It is an oft-told story how about a century ago, near the Lena
River in Siberia, there was found the body of a mammoth which had
been safely preserved in ice for thousands of years, how the flesh
was eaten by dogs and bears, and how the eyes and hoofs and
portions of the hide were taken with the skeleton to St.
Petersburg. Since then several other carcasses of the mammoth,
similarly preserved in ice, have been found in the same region,--
one as recently as 1901. We know from these remains that the
animal was clothed in a coat of long, coarse hair, with thick
brown fur beneath.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS. The distribution of
species in the Glacial epoch was far different from that of the
present. In the glacial stages arctic species ranged south into
what are now temperate latitudes. The walrus throve along the
shores of Virginia and the musk ox grazed in Iowa and Kentucky. In
Europe the reindeer and arctic fox reached the Pyrenees. During
the Champlain depression arctic shells lived along the shore of
the arm of the sea which covered the St. Lawrence valley. In
interglacial times of milder climate the arctic fauna-flora
retreated, and their places were taken by plants and animals from
the south. Peccaries, now found in Texas, ranged into Michigan and
New York, while great sloths from South America reached the middle
states. Interglacial beds at Toronto, Canada, contain remains of
forests of maple, elm, and papaw, with mollusks now living in the
Mississippi basin.
What changes in the forests of your region would be brought about,
and in what way, if the climate should very gradually grow colder?
What changes if it should grow warmer?
On the Alps and the highest summits of the White Mountains of New
England are found colonies of arctic species of plants and
insects. How did they come to be thus separated from their home
beyond the arctic circle by a thousand miles and more of temperate
climate impossible to cross?
MAN. Along with the remains of the characteristic animals of the
time which are now extinct there have been found in deposits of
the Glacial epoch in the Old World relics of Pleistocene MAN, his
bones, and articles of his manufacture. In Europe, where they have
best been studied, human relics occur chiefly in peat bogs, in
loess, in caverns where man made his home, and in high river
terraces sometimes eighty and a hundred feet above the present
flood plains of the streams.
In order to understand the development of early man, we should
know that prehistoric peoples are ranked according to the
materials of which their tools were made and the skill shown in
their manufacture. There are thus four well-marked stages of human
culture preceding the written annals of history:
4 The Iron stage.
3 The Bronze stage.
2 The Neolithic (recent stone) stage.
1 The Paleolithic (ancient stone) stage.
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