The animal world in turn was winnowed by the Pleistocene episode. The
hippopotamus, crocodile, turtle, flamingo, and other warm-loving animals
were banished to the warm zone. The mammoth and the rhinoceros met the
cold by developing woolly coats, but the disappearance of the ice, which
had tempted them to this departure, seems to have ended their fitness.
Other animals which became adapted to the cold--arctic bears, foxes,
seals, etc.--have retreated north with the ice, as the sheet melted.
For hundreds of thousands of years Europe and North America, with their
alternating glacial and interglacial periods, witnessed extraordinary
changes and minglings of their animal population. At one time
the reindeer, the mammoth, and the glutton penetrate down to the
Mediterranean, in the next phase the elephant and hippopotamus again
advance nearly to Central Europe. It is impossible here to attempt
to unravel these successive changes and migrations. Great numbers of
species were destroyed, and at length, when the climatic condition
of the earth reached a state of comparative stability, the surviving
animals settled in the geographical regions in which we find them
to-day.
The only question into which we may enter with any fullness is that
of the relation of human development to this grave perturbation of the
condition of the globe. The problem is sometimes wrongly conceived. The
chief point to be determined is not whether man did or did not precede
the Ice-Age. As it is the general belief that he was evolved in the
Tertiary, it is clear that he existed in some part of the earth before
the Ice-Age. Whether he had already penetrated as far north as Britain
and Belgium is an interesting point, but not one of great importance.
We may, therefore, refrain from discussing at any length those disputed
crude stone implements (Eoliths) which, in the opinion of many, prove
his presence in northern regions before the close of the Tertiary.
We may also now disregard the remains of the Java Ape-Man. There are
authorities, such as Deniker, who hold that even the latest research
shows these remains to be Pliocene, but it is disputed. The Java race
may be a surviving remnant of an earlier phase of human evolution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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