the Old World (for in America the succession is different) in the
Pliocene period. In the older Pliocene we have nothing but mastodons,
in the newer nothing but elephants, and the transition from the
older to the newer type is distinctly traced by intermediate forms
in the fossil fauna of the Sewalek hills. The _Elephas Meridionalis_
is the oldest known form of true elephant, and it is characteristic
of all the different formations of the Upper Pliocene, while it is
nowhere found in cave or river deposits which belong unmistakably
to the Quaternary. It was a gigantic animal, fully four feet higher
than the tallest existing elephant, and bulky in proportion. It had
a near relation in the _Elephas Antiquus_, which was of equal size,
and different from it mainly in a more specialized structure of the
molar teeth, and the remains of this elephant have been found in the
lower strata of some of the oldest bone-caves and river-silts, as to
which it is difficult to say whether they are older or younger than
the first glacial period. The remains of a pygmy elephant, no bigger
than an ass, have also been found in the Upper Pliocene, at Malta
and Sicily, and those of the existing African elephant in Sicily and
Spain. It would seem, therefore, that the Upper Pliocene was the
golden age of the elephants where they were most widely diffused,
and comprised most species and most varieties, both in the direction
of gigantic and of diminutive size. But in passing from the Pliocene
into the Quaternary period, they all, or almost all, disappeared,
and were superseded by the _Elephas Primigenius_, or mammoth, which
had put in a first appearance in the latest Pliocene, and became
the principal representative of the genus _Elephas_ in Europe and
Northern Asia down to comparatively recent times.
This succession is confirmed by that of the rhinoceros, of which
several species were contemporary with the _Elephas Meridionalis_,
while the _Rhinoceros tichorinus_, or woolly rhinoceros, who is the
inseparable companion of the mammoth, appeared and disappeared with
him.
In these matters, those who are not themselves specialists must
rely on authority, and when we find Lyell, Geikie, and Prestwich
coinciding with all modern French, German, Italian, and Belgian
geologists, in considering _Elephas Meridionalis_ as one of the
characteristic Upper Pliocene fauna, we can have no hesitation in
adopting their conclusion.
In this case the section of St. Prest, near Chartres, affords a first
absolutely secure foothold in tracing our way backwards towards human
origins beyond the Quaternary. The sands and gravels of a river which
ran on the bed rock without any underlying glacial _débris_ are here
exposed. It had no relation to the existing river Eure, the bed
of which it crosses at an angle, and it must have run before that
river had begun to excavate its valley, and when the drainage of
the country was quite different. The sands contain an extraordinary
number of bones of the _Elephas Meridionalis_, associated with old
species of rhinoceros, and other Pliocene species. Lyell, who visited
the spot, had no hesitation in calling it a Pliocene river. In fact
it never would have been disputed if the question of man's antiquity
had not been involved in it, for in these sands and gravels have been
found numerous specimens of cut bones of the _Elephas Meridionalis_,
together with the flint knives which made the cuts, and other stone
implements, rude but still unmistakably of the usual palæolithic type.
The subjoined plate will enable the reader to compare the arrow-head,
which is the commonest type found at St. Prest, with a comparatively
recent arrow-head from the Yorkshire wolds, and see how impossible
it is to concede human agency to the post-glacial and deny it to the
Pliocene specimen.
[Illustration: PLIOCENE.
ARROW-HEAD--ST. PREST.
(Hamy, _Palæontologie Humaine_.)
POST-GLACIAL.
ARROW-HEAD--YORKSHIRE WOLDS.
(Evans, _Stone Implements_.)]
In this and other instances, cut bones afford one of the most
certain tests of the presence of man. The bones tell their own
tale, and their geological age can be certainly identified. Sharp
cuts could only be made on them while the bones were fresh, and
the state of fossilization, and presence of dendrites or minute
crystals alike on the side of the cuts and on the bone, negative any
idea of forgery. The cuts can be compared with those on thousands
of undoubted human cuts on bones from the reindeer and other later
periods, and with cuts now made with old flint knives on fresh bones.
All these tests have been applied by some of the best anthropologists
of the day, who have made a special study of the subject, and who
have shown their caution and good faith by rejecting numerous
specimens which did not fully meet the most rigorous requirements,
with the result that in several cases there could be no reasonable
doubt that the cuts were really made by human implements guided by
human hands. The only possible alternative suggested is, that they
might have been made by gnawing animals or fishes. But as Quatrefages
observes, even an ordinary carpenter would have no difficulty in
distinguishing between a clean cut made by a sharp knife, and a
groove cut by repeated strokes of a narrow chisel; and how much
more would it be impossible for a Professor trained to scientific
investigation, and armed with a microscope, to mistake a groove
gnawed out by a shark or rodent for a cut made by a flint knife. No
one who will refer to Quatrefages' _Hommes fossilés_, and look at the
figures of cut bones given there from actual photographs, can feel
any doubt that the cuts there delineated were made by flint knives
held by the human hand.
In addition to this instance of St. Prest, Quatrefages in his
_Histoire des Races Humaines_, published in 1887, and containing
the latest summary of the evidence generally accepted by French
geologists as to Tertiary man, says that, omitting doubtful cases,
the presence of man has been signalized in deposits undoubtedly
Tertiary in five different localities, viz. in France by the
Abbé Bourgeois, in the Lower Miocene of Thenay near Pontlevoy
(Loir-et-Cher); by M. Rames at Puy Courny near Aurillac (Cantal), in
the Upper Miocene; in Italy by M. Capellini in the Pliocene of Monte
Aperto near Sienna, and by M. Ragazzoni in the Lower Pliocene of
Castelnedolo near Brescia; in Portugal by M. Ribiero at Otta, in the
valley of the Tagus, in the Upper Miocene.
[Illustration: CUTS WITH FLINT KNIFE ON RIB OF
BALÆONOTUS--PLIOCENE. From Monte Aperto, Italy. (Quatrefages,
_Histoire des Races Humaines_.)]
[Illustration: CUT MAGNIFIED BY MICROSCOPE.]
To these may be added the cut bones of Halitherium, a Miocene
species, from Pouancé (Maine et Loire), by M. Delaunay; and those
on the tibia of a Rhinoceros Etruscus, and other fossil bones from
the Upper Pliocene of the Val d'Arno. In addition to these are the
numerous remains, certainly human and presumably Tertiary, from
North and South America, which will be referred to later, and a
considerable number of cases where there is a good deal of _primâ
facie_ evidence for Tertiary human remains, but where doubts remain
and their authenticity is still denied by competent authorities.
Among these ought to be placed the instance from Portugal, for
although a large celt very like those of the oldest palæolithic type
was undoubtedly found in strata which had always been considered as
Miocene, the Congress of Palæontologists who assembled at Lisbon were
divided in opinion as to the conclusiveness of the evidence.
But there remain six cases in the Old World, ranging from St. Prest
in the Upper Pliocene to Thenay in the Lower Miocene, in which the
preponderance of evidence and authority in support of Tertiary man
seems so decisive, that nothing but a preconceived bias against the
antiquity of the human race can refuse to accept it.
I have already discussed this evidence so fully in a former work
(_Problems of the Future_, ch. v. on Tertiary Man) that I do not
propose to go over the ground again, but merely to refer briefly to
some of the more important points which come out in the above six
instances. In three of them, those of the Halitherium of Pouancé, the
Balæonotus of Monte Aperto, and the rhinoceros of the Val d'Arno,
the evidence depends entirely on cut bones, and in the case of St.
