MAN IN THE TERTIARIES. 
AN ADDRESS 
Before the Section of 
Anthropology of the 
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 
FOR THE / 
Advancement of Science. 
By EDWARD 8. MORSE, 
VICE PRESIDENT. 
1884. MAN IN THE TERTIARIES. 
jlisr 
ADDRESS 
BEFORE THE 
SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY 
OF 
THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 
FOR THE 
ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, 
AT 
PHILADELPHIA, SEPTEMBER 4, 1884. 
BY 
EDWARD S. MORSE, 
VICE PRESIDENT. 
From Vol. XXXIII Proceedings of the Association. 
PRINTED AT THE SALEM PRESS, 
SALEM, MASS. 
1884. ADDRESS 
BY 
PROFESSOR EDWARD S. MORSE, 
VICE PRESIDENT, SECTION H, ANTHROPOLOGY. 
MAN IN THE TEE TIABIES. 
Man, profoundly interested in his origin and antiquity, finds 
himself hampered in his investigations by the opinions and prej- 
udices that have grown up with him. He finds it well-nigh impos- 
sible to step outside of himself and regard himself as a mammal 
among hundreds of other species of mammals. 
The formidable dogmas which he has erected, and perpetuated 
through centuries, to explain his origin, have become obstructive 
barriers which have had to be assailed, one after the other, to 
clear the way for rational investigation. The arrogance, fury 
and final desperation of their defence have been only faintly por- 
trayed by history. 
The most formidable, and indeed the chief, of these barriers was 
the one interwoven with theological dogma. Its foundation was 
laid fifteen centuries ago, and each century added its accumulations, 
until, finally, by violence and otherwise, it became a part of man’s 
inheritance, to assail which was to imperil his most cherished con- 
victions. With the partial removal of these barriers, one becomes 
mindful of the precious evidences of man’s antiquity, which have 
been overlooked, or forever lost; evidences all the more precious 
because so difficult to obtain. 
These barriers being no longer obstructive, others arose, having 
for their foundation evidence, and having for their builders men 
who belonged to that class which had been mainly instrumental 
in clearing the ground of previous obstacles. 
The most important of these barriers was the one erected by 
Cuvier in the declaration that man being the last and highest 
3 4 
SECTION H. 
creation, and intimately associated with the present fauna, could 
never have been contemporary with the extinct species of mammals 
found in the quaternary beds. Fortified by this barrier, science 
repelled for a time all evidences brought forward to show that 
man’s remains were synchronous with those of extinct mammals, 
and the authors of these evidences were treated with neglect and 
even ignominy. 
The assaults of this barrier are now historic. The final and 
triumphant vindication of Perthes, Schmerling and others, and the 
consequent overthrow of Cuvier’s massive authority in this matter, 
are familiar to every student of archaeology. 
No sooner had the Cuvierian barrier against quaternary man 
been demolished, than smaller barriers of precisely the same nature 
were erected against tertiary man. 
Gaudry, while admitting the authenticity of the worked flints, 
discovered by the Abbe Bourgeois in the miocene of Thenay, could 
not admit that they were those of man, because he says, “There 
was not in the middle of the miocene epoch a single species now 
extant. Considering the question from a palaeontological point of 
view it is difficult to believe that the flint carvers of Thenay re- 
mained uninfluenced by this universal change.” 
Professor Dawkins1 in a similar line of argument assumes that 
“man, the most highly specialized form in the animal kingdom, 
cannot be looked for until the lower animals by which he is now 
surrounded made their appearance. We cannot imagine him to 
have been living in the eocene age when animal life was not 
sufficiently differentiated to present us with living genera of placen- 
tal mammals. Nor is there any probability of his having ap- 
peared on the earth in the miocene, because of the absence of 
placental mammals belonging to living species. It is most un- 
likely that man should appear in a fauna in which there was no 
other living mammal. 
“He belongs to a more advanced stage of evolution than that 
presented by the mid-miocene of Thenay, in which flint splinters 
fashioned by man are said to have occurred. Up to this time the 
evolution of the animal kingdom had advanced no farther than 
the Simiadce in the direction of man, and the apes then haunting 
the forests of Italy, France and Germany were the most highly organ- 
ized types. We may also look at the question from another point of 
i N. A. Review, Vol. 137, No. 4. ADDRESS BY EDWARD S. MORSE. 
