Note 60 — Chapter II
Reading edition
It is asserted that the bones of mammoths and mastodons, in many instances, appear to have been grazed or cut by flint arrow-heads or other stone weapons. These accounts have often been discredited, because it has been assumed that the extinction of these animals was more ancient than the existence of man. Recent discoveries render it highly probable, if not certain, that this conclusion has been too hastily adopted. Lyell observes: "These stories * * must in future be more carefully inquired into, for we can scarcely doubt that the mastodon in North America lived down to a period when the mammoth coexisted with man in Europe."—Antiquity of Man, p. 354.
On page 143 of the volume just quoted, the same very distinguished writer remarks that man "no doubt played his part in hastening the era of the extinction" of the large pachyderms and beasts of prey; but, as contemporaneous species of other animals, which man cannot be supposed, to have extirpated, have also become extinct, he argues that the disappearance of the quadrupeds in question cannot be ascribed to human action alone.
On this point it may be observed that, as we cannot know what precise physical conditions were necessary to the existence of a given extinct organism, we cannot say how far such conditions may have been modified by the action of man, and he may therefore have influenced the life of such organisms in ways, and to an extent, of which we can form no just idea.