Prest on that of cut bones of _Elephas Meridionalis_ combined with
palæolithic implements.
The evidence from cut bones is for the reasons already stated
very conclusive, and when a jury of four or five of the leading
authorities, such as Quatrefages, Hamy, Mortillet, and Delaunay, who
have devoted themselves to this branch of inquiry, and have shown
their great care and conscientiousness by rejecting numbers of cases
which did not satisfy the most rigid tests, arrive unanimously at the
conclusion that many of the cuts on the bones of Tertiary animals
are unmistakably of human origin, there seems no room left for any
reasonable scepticism. I cannot doubt therefore that we have positive
evidence to confirm the existence of man, at any rate from the
Pliocene period, through the long series of ages intervening between
it and the Quaternary.
But the discovery of flint implements at Puy Courny in the Upper
Miocene, and at Thenay in the Lower Miocene, carry us back a long
step further, and involves such important issues as to the origin of
the human race, that it may be well to recapitulate the evidence upon
which those discoveries rest.
The first question is as to the geological age of the deposits in
which these chipped implements have been found. In the case of
Puy Courny this is beyond dispute. In the central region of the
Auvergne there have been two series of volcanic eruptions, the latest
towards the close of the Pliocene or commencement of the Quaternary
period, and an older one, which, from its position and fossils,
is clearly of the Upper Miocene. The gravels in which the chipped
flints were discovered by M. Rames, a very competent geologist, were
interstratified with tuffs and lavas of these older volcanoes, and no
doubt as to their geological age was raised by the Congress of French
archæologists to whom they were submitted. The whole question turns
therefore on the sufficiency of the proofs of human origin, as to
which the same Congress expressed themselves as fully satisfied.
[Illustration: FLINT SCRAPER FROM HIGH LEVEL DRIFT, KENT.
(Prestwich.)]
The specimens consist of several well-known palæolithic types, celts,
scrapers, arrow-heads and flakes, only ruder and smaller than those
of later periods. They were found at three different localities in
the same stratum of gravel, and comply with all the tests by which
the genuineness of Quaternary implements is ascertained, such as
bulbs of percussion, conchoidal fractures, and above all, intentional
chipping in a determinate direction. It is evident that a series
of small parallel chips or trimmings, confined often to one side
only of the flint, and which have the effect of bringing it into a
shape which is known from Quaternary and recent implements to be
adapted for human use, imply intelligent design, and could not have
been produced by the casual collisions of pebbles rolled down by an
impetuous torrent. Thus the annexed plate of an implement from the
high level drift on the North Downs, shown by Professor Prestwich
to the Anthropological Society, is rude enough, but no one has ever
expressed the least doubt of its human origin.
The chipped flints from Puy Courny also afford another very
conclusive proof of intelligent design. The gravelly deposit in
which they are found contains five different varieties of flints,
and of these all that look like human implements are confined to one
particular variety, which from its nature is peculiarly adapted for
human use. As Quatrefages says, no torrents or other natural causes
could have exercised such a discrimination, which could only have
been made by an intelligent being, selecting the stones best adapted
for his tools and weapons.
[Illustration: UPPER MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS. PUY COURNY.
SCRAPER, OR LANCE-HEAD.
Puy Courny. Upper Miocene (Rames).
(Quatrefages, _Races Humaines_, p. 95.)
SCRAPER.
Puy Courny. Upper Miocene (Rames)
(Quatrefages, _Races Humaines_, p. 95.)]
The general reader must be content to rely to a great extent on the
verdict of _experts_, and in this instance of Puy Courny need not
perhaps go further than the conclusion of the French Congress of
archæologists, who pronounced in favour both of their Miocene and
human origin. It may be well, however, to annex a plate showing in
two instances how closely the specimens from Puy Courny resemble
those of later periods, of the human origin of which no doubt
has ever been entertained. It is certainly carrying scientific
scepticism to an unreasonable pitch to doubt that whatever cause
fashioned the two lower figures, the same cause must equally have
fashioned the upper ones; and if that cause be human intelligence
in the Quaternary period it must have been human or human-like
intelligence in the Upper Miocene.
[Illustration: COPARE QUATERNARY IMPLEMENTS.
WOKEY HOLE--GLACIAL.
(Evans, _Stone Implements_, p 473.)
PLATEAU DRIFT.
North Downs, Kent (Prestwich).]
The evidence for the still older implements of Thenay is of the
same nature as that for those of Puy Courny. First as regards the
geological horizon. Subjoined is the section at Thenay as made by
M. Bourgeois, verified by MM. Vibraye, Delaunay, Schmidt, Belgrand,
and others, from personal inspection, and given by M. Hamy in his
_Palæontologie humaine_.
It would seem that there could be little doubt as to the geological
position of the strata from which the alleged chipped flints come.
The Faluns are a well-known marine deposit of a shallow sea spread
over a great part of Central and Southern France, and identified,
beyond a doubt, as Upper Miocene by its shells. The Orleans Sands
are another Miocene deposit perfectly characterized by its mammalian
fauna, in which the _Mastodon Angustidens_ first appears, with other
peculiar species. The Calcaire de Beauce is a solid freshwater
limestone formed in the great lake which in the Miocene age occupied
the plain of the Beauce and extended into Touraine. It forms a clear
horizon or dividing line between the Upper Miocene, characterized
by the Mastodon, and the Lower Miocene, of which the Acrotherium, a
four-toed and hornless rhinoceros, is the most characteristic fossil.
[Illustration: SECTION AT THENAY.]
The supposed chipped flints are said to appear sparingly in the upper
deposits, disappear in the Calcaire de Beauce, and reappear, at
first sparingly and then plentifully, in the lacustrian marls below
the limestone. They are by far the most numerous in a thin layer of
greenish-yellow clay, No. 3 of section, below which they rapidly
disappear. There can be no question therefore that if the flints
really came from the alleged deposits, and really show the work of
human hands, the savages by whom they were chipped must have lived
on the shores or sand-banks of this Miocene lake. As regards the
geological question, it is right to observe that Professor Prestwich,
who visited the section a good many years ago in company with the
Abbé Bourgeois, and who is one of the highest authorities on this
class of questions, remained unconvinced that the flints shown him
really came from the alleged strata below the Calcaire de Beauce, and
thought that the specimens which appeared to show human manufacture
might have come from the surface, and become intermixed with the
natural flints of the lower strata.
The geological horizon, however, seems to have been generally
accepted by French and Continental geologists, especially by the
latest authorities, and the doubts which have been expressed have
turned mainly on the proof of human design shown by the implements.
This is a question which must be decided by the authority of experts,
for it requires special experience to be able to distinguish between
accidental fractures and human design, in implements of the extremely
rude type of the earlier formations. The test is mainly afforded
by the nature of the chipping. If it consists of a number of small
chips, all in the same direction, with the result of bringing one
face or side into a definite form, adapted for some special use,
the inference is strong that the chips were the work of design. The
general form might be the result of accident, but fractures from
frost or collisions simulating chipping could hardly be all in the
same direction, and confined to one part of the stone. The inference
is strengthened if the specimen shows bulbs of percussion, where the
blows had been struck to fashion the implement, and if the microscope
discloses parallel striæ and other signs of use on the chipped edge,
such as would be made by scraping bones or skins, while nothing of
the sort is seen on the other natural edges, though they may be
sharper. But above all, the surest test is afforded by a comparison
with other implements of later dates, or even of existing savages,
which are beyond all doubts products of human manufacture.