5 
view. If man were upon the earth in the miocene age, it is in- 
credible that he should not have become something else while those 
changes were going on in the conditions of life by which all the 
miocene land mammalia have been so profoundly affected that they 
have either assumed new forms or been exterminated. It is im- 
possible to believe that man should have been an exception to 
the law of change,” and for similar reasons Professor Dawkins 
says we cannot expect to find traces of man in the pliocene age. 
The student fully imbued with these opinions, the same in kind 
with those of Gaudry, is inclined to repudiate or modify the inter- 
pretations of all evidences bearing on man’s existence before the 
quaternary. 
That such barriers are really obstructive is plainly evident. 
In thus authoritatively setting a limit to man’s antiquity a check 
is not only put upon research but, if firmly grounded in the minds 
of some, evidence, if met with, is mistaken or ignored. 
The history of paleontology is strewn with these barriers, bar- 
riers not only limiting groups of animals to certain horizons, but 
repeatedly placing a limit to the dawn of life itself. How well do 
we recall the timeworn geological terms characterizing the different 
geological periods as they were recognized in our younger days, 
and how many thousands of vertical feet have been recovered 
from the Azoic and brought into orderly sequence, defined by 
names which are getting to be equally familiar. 
As the objections to the occurrence of man in the tertiaries are 
in every case purely theoretical, they may, with perfect fairness, 
be combated on theoretical grounds. 
In the theological barrier the objection to man’s high antiquity 
rested solely on the fact that it was in direct conflict with Mosaic 
cosmogony, and yet this barrier, unsupported by the faintest 
scrap of evidence, thwarted the study of man’s antiquity up to 
within very recent years. 
In the Cuvierian barrier man was assumed to be structurally 
the highest mammal, and consequently must have appeared last. 
In the analogous barriers of Gaudry, Dawkins and others, the 
assumption is that since orders, families and genera have become 
extinct, it is inconceivable that man should have remained un- 
changed while those profound modifications and extinctions were 
going on. 
This position has been greatly strengthened by the idea that 6 
section h ; 
man has been evolved from the higher apes, and that his nearest 
relations among these creatures are those which are supposed to 
have appeared last in the sequence. The troublesome fact, how- 
ever, confronts us that we find the evidences of man associated 
with extinct apes, and the gap between them is by no means 
closed in these earlier horizons. 
Assuming that man has sprung from the same stem with the 
higher apes, and assuming, moreover, that he is limited to the 
quaternary, we do not find in the earlier deposits what we should 
have a right to expect, namely, generalized forms of man, that is, 
creatures that while markedly ape-like in character were unques- 
tionably man. In the earliest remains of man, thus far recognized, 
we do have the most pronounced ape-like features, as in the 
well-known Engis and Neanderthal, and in the more recently dis- 
covered Tilbury and Podhaba skulls. But all these forms are still 
man, with a fair brain case whatever may be inferred regarding 
the depth and number of his cerebral convolutions. The modifica- 
tions toward an ape-like structure, slight as they may appear, 
have the deepest significance in clearly indicating the direction 
from which he sprang. 
If palaeontologists are right the first anthropoid ape has been 
found in the middle eocene, and later still a more generalized 
form called Oreopithecus which, according to Gervais, had affini- 
ties with the anthropoid apes, macaques and baboons. Side by 
side with these early apes are found chipped flints, if we are to 
accept the authority of their discoverer, Bourgeois, and the opin- 
ion of Mortillet and others. 
If man existed then, and on theoretical grounds there is no 
reason to believe that he did not exist, where are we to look for 
the approach of these two groups? Surely far beyond the limits 
where these evidences had hitherto been found. We must not be 
content to trace out the evidences of man in his work, for before 
the rudest flint was fashioned by him he must have used natural 
fragments of sticks and stones, and even this faculty must have 
indicated an advance far beyond that of his progenitors, who had 
not acquired even the habit of handling weapons. The earliest 
evidences must be sought for in his remains, and notin his works, 
and here we meet with a difficulty which unfortunately not only 
accompanies the remains of man and those creatures having an 
affinity with him, but of other groups of animals as well; condi- 7 
ADDRESS BY EDWARD S. MORSE. 
