A very keen controversy is still being
conducted in regard to them, and some of the highest authorities
in England, France, and Germany deny that they show any trace of
human workmanship or usage. Although they have the support of
such high authorities as Sir J. Prestwich, Sir E. Ray Lankester,
Lord Avebury, Dr. Keane, Dr. Blackmore, Professor Schwartz, etc.,
they are one of those controverted testimonies on which it would
be ill-advised to rely in such a work as this.
We must say, then, that we have no undisputed traces of man in
the Tertiary Era. The Tertiary implements which have been at
various times claimed in France, Italy, and Portugal are equally
disputed; the remains which were some years ago claimed as
Tertiary in the United States are generally disallowed; and the
recent claims from South America are under discussion. Yet it is
the general feeling of anthropologists that man was evolved in
the Tertiary Era. On the one hand, the anthropoid apes were
highly developed by the Miocene period, and it would be almost
incredible that the future human stock should linger hundreds of
thousands of years behind them. On the other hand, when we find
the first traces of man in the Pleistocene, this development has
already proceeded so far that its earlier phase evidently goes
back into the Tertiary.
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