Tried by these tests, the evidence stands as follows--
When specimens of the flints from Thenay were first submitted to the
Anthropological Congress at Brussels, in 1867, their human origin
was admitted by MM. Worsae, de Vibraye, de Mortillet, and Schmidt,
and rejected by MM. Nilson, Hebert, and others, while M. Quatrefages
reserved his opinion, thinking a strong case made out, but not being
entirely satisfied. M. Bourgeois himself was partly responsible for
these doubts, for, like Boucher-de-Perthes, he had injured his case
by overstating it, and including a number of small flints, which
might have been, and probably were, merely natural specimens. But the
whole collection having been transferred to the Archæological Museum
at St. Germain, its director, M. Mortillet, selected those which
appeared most demonstrative of human origin, and placed them in a
glass case, side by side with similar types of undoubted Quaternary
implements. This removed a great many doubts, and later discoveries
of still better specimens of the type of scrapers have, in the words
of Quatrefages, "dispelled his last doubts," while not a single
instance has occurred of any convert in the opposite direction, or of
any opponent who has adduced facts contradicting the conclusions of
Quatrefages, Mortillet, and Hamy, after an equally careful and minute
investigation.
[Illustration: MIDDLE MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS.
SCRAPER FROM THENAY.
(Hamy, _Palæontologie Humaine_, p. 49.)
SCRAPER, OR BORER. Thenay.
(Showing bulb of percussion. Quatrefages, _Races Humaines_, p.
92.)]
In order to assist the reader in forming an opinion as to the claim
of these flints from Thenay, to show clear traces of human design, I
subjoin some illustrations of photographs in which they are compared
with specimens of later date, which are undoubtedly and by universal
consent works of human hands, guided by human intelligence.
These figures seem to leave no reasonable doubt that some at least of
the flints from Thenay show unmistakable signs of human handiwork,
and I only hesitate to accept them as conclusive proofs of the
existence of man in the Middle Miocene, because such an authority as
Prestwich retains doubts of their having come from the geological
horizon accepted by the most eminent modern French geologists.
[Illustration: MIDDLE MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS.
BORER, OR AWL. Thenay. Miocene.
(Congrès Préhistorique, Bruxelles, 1872.)
KNIFE, OR SCRAPER. Thenay.
(Gaudry. Quatrefages, p. 92.)]
The evidence of the authenticity of these implements from Thenay is,
moreover, greatly strengthened by the discovery of other Miocene
implements at Puy Courny, which have not been seriously impugned,
and by the essay of Professor Prestwich, confirming the discovery of
numerous flint implements in the upper level gravels of the North
Downs, which could only have been deposited by streams flowing from a
mountain ridge along the Anticlinal of the Weald, of which 2000 feet
must have disappeared by sub-aërial denudation since these rivers
flowed northwards from its flanks. How far back such a denudation may
carry us is a matter of speculation. Certainly, as Prestwich admits,
into the pre-glacial or very early glacial ages, and possibly into
the Tertiaries, but at any rate for a time which, by whatever name
we call it, must be enormous according to any standard of centuries
or millenniums. And what is specially interesting in these extremely
ancient implements is that, in Prestwich's words, "these plateau
implements exhibit distinct characters and types such as would denote
them to be the work of a more primitive and ruder race than those
fabricated by palæolithic men of the valley drift times."
[Illustration: COMPARE QUATERNARY IMPLEMENTS.
SCRAPER. Yorkshire Wold.
(Evans, _Stone Implements_.)
QUATERNARY. Mammoth Period.
River Drift, Mesvin. Belgium.
(Congrès Préhistorique, Bruxelles, 1872.)
QUATERNARY. Chaleux, Belgium.
Reindeer Period. (Congrès Préhistorique, Bruxelles, 1872.)]
In fact we have only to look at the figures which accompany
Prestwich's essay,[12] to see that their types resemble those of Puy
Courny and Thenay, rather than those of St. Acheul and Moustier.
[12] _Journal of Anthropological Institute_, Feb. 1892, p. 262.
The following remarks of the Professor would apply almost as well to
the Miocene implements as to those of the plateau--
"Unlike the valley implements, the plateau implements are, as a rule,
made of the _fragments_ of natural drift flints, that are found
scattered over the surface of the ground, or picked up in gravel-beds
and merely roughly trimmed. Sometimes the work is so slight as to be
scarcely apparent; at others, it is sufficient to show a distinct
design and object. It indicates the very infancy of the art, and
probably the earliest efforts of man to fabricate his tools and
weapons from other substances than wood or bone. That there was an
object and design is manifest from the fact that they admit of being
grouped according to certain patterns. These are very simple, but
they answered to the wants of a primitive people.
"With few exceptions, the implements are small, from 2 to 5 inches
in length, and mostly such as could have been used in the hand,
and in the hand only. There is, with the exceptions before named,
an almost entire absence of the large massive spear-head forms of
the valley drifts, and a large preponderance of forms adapted for
chipping, hammering, and scraping. With these are some implements
that could not have been used in the hand, but they are few and
rude. The difference between the plateau and the valley implements
is as great or greater than between the latter and the neolithic
implements. Though the work on the plateau implements is often so
slight as scarcely to be recognizable, even modern savage work, such
as exhibited for example by the stone implements of the Australian
natives, show, when divested of their mounting, an amount of work no
greater or more distinct, than do these early palæolithic specimens.
"Some persons may be disposed to look upon the slight and rude work
which these flints have received as the result only of the abrasion
and knocking about caused by collision during the transport of the
drift. This belief prevailed for a time even in the case of the
comparatively well-fashioned valley implements. A little practice,
and comparison with natural drift flints, will show the difference,
notwithstanding the, at first, unpromising appearance of these early
specimens of man's handicraft. It is as such, and from their being
the earliest such work with which we are acquainted, that they are
of so great interest, for they give us some slight insight into the
occupation and surroundings of the race by whom they were used. A
main object their owners would seem to have had in view, was the
trimming of flints to supply them with implements adapted to the
breaking of bones for the sake of the marrow, scraping skins, and
round bodies such as bones or sticks, for use as simple tools or
poles. From the scarcity of the large massive implements of the
pointed and adze type, so common in the valley drifts, it would seem
as though offensive and defensive weapons of this class had not been
so much needed, whether from the rarity of the large mammalia, so
common later on in the low-level valley drifts, or from the habits
and character of those early people."
The positive evidence is therefore extremely strong that men existed
in the Tertiaries, and if we add to it the irresistible inference
that he must have done so to develop so many different races, and
leave his rude implements in so many and such remote regions as we
found early in the Quaternary, I do not see how it is possible to
avoid accepting it as an established fact.
But in using the term Tertiary Man, I do not venture to define the
exact meaning of "man," or the precise stage in his evolution which
had been attained at this enormously remote period. M. Gaudry, an
excellent authority, while admitting that the flints from Thenay
showed evidence of intentional chipping, thought that they might
have been the work of the Dryopithecus, a fossil ape, supposed to
be nearer man than any existing anthropoid, whose remains had been
found at Sausan in the Middle Miocene. But the Dryopithecus has
been deposed from his pride of place by the subsequent discovery of
a more perfect jaw, and he is now considered, though undoubtedly
an anthropoid ape, to be of a lower type than the chimpanzee or
gorilla.[13] The strongest argument however for the essentially
human character of the artificers of the flints of Thenay and Puy
Courny is that their type continues, with no change except that of
slight successive improvements, through the Pliocene, Quaternary,
and even down to the present day. The scraper of the Esquimaux and
the Andaman islanders is but an enlarged and improved edition of the
Miocene scraper, and in the latter case the stones seem to have been
split by the same agency, viz. that of fire. The early knowledge of
fire is also confirmed by the discovery, reported by M. Bourgeois in
the Orleans Sand at Thenay, with bones of mastodon and dinotherium,
of a stony fragment mixed with carbon, in a sort of hardened paste,
which, as we can hardly suppose pottery to have been known, must be
the remnant of a hearth on which there had been a fire.