tions which have rendered the preservation of their remains a mat- 
ter of chance; conditions duly recognized by palaeontologists 
pertaining to their perishable nature, life habits or the composition 
of the rocks in which such and such forms must of necessity have oc- 
curred. While the remains of certain groups of animals are scat- 
tered through the rocks in the greatest profusion, of other groups, 
perhaps equally numerous in individuals, the scantiest traces are 
met with. The very conditions of life which characterized early 
man and his associates render the preservation of their remains a 
matter of extreme improbability. The herbivora, in herds, seek- 
ing the shelter of watery places to avoid heat and insect annoy- 
ances would, in dying, become mired, and thus preserved in a 
matrix for the future explorer. The heavier mammals, like the 
mastodon, would become engulfed by their own weight under con- 
ditions which would preserve them, and these are not suppositi- 
tious cases, but in accordance with facts connected with their 
discovery and preservation. Aquatic forms are infinitely more 
abundant as fossils than land or aerial forms. Professor Marsh, 
in his monograph on the fossil-toothed birds of America, testifies 
to the extreme rarity of the remains of land birds over those of 
aquatic habits. 
The arboreal ancestors of man, and the probable habits of man 
himself, would leave their bones to bleach in the field or forest, to 
decompose and disappear long before an entombment were possi- 
ble. It was only when man acquired the art of sepulture or 
sought refuge in caves that the preservation of his remains be- 
came assured. 
Even after man sought the shelter of caves or acquired the art 
of changes have been so widespread and profound 
as nearly to obliterate all evidences of those places. Professor 
Dawkins, the eminent archaeologist and geologist, says that while 
there have been caverns in all geological periods, they have all 
been obliterated by “the rain, the alternations of heat and cold, 
the acids evolved from decaying vegetation and the breakers on 
the seashore,” and this abrasion and destruction have been so 
extensive and thorough that Professor Dawkins recalls only two 
caverns that can be said to be as old as the middle pliocene. 
Even when these caves have been preserved, the harvest from 
them has been of the most meagre description. 
Schmerling, who examined nearly fifty caves in Belgium, found 8 
SECTION II. 
human remains in only two or three of them. Lund, who exam- 
ined eight hundred caves in Brazil, found only six containing 
human remains. It would seem as if the elements had conspired 
to efface every record of that creature who alone takes any inter- 
est in his own origin. We survey large areas rich in the works of 
man, yet find no traces of bones of man himself. The Swiss 
lake-dwellers we know minutely from the debris of their ruined 
villages, grain and even the bread they made being preserved ; 
and yet human bones are of scanty occurrence. The Danish peat- 
beds have as yet never yielded human bones, though stone imple- 
ments and objects of various kinds from these deposits enrich the 
museums of Denmark. 
The shell heap deposits all over the world rarely contain human 
bones. It is said that none have been found in the Danish shell 
heaps, though Wyman found a few in the Florida shell mounds, 
and the deposits in Japan reveal similar traces. 
Chief among the agencies in destroying the evidences of man 
have been the glacial floods, and these, if the glacialists are right, 
have occurred, one, during the earlier pliocene, and the other at 
the beginning of the quaternary. To these overwhelming and 
annihilating ice torrents, grinding, sweeping and inundating the 
north temperate zone, must be attributed the almost complete ob- 
literation of records we hold most precious ; and in their gradual 
recedenee no less destructive agencies were at work in scooping 
out valleys, inundating immense areas and covering broad tracts 
of land by their detritus. 
Even man to-day with his colossal works of engineering skill 
would in the face of a glacial flood yield the last traces of the 
evidences of his existence. A few corroded metal 
and bits of glazed pottery alone might survive. What must such 
a torrent have been to primitive man with his simple and rude 
appliances ! 
It would seem from many facts that early man lived in the 
vicinity of water, either on the banks of rivers, or along the coast 
line. The reasons for this are obvious enough ; food was always 
procurable at every receding tide and when man acquired the art 
of boat-making, natural thoroughfares were always available and 
of greater necessity from the dense forests which covered the land. 
Now it is just these regions that have been most profoundly 
modified since glacial days and indeed in all times. ADDRESS BY EDWARD S. MORSE. 
