Prehistoric animal

“ In the first place, we must recall the animals that suddenly made their appearance in Europe at the beginning of this age. Though there were a number of species, since become extinct, the majority of animal forms were those still living.53
These are the animals with which man has always been associated. There is therefore no longer any reason to suppose the evolution of animal life had not reached that stage where man was to appear. We need only recall how strongly this point was urged in reference to the preceding geological epoch, to see its important bearings here. ”

“ The growth of animal life is equally instructive. First invertebrate life, then the lowest forms of vertebrate life. The fishes are followed by amphibians—then reptiles, then birds. The first mammal to appear was the lowest organized of all—the marsupials. And we have seen the sudden increase of mammalian life in Tertiary times. We notice, in all the divisions of life, a beginning, a culmination, and a decline. ”

“ You can see that the more we dig and find, the more clearly the main facts begin to stand out. We begin to be more sure of which people lived at the same time, which earlier and which later. We begin to know who traded with whom, and which peoples seemed to live off by themselves. We begin to find enough skeletons in burials so that the physical anthropologists can tell us what the people looked like. We get animal bones, and a paleontologist may tell us they are all bones of wild animals ”

“ It is well known that a competent naturalist needs but a single fossil bone to describe the animal itself, and tell us its habits. So also anthropologists need but fragments of the human skeleton, especially of the skull, to describe characteristics of the race to which the individual belonged.
This cut, though an ideal restoration, is a restoration made in accordance with the results of careful study of fragmentary skulls found in various localities in Europe. The head and the face present a savage aspect; the body harmonized with the head; the height was not more than five feet and a half ”

“ Those relics point to times when the fauna differed even more than the men of this era from those of the present day. In the mounds of the Ohio Valley, on the other hand, the bone implements and animal remains appear to be referable to existing species; and so supply evidence in contradiction of the extreme antiquity assigned by some to the mounds and their builders. One special value of primitive tools of horn, bone, and ivory is thus manifest. They embody glimpses of truth in relation to climate, native fauna, culinary practices, and special objects of the chase ”

“ The same rule holds good for the animal world also. As man is the most highly organized of all the animals, we can not hope to find any evidence of his presence until we find proofs of the presence of all the lower types of life. Of course future discoveries may change our knowledge when the series is complete; but, from our present stand-point, he could not have lived before the Miocene Age, and we have seen how faint and indecisive are the proofs of his presence even then. ”

“ As the naturalist, from the inspection of a single bone, is enabled to determine the animal from which it was derived, though there be no longer a living representative, so the archæologist, by the aid of fragmentary remains, is able to tell us of manners and times now long since removed. ”

“ And first in seeming chronological order are those traces of human arts in the drift, or in ossiferous caves among the bones of strange orders of beings hitherto supposed to have long preceded the existence of man. In the ancient alluvial deposits—most modern among the strata of the geologist,—lie abundant traces of extinct animal life, belonging to that recent transitional era of the globe in which man first appears. ”

“ As these four-footed animals became greatly affected by the struggle for life, owing to the rapid multiplication of species and the ever-varying conditions of the environment, it followed that the limbs became also more or less modified, so as to make them suitable, not only for increased speed in altered circumstances, but useful to the animal economy in other ways. ”

“ The lower forms of animals appear first to be followed in time by the higher. It is true that some forms have survived through all the changes of Geological time to the present: yet, speaking generally, some forms of life are peculiar to each age, and the general phase of animal life is different with each period. ”

“ Almost equally active, and even more athletic, man-like creatures inhabited this planet for a period variously estimated from 25,000 to half a million years. Human skeletons have been found among the strata of former geological ages and associated with the bones of such prehistoric animals as mammoths and cave-bears. ”

“ But in those, as in the better-defined animal-mounds, time has obliterated the minuter touches of the ancient modeller, and effaced indications of his meaning. Yet fancy still recognises among the best preserved relievos the elk, buffalo, bear, fox, otter, and racoon. The lizard is of frequent occurrence; the turtle and frog also appear; birds and fishes are repeatedly represented; and man himself figures among the ancient relievos. ”

“ Now we can easily see how the remains of organic bodies, growing at the time of the formation of these beds, should be preserved in a fossil form. Limestone rocks are thickly studded in places with all sorts of marine formations. Coal fields reveal wonders of early vegetative growth. From sandstone rocks, and shaly beds, we learn strange stories of animal life at the time they were forming. From a careful study of these remains together with the formation in which they occur, not only in one locality but all over the earth, geologists have gradually unfolded the history of life on the globe. ”

“ They are forced to admit that many species and genera have become extinct—so much is proved by the skeletons of prehistoric beasts found from time to time under the earth's surface. But what they dispute is that there is any connection between those beasts and living animals. ”

“ Schoolcraft attempted to solve the mystery of the emblematic mounds by assuming them to be the Totems, or heraldic symbols, in use among the Indian tribes, thus reproduced in earthworks on a gigantic scale. The fox, the bear, the eagle, turtle, or other animal, is selected among them as the sign of the tribe or family. This usage prevailed among the Iroquois, Hurons, Algonquins, Cherokees, and other nations occupying very extensive areas; and, accordingly, guided by the superficial resemblance of the Animal Mounds to such totemic signs, Mr. ”

“ Fossilized remains of prehistoric mammals have also been discovered in clay pits of the vicinity, among them camels of various sizes and kinds, mastodon, deer, antelope, rhinoceros, three-toed horses, cougar- sized cats, wild pigs, and rodents of various types. ”