[13] Having applied to Professor Flower, as the highest
authority, to inform me of the actual position of the evidence
as to the Dryopithecus, he was good enough to reply to me as
follows--
"Dryopithecus (Middle Miocene of France) is an undoubted
anthropoid, allied to gorilla and chimpanzee, but the recent
discovery of a more complete jaw than that first found shows
that it is rather a lower form than the two just mentioned,
instead of higher as once thought. See Gaudry, Mem. Soc. Geol.
France--_Palæontologie_, 1890.
"The animal called _Pliopithecus_, from the same formation, is
now generally considered to be not distinguishable from the genus
Hylobates (Gibbon).
"So there is no doubt about the existence of anthropoid apes in
the Miocene of Europe, but not of a higher type than the present
African or Asiatic species. Yours truly,
"W. FLOWER."
There must always, however, remain a doubt as to the nature of this
ancestral Tertiary man, until actual skulls and skeletons have been
found, under circumstances which preclude doubt, and in sufficient
numbers to enable anthropologists to speak with the same confidence
as to types and races, as they can of his Quaternary successors.
This again is difficult from the rarity of such remains, and from
the fact that after burial of the dead was introduced, graves must
often have been dug down from the surface into older strata, with
which in course of time their contents become intermixed. No case,
therefore, can be safely admitted where the find was not made by
well-known scientific authorities, under circumstances which preclude
the possibility of subsequent interment, and vouch for the geological
age of the undisturbed deposit. This test disposes of all the alleged
discoveries of human remains in the Tertiaries of the Old World,
except one, and although it is quite possible that some may be
genuine among those rejected, it is safer not to rely on them. There
is one, however, which is supported by extremely strong evidence, and
the discussion of which I have reserved for the last, as if accepted
it throws a new and unexpected light on the evolution of the human
race.
The following is the account of it, taken from Quatrefages' _Races
humaines_--
"The bones of four individuals, a woman and two children, were found
at Castelnedolo, near Brescia, in a bed identified by its fossils
as Lower Pliocene. The excavations were made with the utmost care,
in undisturbed strata, by M. Ragazzoni, a well-known scientific
man, assisted by M. Germani, and the results confirmed by M. Sergi,
a well-known geologist, after a minute personal investigation. The
deposit was removed in successive horizontal layers, and not the
least trace was found of the beds having been mixed or disturbed. The
human bones presented the same fossilized appearance as those of the
extinct animals in the same deposit. The female skeleton was almost
entire, and the fragments of the skull were sufficiently perfect to
admit of their being pieced together so as to show almost its entire
form."
The first conjecture naturally was that it must have been a case of
subsequent interment, a conjecture which was strengthened by the fact
of the female skeleton being so entire; but this is negatived by
the undisturbed nature of the beds, and by the fact that the other
bones were found scattered at considerable distances throughout the
stratum. M. Quatrefages sums up the evidence by saying, "that there
exists no serious reason for doubting the discovery, and that if made
in a Quaternary deposit, no one would have thought of contesting its
accuracy. Nothing can be opposed to it but theoretical _à priori_
objections similar to those which so long repelled the existence of
Quaternary man."
But if we accept this discovery, it leads to the remarkable
conclusion that Tertiary man not only existed, but has undergone
little change in the thousands of centuries which have since elapsed.
The skull is of fair capacity, very much like what might be expected
from a female of the Canstadt type, and less rude and ape-like than
the skulls of Spy and Neanderthal, or those of modern Bushmen and
Australians. And the other bones of the skeleton show no marked
peculiarities.
This makes it difficult to accept the discovery unreservedly,
notwithstanding the great weight of positive evidence in its favour.
The great objection to Tertiary man has been, that as all other
species had changed, and many had become extinct two or three times
over since the Miocene, it was unlikely that an animal so highly
specialized as man should alone have had a continuous existence. And
this argument of course becomes stronger the more it can be shown
that the oldest skeletons differed little if it at all from man of
the Quaternary and Recent ages. Moreover, the earlier specimens
of Quaternary man which are so numerous and authentic, show, if
not anything that can be fairly called the "missing link," still
a decided tendency, as they get older, towards the type of the
rudest existing races, which again show a distinct though distant
approximation towards the type of the higher apes. The oldest
Quaternary skulls are dolichocephalic, very thick with enormous
frontal sinuses; low and receding foreheads; flattened vertices;
prognathous jaws, and slight and receding' chins. The average cranial
capacity is about 1150 cubic centimètres, or fully one-fourth less
than that of modern European man, and of this smaller brain a larger
proportion is in the posterior region. The other peculiarities of
the skeletons all tend in the same direction, and, as we have seen
in Huxley's description of the men of Spy, sometimes go a long way
in the pithecoid direction, even to the extent of not being able to
straighten the knee in walking.
It would, therefore, be contrary to all our ideas of evolution to
find that some 100,000 or 200,000, or more probably 400,000 or
500,000 years prior to these men of Spy and Neanderthal, the human
race had existed in higher physical perfection nearer to the existing
type of modern man.
Quatrefages meets this by saying that Tertiary men with a larger
brain, and therefore more intelligence than the other Tertiary
mammals, might have survived, where these succumbed to changes and
became extinct. This is doubtless true to some extent, but it hardly
seems sufficient to account for the presence of a higher and more
recent type, like that of Castelnedolo in the Lower Pliocene, that is
a whole geological period earlier than that of the Lower Quaternary.
It is more to the purpose to say with Gaudry that the changes on
which the distinction of species are founded are often so slight that
they might just as well be attributed to variations of races; and to
appeal to instances like that of the Hylobates of the Miocene, one
of the nearest congeners of man, in which no genuine difference can
be detected from the Hylobates or Gibbon of the present day; and if
the discovery referred to at p. 264, of anthropoid primates in the
Eocene of Patagonia, should be confirmed, it would greatly strengthen
the argument for the persistence of the order to which man belongs
through several geological periods.
In any case we require more than the evidence of this one discovery
before we can assume the type of Tertiary man as a proved fact with
the same confidence as we can the existence of something like man
in those remote ages, from the repeated evidence of chipped stones
and cut bones, showing unmistakable signs of being the work of human
intelligence. And in the meantime, the only safe conclusion seems to
be that it is very probable that we may have to go back to the Eocene
to find the "missing link," or the ancestral animal which may have
been the common progenitor of man and of the other quadrumana.
I turn now to the evidence from the New World. I have kept this
distinct, for there is no such proof of synchronism between the later
geological phases of this and of the Old World as would warrant us in
assuming that what is true in one is necessarily true in the other.
Thus in Europe the presence of the mastodon is a conclusive proof
that the formation in which its remains are found is Upper Miocene or
Pliocene, and it has completely disappeared before the glacial period
and the Quaternary era. But in North America it has survived both
these periods, and it is even a question whether it is not found in
recent peat-mosses with arrow-heads of the historical Indians.
