If he did not exist before the Drift, of course, no myths descriptive of it could have come down to us.
This preliminary question must, then, be settled by testimony.
Let us call our witnesses
"The palæolithic hunter of the mid and late Pleistocene river-deposits in Europe belongs, as we have already shown, to a fauna which arrived in Britain before the lowering of the temperature produced glaciers and icebergs in our country; he may, therefore, be viewed as being probably pre-glacial."[1]
Man had spread widely over the earth before the Drift; therefore, he had lived long on the earth. His remains have been found in Scotland, England, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Greece; in Africa, in Palestine, in India, and in the United States.[2]
"Man was living in the valley of the lower Thames before the Arctic mammalia had taken full possession of
[1. Dawkins's "Early Man in Britain," p. 169.
2. Ibid., pp. 165, 166.]
{p. 122 }
the valley of the Thames, and before the big-nosed rhinoceros had become extinct."[1]