Wherever man has led a
wandering life, eating fish and leaving their bones behind him, these
heaps are found; and they are always by the sea or by a river.
CHAPTER XVII
HOW THE EARTH LOOKED WHEN THE SHELL MEN AND THE CAVE MEN LIVED
At the time when the cave men and the shell men lived, the earth looked
much as it looks now, as far as hills and rivers and trees and grass
could make it. The earth had its seasons--its spring and summer, its
autumn and winter. Then, as now, the forests dropped their leaves in
autumn. Many leaves of oak, maple, poplar, and hickory fell upon
clayey soil and left their imprints; and the clay afterwards turned to
stone, and the imprints show us that the forests of the cave men were
like our own.
The insects, too, were the same as those of our own fields. We know
this because the gum flowed down the pine trees then as now; and ants,
crickets, butterflies, grasshoppers, and spiders visiting the tree were
held and covered. The gum turned to stone and made the amber of a
later time and kept the insects within it unchanged, and there within
the amber we see the insects that the cave men knew.
The animals, also, were much the same as those of our own time. It
seems strange to us that at that time the reindeer and the mammoth
should have lived in the same country; because the reindeer of our time
lives in a cold country, and the elephant, which is like the mammoth,
lives in a hot country.
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