Ground sloth and glyptodon, sabre-tooth, horse and mastodon, and all
the associated animals of large size, vanished, and South America,
though still retaining its connection with North America, once again
became a land with a mammalian life small and weak compared to that
of North America and the Old World. Its fauna is now marked, for
instance, by the presence of medium-sized deer and cats, fox-like
wolves, and small camel-like creatures, as well as by the presence of
small armadillos, sloths, and ant-eaters. In other words, it includes
diminutive representatives of the giants of the preceding era, both of
the giants among the older forms of mammalia, and of the giants among
the new and intrusive kinds. The change was widespread and
extraordinary, and with our present means of information it is wholly
inexplicable. There was no ice age, and it is hard to imagine any
cause which would account for the extinction of so many species of
huge or moderate size, while smaller representatives, and here and
there medium-sized representatives, of many of them were left.
Now as to all of these phenomena in the evolution of species, there
are, if not homologies, at least certain analogies, in the history of
human societies, in the history of the rise to prominence, of the
development and change, of the temporary dominance, and death or
transformation, of the groups of varying kind which form races or
nations.
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