9 
Ancient river beds have been widened, lowered and obliterated, 
coast lines have changed, great tracts have disappeared beneath 
the waves and degradations of the coast lines by the pounding of 
the waves have been universal. 
Professor George H. Cook, state geologist of New Jersey, calls 
attention to the universal subsidence of the coast line from the 
Carolinas to Greenland. The erosion of all the shores and islands 
along the coast of New England is very marked. kShell heaps are 
everywhere met with, cropping out and crumbling down with the 
decaying banks, and the records of man thus lost can never be 
regained. 
If Saporta’s idea is correct then, of course, the traces of these 
primitive people are buried under paleochrystic ice. Saporta 
suggested the idea that man, originating in the north, had been 
pushed southward by successive waves of people till the primitive 
wave was forced into the extremities of the southern continents, 
and that the remnants of this ancient wave are seen in the Tas- 
manians, Bushmen and Fuegans. 
That such a wave could be forced the length of the world, through 
such vicissitudes of climate and accompanying conditions, un- 
mixed and unbroken seems incredible. Far more probable would 
it be to assume an antarctic continent under genial conditions in 
which these primitive races lived, I will not say originated, and 
whence successive waves emanated, becoming modified by their 
new surroundings as they receded from their point of origin. 
The submergence of this region leaving remnants of these extra- 
ordinary, low and uniformly dolichocephalic types as we recognize 
them in the Patagonians, Tasmanians, Australians, Bushmen, 
Veddahs and others, and precisely where we might expect to find 
them. If either supposition is true the earlier traces of these 
people are forever buried beyond recovery. 
In the face of all this destruction and effacement must be reck- 
oned also the prejudices of man himself, which have caused the loss 
of precious material, or of opportunities which can never be re- 
gained. Ancient skeletons have been exhumed only to be prompt- 
ly buried again ; others encountered in excavations and left undis- 
turbed through superstitious fear. Even at the present time the 
recognition of all evidences bearing on the high antiquity of man 
is checked by a scrutiny that oftentimes becomes well-nigh ridicu- 
lous. The collection and study of the remains of other fossil 10 
SECTION H. 
mammals go on unchallenged. Material is collected and allotted 
to its proper horizon without dispute. The archaeologist, how- 
ever, is beset by a class who repudiate his facts, look upon his 
evidences as deceptive or fraudulent, and within very recent times 
have not hesitated to apply terms of equal opprobrium to the in- 
vestigators of these things. 
We are continually warned that caution should be exercised in 
accepting evidence not verified by scientific observers ; at the 
same time we should be on our guard to repudiate all protests 
against the high antiquity of man made by those not equally well 
informed. 
From the preceding pages it is evident that the discovery of 
the remains of early man, or rather of primitive man, is highly 
improbable. Nevertheless we need not despair; other forms of 
animals have been equally rare for a time until some unlooked- 
for discovery has brought to light a rich mine of material. Until 
this good fortune comes to us we must be content to reason from 
the known to the unknown. 
In regard to the physical characteristics of man, it has been 
wondered by Gaudry that man could have remained unchanged 
while so many other forms have been modified or become extinct. 
That slight changes in the osteological structure of man have 
taken place he must admit, and that mammals of huge form and 
great variety have become extinct, and others profoundly mod- 
ified since his appearance, are equally certain. 
These facts he recognizes so far as pleistocene man is concerned, 
but the great disproportion in the changes that man may have 
undergone, and the known changes of other mammals since mio- 
cene days, seem too improbable to be accepted. On the other 
hand, it seems reasonable to believe that the moment the ancestors 
of man possessed the power of banding together in communities 
and of using weapons, they became capable of rendering in- 
operative the very influences which were so active in modifying or 
exterminating their mammalian associates. 
IIow far these conditions were settled in the quaternary may be 
seen in the fact that while man could endure an arctic climate, 
his anthropoid and more distant pithicoid relations bathed in a 
tropical heat. Indeed, the latter disappeared from Europe forever 
on the approach of the cold wave, while man survived. 
The fact that man and his near associates have been regarded ADDRESS BY EDWARD S. MORSE. 
11 
as, structurally, the highest forms of mammals, has led to the 
natural belief that they must have been last evolved. 