The glacial period also, which in the Old World affords such a clear
demarcation between Tertiary and Recent ages, and such manifest
proofs of two great glaciations with a long inter-glacial period,
presents different conditions in America, where the ice-caps
radiated from different centres, and extended further south and
over wider areas. There is no proof whether the great cold set
in sooner or later, and whether the elevations and depressions of
land synchronized with those of Europe. The evidence for a long
inter-glacial period is by no means so clear, and the best American
geologists differ respecting it. And above all, the glacial period
seems to have lasted longer, and the time required for post-glacial
or recent denudation, and erosion of river-gorges, to be less than is
required to account for post-glacial phenomena on this side of the
Atlantic.
The evidence, therefore, from the New World, though conclusive as
to the existence of man from an immense antiquity, can hardly be
accepted as equally so in an attempt to prove that antiquity to
be Tertiary in the sense of identifying it with specific European
formations. With this reservation I proceed to give a short account
of this evidence as bearing on the question of the oldest proofs of
man's existence. The first step or proof of the presence of man in
the Quaternary deposits which correspond with the oldest river-drifts
of Europe, has only been made quite recently. Mr. Abbott was the
first to discover such implements of the usual palæolithic type
in Quaternary gravels of the river Delaware, near Trenton in New
Jersey, and since then they have been frequently found, as described
by Dr. Wright in his recently-published _Ice Age in America_, in
Ohio, Illinois, and other States, in the old gravels of rivers which
carried the drainage of the great lake district to the Hudson and
the Mississippi, before the present line of drainage was established
by the Falls of Niagara and the St. Lawrence. So far the evidence
merely confirms that drawn from similar finds in the Old World of the
existence of man in the early glacial or Quaternary times, already
widely diffused, and everywhere in a similar condition of primitive
savagery, and chipping his rude stone implements into the same forms.
But if we cross the Rocky Mountains into California, we find evidence
which apparently carries us further back and raises new questions.
The whole region west of the Rocky Mountains is comparatively recent.
The Coast Range which now fronts the Pacific is composed entirely
of marine Tertiary strata, and when they were deposited, the waves
of the Pacific beat against the flanks of the Sierra Nevada. At
length the Coast Range was upheaved and a wide valley left between
it and the Sierra of over 400 miles in length, and with an average
breadth of seventy-five miles. The Sierra itself is old land, the
lower hills consisting of Triassic slates and the higher ranges
of granite, and it has never been under water since the Secondary
Age though doubtless it stood much higher before it was so greatly
denuded. All along its western flank and far down into the great
valley is an enormous bed of auriferous gravel, doubtless derived
from the waste of the rocks of the Sierra during an immense time by
old rivers now buried under their own deposits. While these deposits
were going on a great outburst of volcanoes occurred on the western
slope of the Sierra, and successive sheets of tuffs, ashes, and
lavas are interstratified with the gravels, while finally an immense
flow of basalt covered up everything. The country then presented the
appearance of a great plain, sloping gradually downwards from the
Sierra according to the flow of the basalt and lavas. This plain was
in its turn attacked by denudation and worn down by the existing main
rivers into valleys and gorges, and by their tributary streams into
a series of flat-topped hills, capped by basalt and divided from one
another by deep and narrow cañons.
The immense time required for this latest erosion may be inferred
when it is stated that where the Columbia river cuts through the axis
of the Cascade Mountains, the precipitous rocks on either side, to a
height of from 3000 to 4000 feet, consist of this late Tertiary or
Post-Tertiary basalt, and that the Deschutes river has been cut into
the great basaltic plain for 140 miles to a depth of from 1000 to
2500 feet, without reaching the bottom of the lava. The American and
Yuba valleys have been lowered from 800 to 1500 feet, and the gorge
of the Stanislas river has cut through one of these basalt-covered
hills to the depth of 1500 feet.
[Illustration: SECTION OF GREAT CALIFORNIAN LAVA STREAM, CUT
THROUGH BY RIVERS.
_a_, _a_, basalt; _b_, _b_, volcanic ashes; _c_, _c_, tertiary;
_d_, _d_, cretaceous rocks; _R_, _R_, direction of the old
river-bed; _R´_, _R´_, sections of the present river-beds.
(Le Conte, from Whitney.)]
The enormous gorge of the Colorado has cut its cañons for hundreds
of miles from 3000 to 6000 feet deep through all the orders of
sedimentary rocks from the Tertiaries down, and from 600 to 800 feet
into the primordial granite below, thus draining the great lakes
which in Tertiary times occupied a vast space in the interior of
America which is now an arid desert.
Evidently the gravels which lie below the basalt, and interstratified
with the tuffs and lavas, or below them, and which belong to an older
and still more extensive denudation, must be of immense antiquity,
an antiquity which remains the same whether we call it Quaternary
or Tertiary. It is in these gravels that gold is found, and in the
search for it great masses have been removed in which numerous stone
implements have been found.
The great antiquity of those gravels and volcanic tuffs is further
confirmed by the changes in the flora and fauna which are proved to
have occurred. The animal remains found beneath the basaltic cap
are very numerous, and all of extinct species. They belong to the
genera rhinoceros, elatherium, felis, canis, bos, tapirus, hipparion,
elephas (primigenius), mastodon, and auchenia, and form an assemblage
entirely distinct from any now living in any part of North America.
Some of the genera survived into the Quaternary age as in Europe,
but many, both of the genera and species, are among those most
characteristic of the Pliocene period.
The flora also, which is well preserved in the white clays formed
from the volcanic ash, comprises forty-nine species of deciduous
trees and shrubs, all distinct from those now living, without a
single trace of the pines, firs, and other conifera which are now the
prevalent trees throughout California.
Tried by any test, therefore, of fauna, flora, and of immensely
long deposit before the present drainage and configuration of the
country had begun to be established, Professor Whitney's contention
that the auriferous gravels are of Tertiary origin seems to be
fully established. It can only be met by obliterating all definite
distinction between the Quaternary and the Pliocene, and adding to
the former all the time subtracted from the latter. And even if we
apply this to the physical changes, it would upset all our standards
of geological formations characterized by fossils, to suppose that
a fauna comprising the elatherium, hipparion, and auchenia could be
properly transferred to the Quaternary. In fact no one would have
thought of doing so if human implements and remains had not been
found in them.
The discovery of such implements was first reported in 1862, and
since then a large number have been found, but their authenticity
has been hotly contested. The most common were stone mortars very
like those of the Indians of the present day, only ruder, and it was
objected, first, that they were ground and not chipped, and therefore
belonged to the neolithic age; secondly, that they might have slipped
down from the surface or been taken down by miners. The difficulty
in meeting these objections was that the implements had been found
not by scientific men _in situ_, but by ignorant miners, who were
too keen in the pursuit of gold to notice the particulars of the
find, and only knew that they had picked them out in sorting loads
of the gravels, and generally thrown them aside. This, however, had
occurred in such a number of instances, over such wide areas, and
with such a total absence of any motive on the part of the miners to
misrepresent or commit a fraud, that the cumulative evidence became
almost irresistible; and we cannot sum it up better than in the words
of the latest and best authority, Professor Wright, in an article in
the _Century_ of April 1891, which is the more important because only
two years previously, in his _Ice Age in North America_, he had still
expressed himself as retaining doubts.
