The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

But M. Desnoyers only brought forward proofs of a single kind, and such as are not appreciated at their full value until we are used to them. Thus his work was at first received with a certain amount of distrust. He was asked to produce, if not pliocene man himself, at least some objects of his industry, and, in particular, the weapons which would enable him to attack, and the knives with which he could cut up the elephant and rhinoceros, or the great deer, whose bones all bear the marks of more or less deep incision which he attributes to man. M. l’Abbé Bourgeois soon replied to these demands, and in the presence of the worked flints which he placed before competent judges, all doubt disappeared.

Unfortunately, the gravel of Saint-Prest is considered by a sufficient number of geologists to belong rather to quaternary deposits, which are more recent than undoubted tertiary formations. It ought probably to be placed in the period of transition which separates two distinct epochs. Perhaps it is contemporaneous with the deposit of the Victoria cave in Yorkshire, from which Tiddeman extracted a human fibula, and which this naturalist regarded as having been formed a little before the great glacial cold. In short, the discoveries of MM. Desnoyers and Tiddeman take back the existence of man to the confines of the tertiary period.

The discoveries in Italy take us still further. On different occasions, and since 1863, some Italian savants thought that they had discovered in undoubted pliocene deposits traces of human industry, and even human bones. These results were, however, for different reasons successively doubted and rejected by the most competent judges.

But M. Capellini has just discovered, in 1876, clearer proofs of man’s existence in pliocene times in the clay deposits of Monte Aperto, near Sienne, and in two other places. The eminent professor of Bologna has found in these localities, the age of which is not contested, bones of the balœnotus bearing numerous deep incisions, which it seems to me could only have been produced by the action of a cutting instrument. In some cases the bone has been broken off upon one of the faces of incision, whilst the other is smooth and sharply defined. Judging from woodcuts and casts, it is impossible to avoid admitting that the cuts have been made upon fresh bones. These incisions differ entirely from those found upon the bones of halitherium found in the miocene falunian strata of Pouancé. I have always thought it impossible to attribute the latter to man, as decidedly as I think those which we are now discussing ought to be attributed to his agency. The existence of pliocene man in Tuscany is, then, in my opinion, an acquired scientific fact. Nevertheless, I should admit that this conclusion is not yet unanimously accepted, and that it is disputed by M. Magitot, among others, who relies upon his own experience.

VII. The researches of M. l’Abbé Bourgeois take us still further back. This practised and persevering observer has discovered in the department of Loir-et-Cher, in the Commune of Thénay, flints, the shape of which he thinks can only be attributed to man. Now geologists are unanimous in considering these deposits as miocene, belonging to the mean tertiary age.

But the flints of Thénay, generally of small size, are almost all very roughly shaped, and many palæontologists and archæologists have considered the fractures to be due to nothing more than accidental blows. In 1872, at the Congress of Brussels, the question was submitted to a commission of the most competent men of Germany, England, France, Belgium, and Italy, and the judges disagreed. Some accepted and some rejected all the flints exhibited by M. l’Abbé Bourgeois. Some considered that a small number only could be attributed to human industry. Others, again, thought it right to reserve their judgment and to wait for fresh facts.

I joined the ranks of the latter. But since then fresh specimens discovered by M. l’Abbé Bourgeois have removed my last doubts. A small knife or scraper, among others, which shows a fine regular finish, can, in my opinion, only have been shaped by man. Nevertheless, I do not blame those of my colleagues who deny or still doubt. In such a matter there is no very great urgency, and doubtless the existence of miocene man will be proved, as that of glacial and pliocene man has been—by facts.

VIII. Thus, man was most certainly in existence during the quaternary epoch and during the transition age to which the gravels of Saint-Prest and the deposits of the Victoria cave belong. He has, in all probability, seen miocene times, and consequently the entire pliocene epoch. Are there any reasons for believing that his traces will be found further back still? Is the date of his appearance necessarily connected with any epoch? For an answer to these questions I only see a single order of facts to which we can apply.

We know that, as far as his body is concerned, man is a mammal, and nothing more. The conditions of existence which are sufficient for these animals ought to have been sufficient for him also; where they lived, he could live. He may then have been contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia, and go back as far as the secondary period.