Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

The forests of central France in Pliocene times, as well as those of the valley of the Arno in northern Italy, were very similar to the forests of the middle United States at the present time, comprising such trees as the sassafras, the locust, the honey-locust, the sumach, the bald cypress, and the tulip. Thus the regions which harbored the rich forest and meadow fauna of northern Italy in Upper Pliocene times abounded in trees familiar to-day in North and South Carolina, including even such distinctively American forms as the sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua), the sour gum (Nyssa sylvatica), and the bay, beside those above mentioned. To the south, along the Mediterranean, there also flourished trees incident to a more tropical climate, the bamboo, the sabal palm, and the dwarf fan-palm; most interesting is the presence of the sabal, which now flourishes in the subtropical rain forests of central Florida. The sequoia also was abundant. Toward the close of the Pliocene the first indications of the coming Glacial Epoch were a lowering of the temperature, and, in the higher mountainous areas perhaps, a beginning of the glacial stages.

The ancestors of the modern forests of Europe predominated in central France: the oak, the beech, the poplar, the willow, and the larch. It is these forests, which survived the vicissitudes of glacial times, that gave descent to the forests of Postglacial Europe, while all the purely American types disappeared from Europe and are now found only in the temperate regions of the United States.[(5)]

We have seen that anthropoid apes have not been discovered either in the Middle or Upper Pliocene of Europe; the gibbon-ape line disappears with the Pliohylobates of the Upper Pliocene. These animals are, however, rarely found in fossil form, owing to their retreat to the trees in times of flood and danger, so that we need not necessarily assume that the anthropoids had actually become extinct in France. The primates which are found in the Upper Pliocene belong to the lower types of the Old World monkeys, related to the living langur of India and to the macaque and baboon. The evidence, as far as it goes, indicates that the ancestors of man were at this time evolving in Asia and not in Europe. This evidence, nevertheless, would be completely offset if it could be proven that the eoliths, or primitive flints, found in various parts of Europe from Oligocene to Pleistocene times are really artifacts of human or prehuman origin.

The mammals of Europe in Pliocene times were derived by very remote migrations from North America and, more directly, from southern Asia. The Oriental element is very strong, including types of rhinoceroses now peculiar to Sumatra and southern Asia, numerous mastodons very similar to the south Asiatic types of the times, gazelles and antelopes, including types related to the existing elands, and primitive types of horses and of tapirs. Among the carnivores in Europe similar to south Asiatic species were the hyænas, the dog bears (Hyænarctos), the civets, and the pandas (Ailurus); there were also the sabre-tooth tigers and numerous other felines. In the trees were found the south Asiatic and north African monkeys; and in the forests the axis deer, now restricted to Asia. But the most distinctive African-Asiatic animal of this period was found in the rivers; namely, the hippopotamus, which arrived in Italy in the early Pliocene and ranged south by way of the Sicilian land bridge into northern Africa and east along the southern shores of the Black Sea to the Siwalik hills of India. Thus, many of the ancestors of what we have termed the African-Asiatic mammal group of Pleistocene times had already found their way into Europe early in Pliocene times. In middle and late Pliocene times there arrived three very important types of mammals which played a great rôle in the early Pleistocene. These are:

The true horses (Equus stenonis) of remote North American origin.

The first true cattle (Leptobos elatus), originating in southern Asia.

The true elephants, first Elephas planifrons and later E. meridionalis, better known as the southern mammoth, both originating in Asia.

The forests and river borders of the valley of the Arno, near Florence, contained all these African-Asiatic animals in Upper Pliocene times. Here they received their names which remind us of this region of Italy as it is to-day, such as the Etruscan rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus etruscus), the Florentine macaque (Macacus florentinus), Steno's horse (Equus stenonis), the Etruscan cattle (Leptobos etruscus), which was the earliest ox to reach Europe.

In Italy and France these African-Asiatic mammals were mingled with ancestors of the more hardy Eurasiatic forest and meadow group. Of these the most graceful were a variety of deer with very elaborate or many-branched antlers, hence known as the 'polycladine' deer. In the forests roamed the wild boars of Auvergne (Sus arvernensis), also the bears of Auvergne (Ursus arvernensis), lynxes, foxes, and wildcats. In the rivers swam the otter and the beaver, closely allied to existing forms. Among the rocks of the high hills were the pikas or tailless hares (Lagomys), also hamsters, moles, and shrews.

Many of the most characteristic animals of the dry modern plateaus of Africa had disappeared from Europe before the close of Pliocene times, namely, species of gazelles, antelopes, and the hipparion horses, all of which were adapted to the dry uplands or deserts of Africa. In the remaining faune Pliocène récente of French authors we find evidence that the Pliocene in all of western Europe closed with a moist, warm, temperate climate, with wide-spread forests and rivers interspersed with meadows favorable to the life of a great variety of browsing deer as well as of grazing elephants, horses and cattle. The flora of the Middle Pliocene as found at Meximieux indicates a mean annual temperature of 62° to 63° Fahr.