perforation evidently occasioned by a pointed instrument while the individual was alive; for there is an effusion of callus or new osseous substance, which could only have resulted from a foreign body having remained in the wound for a considerable time; such an effect, indeed, as would be produced by the head of an arrow or a spear.[1]
Human bones have likewise been found associated with the remains of the extinct gigantic wingless birds (the Moa or Dinornis) of New Zealand, under circumstances that appear to leave no doubt of their having been contemporaneous;[2] but as the extinction of this family of colossal bipeds, like that of the Dodo, probably took place but a few centuries ago, those remains of man and works of art that are associated with the skeletons of the Irish Elk, may be regarded as by far the most ancient vestiges of the human race hitherto discovered. For although Indian arrow-heads and pottery have been dug up from the alluvial clay containing the bones of Mastodons, in the United States of North America, yet the evidence on this point is not conclusive. The same remark applies to the account of human crania having been found in the ossiferous caves of the Brazils, and with bones of the extinct gigantic Edentata of the Pampas.
IV.—On the Probability of discovering traces of the Human Race in the ancient Tertiary Formations.
The facts brought forward in the course of this argument, demonstrate the existence of Man at that remote period when the Irish Elk, and other extinct species and genera of terrestrial mammalia, whose remains occur in the superficial alluvial deposits, inhabited the countries of Europe; and as the Irish Elk was contemporaneous with the Mastodon, Mammoth, and the Carnivora of the caverns, it seems not improbable that sooner or later human remains may be dis- covered coeval with the bones of those animals. The question therefore naturally arises, whether the evidence at present obtained warrants the inference that traces of man's existence will be found in the far more ancient tertiary formations.
- ↑ A species of Ox (Bos longifrons) now extinct, was unquestionably an inhabitant of Britain during the Roman period, for its horns and bones have been found in several places associated with Roman remains; as at Colchester in 1849.—Vide Archaeological Journal.
- ↑ By Mr. Walter Mantell, of Wellington. See a Memoir on the Fossil Birds of New Zealand, Geological Quarterly Journal, 1849 and 1850; and Pictorial Atlas of Organic Remains, Art. Fossil Birds of New Zealand, 1850.