That man is preeminently the highest form intellectually goes 
without the saying. In the words of Topinard, “The supremacy 
which our very exalted intellectual faculties secure to us, is con- 
firmed to us by the existence of an exceptional development of 
the organ which is its seat.” Man has three or four times more 
brain than the highest ape. This excessive disproportion, even 
taking the capacity of the earliest crania, must presuppose a long 
line of ancestors in which this capacity was less and less. 
The same progress that man and his near relatives have shown, 
in an unparalleled degree in the development of the brain, is also 
remarkably conspicuous in other mammals and vertebrates lower 
down in the scale, as shown so admirably by Marsh. 
The size of the brain case went on increasing from the earlier 
to the later geological periods out of all proportion to other 
modifications of structure. 
In relation to this subject it seems that sufficient importance 
has never been given to the generalizations of Cope wherein he 
considers the relations of man with tertiary mammals ; and until 
sufficient recognition has been accorded to these generalizations 
I feel justified in again bringing them forward. In these consid- 
erations Professor Cope shows that “the mammals of the lower 
eocene exhibit a greater percentage of types that walk on the 
soles of their feet, while the successive periods exhibit an increas- 
ing number of those that walk on the toes, while the hoofed ani- 
mals and Carnivora of recent times nearly all have the heel high 
in the air, the principal exceptions being the elephant and bear 
families.” lie then calls attention to the progressive osteological 
changes of the foot from the earlier to the later t}Tpes through 
several lines of descent, and says ; “ The relation of man to this 
history is highly interesting. Thus, in all generalized points, his 
limbs are those of a primitive type so common in the eocene. He 
is plantigrade ; has five toes ; separate tarsals and carpals ; short 
heel; flat astragalus, and neither hoofs nor claws, but something 
between the two: the bones of the forearm and leg are not so 
unequal as in the higher types, and remain entirely distinct 
from each other, and the ankle joint is not so perfect as in 
many of them. In his teeth his character is thoroughly primitive. 12 
SECTION II 
* * * His structural superiority consists solely in the com- 
plexity and size of the brain. A very important lesson is derived 
from these and kindred facts. The monkeys were anticipated in 
the greater fields of the world’s activity by more powerful rivals. 
The ancestors of the ungulates held the fields and the swamps, 
and the Carnivora, driven by hunger, learned the arts and cruel- 
ties of the chase. The weaker ancestors of the quadrumana 
possessed neither speed nor weapons of offence or defence, and 
nothing but an arboreal life was left them, when they developed the 
prehensile powers of the feet. Their digestive system unspecial- 
ized, their food various, their life the price of ceaseless vigilance, 
no wonder that their inquisitiveness and wakefulness were stimu- 
lated and developed, which is the condition of progressive intel- 
ligence.” And Professor Fiske shows, on other grounds, that 
when variations in intelligence became more important than vari- 
ations in physical structure, they were seized upon to the relative 
exclusion of the latter. 
I am not aware that these postulates have ever been gainsaid, 
and their admission answers the objections urged by Gaudry and 
others, and explains on rational grounds why man has continued 
to persist for so long a time with physical characteristics so 
slightly modified, while other forms were changing or becoming 
extinct. 
As to his structural affinities with the higher apes, it has been 
shown that his relations are not only with these forms but scattered 
through the whole range from the gorilla down, and osteological- 
ly even with the half-apes, the lemuroids, and these in turn have 
affinities with those perplexing forms, the aye-aye and tarsier. 
As to his osteological affinities with the Lemuroidae, insisted 
upon by Mivart, it is worthy of note that these forms have beeu 
discovered in the lower eocene of both continents. 
If these structural affinities are valid, then we must look far 
beyond and below the present higher apes for the diverging 
branches of man’s ancestry. Among the many evidences of the 
early origin of man is the one that reveals the early establishment 
of well marked types which must have required an enormous 
lapse of time to have established. Repeatedly the evidences 
are brought forward, by different investigators, that the various 
types of skulls are met with among the earliest traces of man. ADDRESS BY EDWARD S. MORSE. 