He says, "But so many of such discoveries have been reported as to
make it altogether improbable that the miners were in every case
mistaken; and we must conclude that rude stone implements do actually
occur in connection with the bones of various extinct animals in the
undisturbed strata of the gold-bearing gravel."
Fortunately the most important human remains have been found in what
may be considered as a test case, where it was physically impossible
that they could have been introduced by accident, and where the
evidence of a common workman as to the locality of the find is as
good as that of a professed geologist.
During the deposition of the auriferous gravel on the western
flanks of the Sierra there were great outbursts of volcanoes near
the summits of that range. Towards their close a vast stream of
lava flowed down the shallow valley of the ancient Stanislas river,
filling up its channel for forty miles or more, and covering its
extensive gravel deposits. The modern Stanislas river has cut across
its former bed, and now flows in a gorge from 1200 to 2000 feet
deeper than the old valley which was filled up by the lava stream,
the surface of which appears as a long flat-topped ridge, known
as Table Mountain. In many places the sides of the valley which
originally directed the course of the lava have been worn away,
so that the walls on either side present a perpendicular face one
hundred feet or more in height.
The gravel of the ancient Stanislas river being very auriferous,
great efforts have been made to reach the portion of it which lies
under Table Mountain. Large sums have been spent in sinking shafts
from the top through the lava cap, and tunnelling into it from the
sides. Great masses of gravel have been thus quarried and removed,
and a considerable amount of gold obtained, though in most cases
not enough to meet the expenses, and the workings have been mostly
discontinued.
[Illustration: SECTION ACROSS TABLE MOUNTAIN, TUOLUMNE COUNTY,
CALIFORNIA.
_b_, lava; _G_, gravel; _S_, slate; _R_, old river-bed; _R´_,
present river-bed. (Le Conte.)]
It is evident that objects brought from a great depth below this lava
cap must have remained there undisturbed since they were deposited
along with the gravels, and that the evidence of the simplest miner,
who says he brought them with a truck-load of dirt from the bottoms
of shafts, or ends of tunnels pierced for hundreds of feet through
the solid lava, is, if he speaks the truth, as good as if a scientist
had found them _in situ_. And this evidence, together with that of
mining inspectors and respectable residents who took an interest in
scientific subjects, has been forthcoming in such a large number of
instances as to preclude any supposition of mistake or fraud. Three
of the latest of these discoveries were reported at the meeting of
the Geological Society of America on the 30th December, 1890, and
they seem to be supported by very first-class evidence.[14] Mr.
Becker, one of the staff of the United States Geological Survey, to
whom has been, committed the responsible work of reporting upon the
gold-bearing gravels of California, exhibited to the Society a stone
mortar, and some arrow or spear-heads, with the sworn statement from
Mr. Neale, a well-known mining superintendent, that he took them
with his own hands from undisturbed gravel in a mine of which he had
charge under the lava of Table Mountain.
[14] Professor Wright in _Century_, April 1891.
A second object exhibited was a pestle found by Mr. King, who was at
one time General Director of the United States Geological Survey, and
is an expert whose judgment on such matters should be final, and who
had no doubt that the gravel in which he found the object must have
lain in place ever since the lava came down and covered it. The third
object was a mortar taken from the old gravel at the end of a tunnel
driven diagonally 175 feet from the western edge of the basalt cliff,
and 100 feet or more below the surface of the flat top of Table
Mountain, as supported by evidence entirely satisfactory to Professor
Wright, who had just visited the locality and cross-examined the
principal witnesses. This may prepare us to consider the case of the
celebrated Calaveras skull as by no means an isolated or exceptional
one, but antecedently probable from the number of human implements
found in the same gravels, under the same beds of basalt and lava, at
Table Mountain and numerous other places.
Professor Wright in the article already referred to, which is the
latest on the subject, and made after his visit to California in
1890, which he says enabled him to add some important evidence, sums
up the facts as follows--
"In February 1866, Mr. Mattenson, a blacksmith living near Table
Mountain, in the county Calaveras, employed his spare earnings in
driving a tunnel under the portion of the Sierra lava flow known as
Bald Hill. At a depth of 150 feet below the surface, of which 100
feet consisted of solid lava, and the last fifty of interstratified
beds of lava, gravel, and volcanic tuffs, he came upon petrified
wood, and an object which he at first took for the root of a tree,
thickly encased in cemented gravel. But seeing what he took for one
of the roots was a lower jaw, he took the mass to the surface, and
gave it to Mr. Scribner, the agent of an express company, and still
living in the neighbourhood, and highly respected. Mr. Scribner, on
perceiving what it was, sent it to Dr. Jones, a medical gentleman
of the highest reputation, now living at San Francisco, who gave
it to Professor Whitney, who visited the spot, and after a careful
inquiry was fully satisfied with the evidence. Soon afterwards
Professor Whitney took the skull home with him to Cambridge, where,
in conjunction with Dr. Wynam, he subjected it to a very careful
investigation to see if the relic itself confirmed the story told
by the discoverer, and this it did to such a degree that, to use
Professor Wright's words, the circumstantial evidence alone places
its genuineness beyond all reasonable question."
This is not a solitary instance, for the Professor reports as the
result of his personal inquiries only a year ago in the district,
that "the evidence that human implements and fragments of the human
skeleton have been found in the stratum of gravel underneath the lava
of Table Mountain seems to be abundantly sufficient;" among others a
fragment of a skull which came up with a bucketful of dirt from 180
feet below the surface of Table Mountain at Tuolumne.
Dr. Wallace, in an article on the "Antiquity of Man in North
America," in the _Nineteenth Century_ of November 1887, thus
enumerates some of the principal instances--
"In Tuolumne county from 1862 to 1865 stone mortars and platters were
found in the auriferous gravel along with bones and teeth of mastodon
90 feet below the surface, and a stone muller was obtained in a
tunnel driven under Table Mountain. In 1870 a stone mortar was found
at a depth of 60 feet in gravel under clay and 'cement,' as the hard
clay with vegetable remains (the old volcanic ash) is called by the
miners. In Calaveras county from 1860 to 1869 many mortars and other
stone implements were found in the gravels under lava beds, and in
other auriferous gravels and clays at a depth of 150 feet. In Amador
county stone mortars have been found in similar gravel at a depth of
40 feet. In Placer county stone platters and dishes have been found
in auriferous gravels from 10 to 20 feet below the surface. In Nevada
county stone mortars and ground discs have been found from 15 to 30
feet deep in the gravel. In Butte county similar mortars and pestles
have been found in the lower gravel beneath lava beds and auriferous
gravel; and many other similar finds have been recorded....
"Even these Californian remains do not exhaust the proofs of man's
great antiquity in America, since we have the record of another
discovery which indicates that he may, possibly, have existed at
an even more remote epoch. Mr. E. L. Berthoud has described the
finding of stone implements of a rude type in the Tertiary gravels
of the Crow Creek, Colorado. Some shells were obtained from the same
gravels, which were determined by Mr. T. A. Conrad to be species
which are 'certainly not older than Older Pliocene, or possibly
Miocene.'"
I do not dwell on the discoveries which have been made of human
implements and skeletons in the cases of Minas Geraes in Brazil, and
in the drift or loess of the pampas of Buenos Ayres, for although
associated with extinct animals usually considered as Pliocene, there
is a difference of opinion among competent geologists, whether the
deposits are really Tertiary or only early Quaternary.
