Comparison of these bones showed that even in
that remote Quaternary period there were great differences of
race, and here again came in an argument for the yet earlier
existence of man on the earth; for long previous periods must
have been required to develop such racial differences.
Considerations of this kind gave a new impulse to the belief
that man's existence might even date back into the Tertiary
period. The evidence for this earlier origin of man was ably
summed up, not only by its brilliant advocate, Mortillet, but by
a former opponent, one of the most conservative of modern
anthropologists, Quatrefages; and the conclusion arrived at by
both was, that man did really exist in the Tertiary period. The
acceptance of this conclusion was also seen in the more recent
work of Alfred Russel Wallace, who, though very cautious and
conservative, placed the origin of man not only in the Tertiary
period, but in an earlier stage of it than most had dared
assign--even in the Miocene.
The first thing raising a strong presumption, if not giving
proof, that man existed in the Tertiary, was the fact that from
all explored parts of the world came in more and more evidence
that in the earlier Quaternary man existed in different,
strongly marked races and in great numbers.
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