The Yellowstone journal. [volume] (Miles City, Mont.) 1893-1901, 1894-04-13
BEGINNING OF MAN.
Or. eRlNTON FURNISHES INTEREST
ING DATA ON THE SUBJECT.

General Agreement on the Discoveries In
the ..Drift"- The Glacial Age sand
wiehed In Between Warm Periods.
Where Man Opened His Eyes.
1.-The Beginning of Man and the Age of
Che Race is the subject of an article il
The Forum by Dr.. Daniel q. Brinton.
one of the foremost anthropologists of
the time. The very earliest deposit I'm
which there may be said to be a general
agreement hat mans remain are found
is that called the Drift, a series of gravel
beds in the valley of the Thames in Eng
land. Somme in France and the Mama
mares in Spain, and elsewhere in western
Europe. In these beds his stone tools n
weapons are found lying in u~ndisturbed
relations with bones of animals long since
extinct, and which under the present con-
ditions or the climate could not exist in
that locality, these animals belonging to
. tropical or subtropical fauna. From
this one is led to believe tina man lived
there at an early date when the climate
was much warmer than n W, and that
he had lived there for a long time, for
thousands of his impleme is have been
found in various strait nd scattered
over a wide area.
After this warm periof a period of ex-
creme cold descended rom the north
over central and wester Europe. Huge
glaciers covered Scott nd, Scandinavia
and Switzerland, an the forests OF
France were the har is of arctic qua
drupeds and birds, of musk OK, reindeer
- @La r-h,-. rAx Mon hny-aypr
weathered this cold period and contin-
ued TO roam the woods and fish the
streams, transferring his habitations to
natural caves, where evidence of his
hunts and his battles are still TO be
found. This period of cold is what is
called the glacial period" and by some
of our most learned biologists the length
of this icy age has been placed from
10000 to 30. 900 years.
Adding this to the former calculation,
and allowing a reasonable time for prime
val man to develop and spread over the
area in which ne lived, we have as the
approximate time since man has APP
peared i'll E~urope-where, up to date, we
nave found the earliest trace of his ex-
istence-about 5000 years. This Mr..
Brinton regards as the minimum allow
ance for him. Some writers Of eminence
nave required 200. Go years TO explain
all these changes IL climate. IN organic
life and in geological deposition. hut Ar.
Brinton points ont that the tendency OF
late years mas been toward n reduction
of these figures, especially by field -eOl.
ogists, who seem to be more impressed
with the rapidity Of natural actions than
heretofore.
Coming next to the consideration Of
.he origin of man, DR.. Brinton declares
that there Is no trace anywhere Of the
missing link. no evidence that man de-
veleped out of some lower animal by
long series of slow changes Nor does
he accept the doctrine of specific crea-
uou as a scientific explanation. There
Is a third possible theory of the origin Of
man which DIR. Brlnton holds is as good
as another-namely, that called ''evolu'
ton per saltum,' or with a jump.
1T is that process, whatever 1t may
be, which produces sports in plants and
'cranks' and 'geniuses' in respectable
families. No doctrine Of 'heredity' OF
'stavism' or 'reversion' can explain these
prodigies or monsters, as they happen to
be. A family of we know not which OF
the higher mammals, perhaps the great
tree ape which then lived in the warn
regions of central France, may have pro
iuced a few sports widely different
physically and mentally from their par
ents, and these sports we're the ances
tors Of mankind. This is a theory which
asks for its acceptance no blind faith il
the dogmatic assertions either of scienct
OF religious tradition"
As to where man first appeared DR.
Brinton says: In fact, we are limited by
a series of exclusions to the southern
slope of that great mountain chain which
begins in western Europe and Africa
with the Atlas mountains, the Cantabri
a. Alps and the Pyrenees and continues
to the Himalayas and their eastern ex
tensions in farther India. Somewhere
along this line il southern Asia or il
southern Europe Or in northern Africa
we may confidently say man first opened
his eyes upon the world about him. Or
TO the present time his earliest vestiges
have been exhumed in the extreme west
Of this region, but hat may be because
there search has beer more diligently
made. but the fact remains that, speak.
ing from present knowledge, We know OF
man nowhere earlier than in England,
France and the Iberian peninsula."-Re
view Of Reviews.