There is, however, one discovery, made since the date of these above
recorded, of human work below the great basalt cap of North-Western
America, brought up from a great depth of underlying gravels and
sands of a silted-up lake, formerly forming part of the course of the
Snake river at Nampa in Idaho, which is as startling in its way as
that of the Calaveras skull. The following account of it is given on
the authority of Professor Wright, who, having visited the locality
in the summer of 1890, states that he found "abundant confirmatory
evidence"--
The Nampa image was brought up in boring an Artesian well, at Nampa
in Ada county, Idaho, through a lava-cap 15 feet thick, and below
it about 200 feet of the quicksands and clays of a silted-up lake,
formed in a basin of the Snake river, which joins the Columbia
river, and flows into the Pacific, forming part, therefore, of the
same geographical and drainage system as the Californian gravels.
At this depth the borers came down to a stratum of coarse sand,
mixed with clay balls at the top, and resting at the bottom on an
ancient vegetable soil, and the image came up from the lower part of
this coarse sand. The borer, or liner of the well, was a six-inch
iron tube, and the drill was only used in piercing the lava, while
the sands below it were all extracted by a sand pump. Mr. King, a
respectable citizen of Nampa, who was boring the well, states that
he had been for several days closely watching the progress of the
well and passing through his hands the contents of the sand pump as
they were brought up, so that he had hold of the image before he
suspected what it was. Mr. Cumming, superintendent of that portion
of the Union Pacific Railway, a highly-trained graduate of Harvard
College, was on the ground next day and saw the image, and heard
Mr. King's account of the discovery, and Mr. Adams, the president
of the railway, happening to pass that way about a month later,
he brought it to the notice of some of the foremost geologists in
the United States. The image was sent to Boston by Mr. King, who
gave every information, and it was found to be modelled from stiff
clay, like that of the clay balls found in the sand, slightly if at
all touched by fire, and incrusted like those balls with grains of
oxide of iron, which Professor Putnam considers to be a conclusive
proof of its great antiquity. Mr. Emmons, of the State Geological
Society, gives it as his opinion that the strata in which this image
is said to have been found, is older by far than any others in which
human remains have been discovered, unless it be those under Table
Mountain, in California, from which came the celebrated Calaveras
skull. So much for the authenticity of the discovery, which seems
unassailable, but now comes the remarkable feature of it, which to a
great extent revolutionizes our conception of this early palæolithic
age. The image, or rather statuette, which is scarcely an inch and
a half long, is by no means a rude object, but on the contrary more
artistic, and a better representation of the human form, than the
little idols of many comparatively modern and civilized people, such
as the Phoenicians. It is in fact very like the little statuettes so
abundantly found in the neighbourhood of the old temple-pyramids of
Mexico, which are generally believed to be not much older than the
date of the Spanish Conquest.
[Illustration:
FRONT VIEW. BACK VIEW.
THE NAMPA IMAGE--ACTUAL SIZE.
(Drawn from the object by J. D. Woodward.)]
In the face of this mass of evidence, from both the Old and New
Worlds, it seems more like obstinate incredulity than scientific
caution to deny the existence of Tertiary man. Indeed the objections
put forward by those who still cling to the notion that any proofs
of greater antiquity of man take them further back from the orthodox
standpoint of Genesis, are sufficient of themselves to show the
straits to which they are driven to explain the facts. A conspiracy
has been imagined of many hundreds of ignorant miners, living
hundreds of miles apart, to hoax scientists, or make a trade of
forging implements, which is about as probable as the theory that the
palæolithic remains of the Old World were all forged by the devil,
and buried in Quaternary strata in order to discredit the Mosaic
account of creation. It is enough to say that the great majority
of the implements had been thrown away as rubbish, and that not a
single instance has ever been adduced in which money was asked or
offered for any of them.
Another equally wild theory is that gold-mining tunnels had been
driven by some race of prehistoric Indians through hundreds of feet
of solid basalt and quicksands, who left their implements in them;
and this on the face of the fact that no such tunnels or evidences of
ancient mining have ever been found in California, and that gold was
unknown there until its recent discovery.
In accepting, however, the evidence for Tertiary man, we must accept
with it conclusions which are much opposed to preconceived opinions.
In the two best authenticated instances in which human skulls have
been found in presumably Tertiary strata, those of Castelnedolo and
Calaveras, it is distinctly stated that they present no unusual
appearance, and do not go nearly as far in a brutal or pithecoid
direction as the Quaternary skulls of Neanderthal and Spy, or as
those of many existing savage races. The Nampa image also appears
to show the existence of considerable artistic skill at a period
which, if not Tertiary, must be of immense antiquity. How can this be
reconciled with the theory of evolution and the descent of man from
some animal ancestor common to him and the other quadrumana? Up to a
certain point, viz. the earliest Quaternary period, the evidence of
progression seems fairly satisfactory. If we take the general average
of this class of skulls as compared with modern skulls, we find
them of smaller brain-capacity, thicker and flatter, with prominent
frontal sinuses, receding foreheads, projecting muzzles, and weaker
chins. The brain is decidedly smaller, the average being 1150 cubic
centimètres as compared with 1250 in Australians and Bushmen, and
1600 in well-developed Europeans; and of this smaller capacity a
larger proportion is contained in the posterior part.[15] Other parts
of the skeleton will tell the same story, and in many of the earliest
and most extreme instances, as those of Neanderthal and Spy, a very
decided step is made in the direction of the "missing link."
[15] Quatrefages and Hamy, _Crania Ethnica_.
But if we accept the only two specimens known of the type of Tertiary
man, the skulls of Castelnedolo and Calaveras, which are supported
by such extremely strong evidence, it would seem that as we recede
in time, instead of getting nearer to the "missing link," we get
further from it. This, and this alone, throws doubt on evidence
which would otherwise seem to be irresistible, and without a greater
number of well-authenticated confirmations we must be content to
hold our judgment to a certain extent in suspense. This, however, it
must be remarked, extends only to the type of man as shown by these
two skulls, and does not at all affect the fact that man, of some
type or other, did exist in the Pliocene and Miocene periods, which
is established beyond reasonable doubt by the numerous instances in
which chipped implements and cut bones have been found by experienced
observers, and pronounced genuine by the highest authorities.
All we can say with any certainty is, that if the Darwinian theory
of evolution applies to man, as it does to all other animals, and
specially to man's closest kindred, the other quadrumana, the common
ancestor must be sought very much further back, in the Eocene, which
inaugurated the reign of placental mammalia, and in which the
primitive types of so many of the later mammals have been found. Nor
will this appear incredible when we consider that man's cousins,
the apes and monkeys, first appear in the Miocene, or even earlier
in the Eocene, and become plentiful in the later Pliocene, and that
even anthropoid apes, and one of them, the Hylobates, scarcely if at
all distinguishable from the Gibbon of the present day, have been
found at Sansan and other Miocene deposits in the south of France, at
OEningen in Switzerland, and Pikermi in Greece; while if Professor
Ameghino's discoveries are to be credited, anthropoids already
existed in the Eocene, and their development may be traced from the
oldest Eocene forms.
CHAPTER XII.
RACES OF MANKIND.
