceros, hog, horse, tapir, and hippopotamus; among Carnivores, the machairodus, hyena, lion, and dog; among Ruminants, the camel, deer, and antelope. There were monkeys, and many other animals. In the pliocene, besides those enumerated, are found the bear, hare, and other animals. In the tertiary beds of America have been found mastodons, elephants, rhinoceroses, deer, camels, foxes, wolves, horses, whales, and other mammalia. Owing to the great lapse of time it cannot be expected that many traces of man will be discovered in this early period. Upon theoretical grounds Lyell thought it very probable that man lived in the pliocene; but in relation to miocene time, he says, "Had some other rational being, representing man, then flourished, some signs of his existence could hardly have escaped unnoticed, in the shape of implements of stone or metal, more frequent and more durable than the osseous remains of any of the mammalia." Some of the older and some of the recent discoveries of geologists have settled the question of tertiary man; and the "signs of his existence," in the "shape of implements of stone," as demanded by Lyell, have been furnished. Man in the Pliocene.—It has already been intimated that the evidences of man are but few in this early epoch. The first example, in the following list, borders closely on the glacial, but far enough removed as to be referred to the pliocene. In the construction of a canal between Stockholm and Gothenburg it was necessary to cut through one of those hills called osars, or erratic blocks, which were deposited by the drift-ice during the glacial epoch. Beneath an immense accumulation of osars, with shells and sand, there was discovered in the deepest layer of subsoil, at a depth of about sixty feet, a circular mass of stones, forming a hearth, in the middle of which there were wood-coals. No other hand than that of man could have performed the work. In the pliocene beds in the neighborhood of the town of Savonia in Liguria, M. A. Issel found several bones which presented all the physical signs of very high antiquity. Dr. Buchner is of the opinion that before these bones can be employed as satisfactory evidence they must have a more accurate test by scientific authorities. In the upper pliocene beds at St. Prest (France), M. Desnoyers found traces of human action on the bones of animals belonging to the tertiary. These fractures are analogous to those of human action observed on bones from the glacial period, and identical with those made by northern tribes of the present day, on the skulls of ruminants. The marked bones found were those of the Southern elephant (E. meridionalis), rhinoceros (R. leptorinus), hippopotamus major, The conclusions of Desnoyers are confirmed beyond a doubt by the more recent discoveries of AbbÉ Bourgeois. In the same tertiary strata of St. Prest, in which were found the marked or fractured bones, Bourgeois discovered worked flints, including flakes, awls, and scrapers. A human skull, belonging to the pliocene, was found by James Matson, at Altaville, in Calaveras county, California, at a depth of one hundred and thirty feet, under five beds of gravel separated by five layers of lava, associated with the bones of an extinct rhinoceros, camel, and horse. The base of the skull is imbedded in a mass of bone-breccia and small pebbles of volcanic rock. The shape of the skull resembles that of the Digger Indians, and is of remarkable thickness. M. Tardy found a flint-flake of undoubted workmanship in the miocene beds of Aurillac (Auvergne), together with the remains of dinotherium giganteum, and machaerodus latidens. M. Bourgeois reports that AbbÉ Delaunay had found near Pouance (Maine-et-Loire), fossil bones of a halitherium (an herbivorous cetacean of the miocene), with evident signs of having been operated upon by cutting instruments. In the miocene gravel beds of Colorado and Wyoming territories, chert-flakes, hammers, chisels, knives, and wrought shells have been found. Eocene.—As yet geologists have failed to discover any traces of man in the Eocene epoch. |