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Show BEGINNING! OF MAN. DR. BRINTON FURNISHES INTERESTING INTEREST-ING DATA ON THE SUBJECT. General Agreement on the Discoveries In the "Drift" The Klaclal Age Sandwiched Sand-wiched In Betwee.y'Tsrm Periods. Where Man Opened El'. 8yes. Jug "The Beginning of I ? and the Age of the Kace" is the subject of an article in The Forum by Dr. Paniel G. Brinton, one of the foremost Siathropologists of rne time. ne very earuess aeposic in which there may be said to be a general agreement that man's remains are found is that called the Drift, a series of gravel beds in the valley of the Thames in England, Eng-land, Somme in France and the Manza-nares Manza-nares in Spain, and elsewherf in western Europe. In these Jwds-. jaWa'e tools and weapons are found lying in undisturbed relations with bones of animals long since extinct, and which under the present conditions con-ditions of the climate, could not exist in that locality, these animals belonging to a tropical or subtropical fauna. From this one is led to believe that man lived there at an early date when the climate was much warmer than now, and that he had lived there for a long time, for thousands of his implements have been found in various strata and scattered over a wide area. After this warm period a period of extreme ex-treme cold descended from the north over central and western Europe, Huge glaciers covered Se?""- Sciindinavia . and Switzerland, and tut-rorests Qf France were the haunts of arctic quadrupeds qua-drupeds and birds, of musk ox, i-eindeer and the white fox. Man, however, weathered this cold period and continued contin-ued to roam the woods and fish the streams, transferring hi3 habitations to natural caves, where evidence of his hunts and his battles p.re still to be found. This period of cold is what is called the "glacial period," and by some of our most learned geologists the length of this "icy age" hafc been placed from sn nnn tr so nnn rsarl Adding this to thtiformer calculationj. and allowing a reaso able time for prim, 1 val man to develop SiixEkW1 ibJ fiince man has- appeared ap-peared in Europe t! here, up to date, we have found the earliest trace of his existenceabout ex-istenceabout 50,0lji0 years. This Mr. Brinton regards as j be minimum allowance allow-ance for him. Some writers of eminence have required 200,000 years to explain all these changes in climate, in organic life and in geological deposition, but Mr. Brinton points out that the tendency of late years has been toward a reduction of these figures, especially by field geologists, geol-ogists, who seem to be more impressed with the rapidity of natural actions than heretofore. Coming next to the consideration of the origin of man, Dr. Brinton declares that "there is no trace anywhere of the missing link, no evidence that man developed de-veloped out of some lower animal by long series of slow changes." Nor does he accept the doctrine of specific crea tion as a scienimu cipiauauon. xnere js a third possible theory of the origin of man which Dr. Brinton holds is as good as another namely, that called "evolution "evolu-tion per saltum," or rith a jump. "It is that procets, whatever it may be, which producesi'sports' in plants and cranks' and 'genitoes' in respectable families. No doctpe of 'heredity' or 'atavism' or reverses' can explain these prodigies or monstlr, as they happen to he. A family of we mow not which of the higher mammperhaps the great tree ape which tlk lived in the warm regions of central T:nce, may have produced pro-duced a few 'spar,' widely different physically and mently from their parents, par-ents, and these 'spes' were the ancestors ances-tors of mankind. Is is a theory which asks for its acceptae no blind faith in the dogmatic asserlus either of science or religious traditi." As to where nSi first appeared Dr. Brinton says: "In, we are limited by a series of exclusis to the southern slope of that great lantain chain which begins in western urope and Africa with the Atlas motains, the Cantabri-an Cantabri-an Alps and the Pjiees and continues to the Himalayas i their eastern extensions ex-tensions in farthe'ndia. Somewhere along tins line inathern Asia or in southern Europe ; Cn northern Africa we may confidentlry man first opened, his eyes upon tho;y d about him. Up to the present tinle i earliest vestige3 have been exhume, the extreme west of this region, butit may be because there search haaln more diligently made, but the fablnains that, speaking speak-ing from present k ledge, we know of man nowhere earl than in England, France and tho Ihn peninsula." |