13 
Without mentioning the comparatively recently lake-dwellers 
of Switzerland, among whom Dr. His believes he has discov- 
ered four different types of skulls, we turn to the labors of Professor 
Kollman, who has made an exhaustive study of the crania of 
various races in both hemispheres. The results of these studies 
have established the existence of races of people bearing certain 
unchangeable characters so far back as the remains of man have 
been detected. Among those races living to-day he calls atten- 
tion to the Malay and Papuan existing for so long a time under 
similar tropical influences, and yet so markedly different in their 
racial characters. 
From a study of the skulls, both ancient and modern, of the 
native races of North and South America, as well as those of 
other parts of the world, Dr. Kollman comes to the opinion that 
the sub-species of man became fixed in the preglacial period, 
and through the vicissitudes of time a greater- or less influence 
has been exerted upon varieties in different areas. 
Mr. Keane, in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute for 
February, 1880, shows that the great Asiatic types, known as the 
Caucasian and Mongolian, have from prehistoric times occupied 
the Chinese peninsula. And these evidences are continually mul- 
tiplying, not only in regard to the diversity of type among early 
races, but to their equally wide dispersion as well. 
Furthermore, the evidences go to show that early man had be- 
come sufficiently differentiated to acclimate himself to widely 
different regions of the earth’s surface, ranging from the torrid to 
the arctic, while the apes were still confined to the torrid zone. 
The remains of his feasts show that he had early become omniv- 
orous. 
These facts in themselves indicate a wide gap then separating 
man from the higher apes, and add further reason for his ability 
to remain unaltered amid the universal change going on about 
him. 
The most powerful argument, in favor of the belief that man 
must have existed in the tertiaries, lies in the very important fact 
that his earliest remains are not confined to any one region of 
the earth which might have been a centre of distribution—a 
paleolithic garden of Eden—but are found in all four quarters of 
the earth, as the rapidly multiplying evidences are testifying. 14 
section n. 
To go no farther back than the river-drift men, if, with Dawkins, 
we admit that these are the first reliable traces of man, we find 
that these people were not confined to any one special region of 
the earth’s crust, but, on the contrary, are found impartially scat- 
tered from tropical India, through Europe, to the continent of 
North America. They could not have been distributed through 
the northern approaches of the continents unless this distribution 
occurred in preglacial times, because, as Dawkins shows, an ice- 
barrier must have spanned the great oceans in northern latitudes. 
It seems an almost fruitless speculation to inquire into the 
manner of their dispersion, yet one is tempted to surmise that if 
they originated in the tropics, then submerged continents must 
be restored to offer the means necessary for such a dispersal. 
If, on the other hand, their home was in the north or south tem- 
perate zone, and the distribution circumpolar, which seems more 
probable, then we have another evidence of the wide separation 
which the race had undergone, at that early day, from its tropical 
relatives, the apes. Whatever the facts may ultimately show, this 
unparalleled distribution of a people in the lowest stages of 
savagery proves beyond question that man must have preexisted 
for an immense period of time, for, with the known fixity of low 
savage tribes, the time required to disperse this people over the 
whole earth can only be measured by geological centuries. 
The farther we penetrate into the past, and ascertain some 
definite horizon of man’s occurrence, other observers in widely 
different regions of the earth bring to light traces of man’s 
existence in equally low horizons. The remoteness of man’s 
existence in time and space is so vast that, to borrow an astro- 
nomical term, no parallax has thus far been established by 
which we can even faintly approximate the distance of the horizon 
in which he first appeared. By this fact we are justified in the 
assumption that the progenitors of quaternary man, under different 
genera possibly, must be sought for in the tertiaries. 
Science will not gain by the erection of any theoretical barriers 
against tertiary man, until such definite forms are met with as 
shall reasonably settle the beds in which he first occurred. 
We know in what rocks it would be obviously absurd to look 
for his remains or the remains of any mammal. So long, how- 
ever, as forms are found, in the lowest beds of the tertiaries, hav- ADDRESS BY EDWARD S. MORSE. 
15 
ing the remotest affinity to his order, we must not cease our 
care in scanning unbiassed, even the rocks of this horizon, for 
traces of that creature who until within a few short years was re- 
garded as five thousand, eight hundred and some odd years old, 
and who despite of protest and prejudice has asserted his claim 
to an antiquity so great and a dispersion so profound that thus 
far no tendency to a convergence of his earliest traces has been 
demonstrated.