The
conjunction of these remains clearly showed that man had lived
in England early enough and long enough to pass through times
when there was arctic cold and times when there was torrid heat;
times when great glaciers stretched far down into England and
indeed into the continent, and times whe England had a land
connection with the European continent, and the European
continent with Africa, allowing tropical animals to migrate
freely from Africa to the middle regions of England.
The question of the origin of man at a period vastly earlier
than the sacred chronologists permitted was thus absolutely
settled, but among the questions regarding the existence of man
at a period yet more remote, the Drift period, there was one
which for a time seemed to give the champions of science some
difficulty. The orthodox leaders in the time of Boucher de
Perthes, and for a considerable time afterward, had a weapon of
which they made vigorous use: the statement that no human bones
had yet been discovered in the drift.
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