River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1883-10-25

! lifted IN so that the British Isles, then
/ an archipelago, again formed part of the
! mainland. As the land emerged from
( the water, the Pieistoeene forests crept
! over it, and the animals found the way
over the southern and midland counties.
Such as this was the scene On which
man first appears in Europe. Rude
| splinters Of stone and roughly Clipped
! Debbles of flint and ebert at their very
( best trimmed to an almond shade, and
/ mostly intended for use in the hand, oc-
cur abundantly in the river deposits of
! England and France in association with
/ the remains of the above animals.
I They are the implements of savages
/ living by the chase, and probably also by
/ fishing and fowling. Not only have the
! implements been discovered, but the very
spots on the river bank where the hum
| ter sat and made them have been iden-
1 titled, as at Crawford and other places in
! the valley of the Thames. Could we
! have penetrated to the banks Of the
| Thames, or of the Seine, in these times,
/ guided by a thin Column of smoke rising
! over the trees till we reached the camp
/ Of the river-drift hunter, we might have
! seek the men selecting blocks Of flint
and clipping their implements out OF
! them, the women preparing the half
! raw meal Of flesh, 1t may be OF reindeer,
I IIlhHlUtOLu, OF EIitnOtCIOo5 0l4AAC biAC
/ children broke the silence of the eve
| ming with their shouts on those very
| spots where are now to be heard, day
| and night, the voices of London and
| Par s.
| Nor can there be much doubt as to
| the relation of the riyer-drft hunter to
/ the above-m entioned changes in climate
and geography, which are usually
summed up under the term Glacial. The
balance of evidence is in favor of the
view that the hunter at Crawford was in
the valley of the Thames before the sub
mergence. and before the temperature
had reached its minimum, or in other
words, in pre-gIacial times. The river
drift hunter whose implements are left
at Abbeyille trayersed the shore Of a
berg-laden sea, and possibly may have
inherited tradition from his ancestors
of the famous hunting grounds then ly-
1 ing at the bottom Of the British Chan
mel and the great Northern Ocean. The
| hunter who followed the hippopotamus
ard the reindeer in the valley OF the
| Ouse, near Bedford, was there after the
relevation of the land and cutting Of the
valley through the mantle of boulder
| clay which had been dropped from the
melting bergs. He probably went
far enough northward to see the glaciers
| then browning the Pennine chain and
| the mountainous regions of Wales.
Southwark the river-dTift man wan
| dered far and wide over France, hunting
| the same animals in the valleys of the
! Rhone, Loire, and Garonne as in the
valley of the Thames. In the Iberian
| peninsula he was a contemporary OF the
| African elephant, the mammoth, and the
straight-tusked elephant, and he camped
| in the neighboThood of both Lisbon and
~ al tFtarA DC Err and
Britain, singular facility in choosing
places which became, in the long ages
which were TO follow the sites
Of great capitals. He also ranged
over Italy, leaving his imple-
ments behind the Abruzzo; and in
Greece, in the neighborhood Of Cor
NTH, he was familiar with the extinct
pigmy hypotaInus. We can also track
him south of the Mediterranean by the
implements found in Oran, and near ko-
lea in Algeria. in the Sahara, and sew
erai places III Egypt. at Luxor they have
been discovered by Gen. Pitt Rivers i'll
the breccia, out of which are hewn the
tombs Of the Egyptian kings. In Pales-
tine. they have been obtained by the
Able Richard between Mount TABOR
and the Sea Of Liberals, and by Mr..
Slopes between Jerusalem and Bethle-
hem. Throughout this wide area the
implements are of the same rude type,
and generally Of the same materials,
| hnt or Quartzite. those of Luxor and
Palestine being identical with those III
| the river valleys of Britain and France.
throughout this area, too, the river
| drift man hunted some or other of
! those animals which we have mention
ed above.
Nor is our survey yet ended. He is
prOyed by MANY discoveries to have
ranged over the Indian peninsula, from
| the valley Of the Nerbudda in the north
| rs far as Madras. Here we find him
| forming part of q fauna in which are to
| be numbered species now living in In
dia, such as the Indian rhinOceros ami
the arnee. as well as distinct types OF
oxen and elephants. There were two ex-
tinct hyppopotaml IN the rivers, as well
| as living gavialS, turtles, and tOrtoises,
| 1t is plain, therefore, that at this time
\ the higher mammals of India stood in
| the same relation to the present Indian
animals as the European fauna of the
Pleistocene does to that now living In
| Europe. In both there was q similar
/ association of living with extinct forms,
and in both the central figure Is the
river-drift hunter
We are led from the region Of tropical
| India to the banks Of the Della ware, in
4
| DR.. Abbott in the neighbOrhOOd OF Tren-
ton, which l have had the opportunity
| of examining with that gentleman and
| Prof. HAYNES and Lewis. The lmple-
ments are of the same type, and occur
under exactIv the same conditions, as
! The river-drift implements of Europe.
| They are found in q terrace of river
gravel and from overlooking the river,
and are composed of materials derived
| from tine old terminal moraine which
| strikes across the states of New Jersey
| and Pennsylvania in the direction of
| Lake Erie. The large blocks of stone
| which it contains indicate that during
| the time of its accumulation there were
| ice RATS boating down the Delaware in
| the spring, as in the Thames, the Seine,
| andthe Somme in those days. The
| identity of the implements proves that
| the river-drilt hunter was in the same
| rude state Of civilizatiOn-in the Old and
! New worlds, while the hand of the geo.
| logical clock pointed to the same hour. IL
| is not little strange that his mode OF
| life should have been the same IN the
| lands bordering on the Mediterranean,
| in the tropical forests of India, and on
| both sides of the Atlantic. The hunter OF
| the reindeer in the valley of tue Della
| were was the same kind OF s wage as the
| hunter of the reindeer in the banks OF
/ the Thames or the SEINE. 1t does not,
| however, follow that this identity of i'm
| plements implies that the same race OF
| men ranged over this vast tract While
| this may he left an open question, 1t GER
| tainly indicates primeval condition OF
| savagery, from which mankind has en-
| erged in the long ages that separate 1t
| from our own time. We may also infer
| from his wide range that the river-drift
| hunter assuming that mankind sprang
| from one ceutre) inhabited the earth for
a long time. and that his dispersal took
! place before the glacial submergence
! and the lowering of the temperature IN
| northern Europe, Asia. and America.
| 1t is not reasonable to suppose that ne
| Straits of Behring could have offered a
| free passage either to the river-drlit
| man migrating from Asia Is America, or
| 10 the American animals from America
| 10 Europe, while there was great bar
rier Of ice or of sea, or of both, IN the
high northern ATTITUDES.
Ii will naturally he asked Who ard
what was the rival-drift hunter. The
question can only be partially answered
in the present stage of the inquiry. The
few fragments of human bones, beyond
doubt associated with the implements,
are too imperfect to offer any evidence
as 70 race. They, however, point out
Enthusiastically that he was man, and
not "a missing link, +" aud that he was
without traces OF Simi6n ancestry, such
{ - be-1 F,rtfllat