Preying upon the defenseless members of this heterogeneous fauna were the great machærodonts, or sabre-tooth tigers, which ranged over Europe and northern Africa and into Asia. It does not appear that the true lions (_Felis leo_) had as yet entered Europe. An intercommunication of life over a vast area extending 6,000 miles from the Thames valley on the west to India on the southeast is indicated by the presence of six or more similar or related species of elephants and rhinoceroses. Twenty-five hundred miles southeast of the foot-hills of the Himalayas similar herds of mammals, but in an earlier stage of evolution, roamed over the island of Java, which was then a part of the Asiatic mainland. THE TRINIL RACE OF JAVA The human interest in this great life throng lies in the fact that the migration routes opened by these great races of animals may also have afforded a pathway for the earliest races of men. Thus the discovery of the Trinil race in central Java, amidst a fauna closely related to that of the foot-hills of the Himalayas and more remotely related to that of southern Europe, has a more direct bearing upon our subject than would at first appear. [Illustration: FIG. 29. Restoration of _Pithecanthropus_, the Java ape-man, modelled by the Belgian artist Mascré, under the direction of Professor A. Rutot, of Brussels, Belgium.] [Illustration: FIG. 30. The Solo or Bengawan River in central Java. Scene of the discovery of the type specimen of _Pithecanthropus erectus_ in 1894. After Selenka and Blanckenhorn. Compare map (Fig. 32, p. 75).]