“ This includes such animals as the mastodon, hipparion, and many kinds of deer (Geikie’s “Prehistoric Europe,” p. 334) . The following animals survived into the Glacial Age, and some even into Inter-glacial periods: African hippopotamus (still living) , saber-toothed lion, bear of Auvergne, big-nosed rhinoceros, Etruskan rhinoceros, Sedgwick’s deer, deer of Polignac, Southern elephant. (“Prehistoric Europe,” p. 95.) The northern animals include the following: Alpine hare, musk-sheep, glutton, reindeer, arctic fox, lemming, tailless hare, marmot, spermophile, ibex, snowy vole, chamois. ”

“ Those with the remains of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and other extinct species, or with paleolithic man (see Archaeology) , are termed Pleistocene. These are sometimes called Quaternary, under the mistaken idea that they belong to an age succeeding the Tertiary period. (3) Those which contain the remains of the domestic animals in association with the remains of man either in the Neolithic, Bronze or Iron stages of civilization are termed Prehistoric. ”

“ This geological claim for a vast antiquity of the human race is supported by the similar claims of prehistoric archaeology and the science of culture, the evidence of all three departments of inquiry being intimately connected, and in perfect harmony.
During the last half century, the fact has been established that human bones and objects of human manufacture occur in such geological relation to the remains of fossil species of elephant, rhinoceros, hysena, bear, &c., as to lead to the distinct inference that man already existed during the ancient period of these now extinct mammalia. ”

“ The evidence of man's antiquity revealed by his discoveries consisted of flint implements and remains of human skeletons, associated with bones of the hyæna, cave-bear, cave-lion, rhinoceros, mammoth and reindeer. ”

“ In a zoological point of view they include man and the existing races of animals, as well as extinct races which appear to have been contemporaneous with indigenous species. To the archæologist they are rich in records of that primeval transition in which the beginnings of history lie. How early in that closing geological epoch man appeared, or how late into that archæological era the extinct fossil mammals survived, are the two independent propositions which the sister sciences have to establish and reconcile. ”

“ It is therefore a legitimate source of interest to the archæologist, to observe the mingling of extinct and familiar species among the fossil mammals found in the superficial deposits, wherein so much of the evidence of his own science must be sought. It discovers to him the precise link by which his pursuits take hold of the great chain of truth, and in a new sense shews man, not as an isolated creation, but as the last and best of an order of animated beings, whose line sweeps back into the far removed shadow of an unmeasured past. ”

“ In order to understand the place of the Dinosaurs in world-history, we must first get some idea of the length of geologic periods and the immense space of time separating one extinct fauna from another.
The Age of Man. Prehistoric time, as it is commonly understood, is the time when barbaric and savage tribes of men inhabited the world but before civilization began, and earlier than the written records on which history is based. ”

“ The characteristics of the fossil mammals of the post-glacial period differ in many respects so widely from all that we are accustomed to associate with the presence of man, that they help to suggest even an exaggerated idea of antiquity. Nevertheless, there is no break of continuity. Animals still living have their fossil representatives alongside of the pleiocene mastodon, cave-lion, and bear: if indeed the latter be not itself the ursus ferox, or grizzly bear of North America, the claws of which are still worn as the proudest trophy of the Red Indian hunter. ”

“ Of the three series, (1) human remains, (2) mammalian remains, (3) stone implements, the first two, (1) and (2) , have been compared as well as (1) and (3) . A comparison between (2) and (3) has now to be instituted. And this is of interest, for mammalian remains have been found in the presence of implements where no human bones could be discovered. Moreover the expectation is well founded, whereby the mammalian fauna will prove to supply information unobtainable from either human skeletons or implements by themselves. ”

“ If artifacts are found in association with fossil remains of an extinct animal such as the mammoth or the woolly rhinoceros, they are obviously older than artifacts that are accompanied only by the bones of the reindeer, the dog, or other living species. For this reason, although the history of mammalian life in the past is a science in itself, it also has close relations with human prehistory. Some of the most characteristic animals of the later Pleistocene, and the successive stages of human cultural development with which they were associated, are listed on the following page. ”

“ A second datum furnished to this discussion by geology and zoology is the negative one that no link of connection is known between man and any preceding animal. If we gather his bones and his implements from the ancient gravel-beds and cave-earths, we do not find them associated with any [361] creature near of kin, nor do we find any such creature in those rich Tertiary beds which have yielded so great harvests of mammalian bones. In the modern world we find nothing nearer to him than such anthropoid apes as the orangs and gorillas. ”

“ In the case of these anthropoid apes no one supposes that they were miraculously created in recent times. On the contrary, we find their type already fully developed in the Miocene, and we infer, that like the horse, camel, and so many other existing mammals, their origin may be traced step by step backwards to some lower and generalized type in the Eocene. Who can doubt that physical man, an animal constructed almost exactly on the same anatomical ground-plan as the anthropoids, came into existence by a similar process? ”

“ The arts of living races help to elucidate what is obscure in those of prehistoric times by the process of reasoning from the known to the unknown. It is the work of the zoologist which enables the palaeontologist to reconstruct the forms of extinct animals from such fragmentary remains as have been preserved, and it is largely from the results of a comparative study of living forms and their habitats that he is able, in his descriptions, to equip the reconstructed types of a past fauna with environments suited to their structure, and to render more complete the picture of their mode of life. ”

“ Many different species of animals characteristic of the Paleolithic Age vanished as completely from Europe as the rude tribes that hunted them, before the appearance of Neolithic tribes. But little change in the fauna of England has taken place in the last two thousand years. So it is obvious that the great change above-mentioned demands many centuries for its accomplishment. Huge animals of the elephant kind, such as the mammoth, no longer crashed through the underbrush, or wallowed in the lakes. ”