Monogeny or Polygeny--Darwin--Existing
Races--Colour--Hair--Skulls and Brains--Dolichocephali
and Brachycephali--Jaws and Teeth--Stature--Other
Tests--Isaac Taylor--Prehistoric Types in Europe--Huxley's
Classification--Language no Test of Race--Egyptian Monuments---
Human and Animal Races unchanged for 6000 years--Neolithic
Races--Palæolithic--Different Races of Man as far back
as we can trace--Types of Canstadt, Cro-Magnon, and
Furfooz--Oldest Races Dolichocephalic--Skulls of Neanderthal
and Spy--Simian Characters--Objections--Evidence confined to
Europe--American Man--Calaveras Skull--Tertiary Man--Skull
of Castelnedolo--Leaves Monogeny or Polygeny an open
Question--Arguments on each side--Old Arguments from the Bible
and Philology exploded--What Darwinian Theory requires--Animal
Types traced up to the Eocene--Secondary Origins--Dog and
Horse--Fertility of Races--Question of Hybridity--Application
to Man--Difference of Constitutions--Negro and
White--Bearing on Question of Migration--Apes and
Monkeys--Question of Original Locality of Man--Asiatic
Theory--Eur-African--American--Arctic--None based on sufficient
Evidence--- Mere Speculations--Conclusion--Summary of Evidence
as to Human Origins.
The immense antiquity of man upon earth having been established,
other questions of great interest present themselves as to the origin
of the race. These questions, however, no longer depend on positive
facts of observation, like the discovery of palæolithic remains in
definite geological deposits, but on inference and conjecture from
these and other observed facts, most of which are of comparatively
recent date and hardly extend beyond the historical period.
Thus if we start with the existing state of things, we find a great
variety of human races actually prevailing, located in different
parts of the world, and of fundamental types so dissimilar as to
constitute what in animal zoology would often be called separate
species,[16] and yet fertile among themselves, and so similar in
many physical and mental characters as to infer an origin from
common ancestors. And we can infer from history that this was so to
a great extent 6000 years ago, and that the length of time has been
insufficient to produce any marked changes, either in physical or
linguistic types of the different fundamental races.
[16] Topinard, one of the latest and best authorities, says in
his book on Anthropology: "We have seen the marked difference
between woolly and straight hair, between the prognathous and
the orthognathous, the jet black of the Yoloff and the pale
complexion of the Scandinavian, between the ultra-dolichocephalic
Esquimaux or New Caledonian, and the ultra-brachycephalic
Mongolian. But the line of separation between the European
and the Bosjesman, as regards these two characters, is, in a
morphological point of view, still wider, as much so as between
each of the anthropoid apes, or between the dog and the wolf, the
goat and the sheep."
Was this always so, and what inference can be drawn as to the
much-disputed question between monogeny and polygeny, that is,
between the theory of descent from a single pair in a single
locality, and that of descent from several pairs, developed in
different localities by parallel, but not strictly identical, lines
of evolution?
This is a question which cannot be decided off-hand by _à priori_
considerations. No doubt Darwinism points to the evolution of all
life from primitive forms, and ultimately, perhaps, from the single
simplest form of life in the cell or protoplasm. But this does not
necessarily imply that the more highly specialized, and what may be
called the secondary forms of life, have all originated from single
secondary centres, at one time and in one locality.
On the contrary, we have the authority of Darwin himself for saying
that this is not a necessary consequence of his theory. In a letter
to Bentham he says--"I dispute whether a new race or species is
necessarily or even generally descended from a single or pair of
parents. The whole body of individuals, I believe, became altered
together--like our race-horses, and like all domestic breeds which
are changed through unconscious selection by man."
The problem is, therefore, an open one, and can only be solved
(or rather attacked, for in the present state of our knowledge a
complete solution is probably impossible) by a careful induction from
ascertained facts, ascending step by step from the present to the
past, from the known to the unknown.
The first step is to have a clear idea of what actually exists at the
present moment. There are an almost endless number of minor varieties
of the human race, but none of them of sufficient importance to imply
diversity of origin, with the exception of four, or at the most five
or six fundamental types, which stand so widely apart that it is
difficult to imagine that they are all descended from a common pair
of ancestors. These are the white, yellow, and black races of the Old
World, the copper-coloured of America, and perhaps the olive-coloured
of Malaysia and Polynesia, and the pygmy races of Africa and Eastern
Asia. The difficulty of supposing these races to have all sprung
from a single pair will at once be apparent if we personify this
pair under the name of Adam for the first man and Eve for the first
woman, and ask ourselves the question, what do we suppose to have
been their colour?
But colour alone, though the most obvious, is by no means the sole
criterion of difference of race. The evidence is cumulative, and
other equally marked and persistent characters, both of physical
structure and of physiological and mental peculiarities, stand out
as distinctly as differences of colour in the great typical races.
For instance, the hair is a very persistent index of race. When
the section of it is circular, the hair is straight and lank; when
flattened, woolly; and when oval, curly or wavy. Now these characters
are so persistent that many of the best anthropologists have taken
hair as the surest test of race. Everywhere the lank and straight
hair and circular section go with the yellow and copper-coloured
races; the woolly hair and flat section with the black; and the wavy
hair and oval section with the white races.
The solid framework of the skeleton also affords very distinctive
types of race, especially where it is looked at in a general way as
applicable to great masses of pure races, and not to individuals of
mixed race, like most Europeans. The skull is most important, for
it affords the measure of the size and shape of the brain, which is
the highest organ, and that on which the differentiation of man from
the lower animals mainly depends. The size of the brain alone does
not always afford a conclusive proof of mental superiority, for it
varies with sex, height, and other individual characters, and often
seems to depend more on quality than on quantity. Still, if we take
general averages, we find that superior and civilized races have
larger brains than inferior and savage ones. Thus the average brain
of the European is about 1500 cubic centimètres, while that of the
Australian and Bushman does not exceed 1200.
The shape as well as the size of the skull affords another test
of race which is often appealed to. The main distinction taken
is between dolichocephalic and brachycephalic, or long and broad
skulls. Here also we must look at general averages rather than at
individuals, for there is often considerable variation within the
same race, especially among the mesocephalic, or medium between the
two extremes, which is generally the prevalent form where there has
been much intermixture of races. But if we take widely different
types there can be no doubt that the long or broad skull is a
characteristic and persistent feature. The formation of the jaws
and teeth affords another important test. Some races are what is
called prognathous, that is, the jaws project, and the teeth are
set in sockets sloping outwards, so that the lower part of the face
approximates to the form of a muzzle; others are orthognathous,
or have the jaws and teeth vertical. And the form of the chin
seems to be wonderfully correlated with the general character and
energy of the race. It is hard to say why, but as a matter of fact
a weak chin generally denotes a weak, and a strong chin a strong,
race or individual. Thus the chimpanzee and other apes have no
chin, the negro and lower races generally have chins weak and
receding. The races who, like the Iberians, have been conquered or
driven from plains to mountains, have had poor chins; while their
successive conquerors, of Aryan race,--Celts, Romans, Teutons, and
Scandinavians,--might almost be classified by the prominence and
solidity of this feature of the face.
Stature is another very persistent feature. The pygmy races of
Equatorial Africa described by Stanley have remained the same since
the early records of Egypt, while the pure Aryan races of the north
temperate zone, Gauls, Germans, and Scandinavians, have from the
first dawn of history amazed the shorter races of the south by their
tall stature, huge limbs, blue eyes, and yellow hair. Here and there
isolated tall races may be found where the race has become thoroughly
acclimatized to a suitable environment, as among some negro tribes,
and the Araucanian Indians of Patagonia; but as a rule the inferior
races are short, the bulk of the civilized races of the world of
intermediate stature, and the great conquering races of the north
temperate zone decidedly tall.
Other tests are afforded by the shape of the eye-orbits and nasal
bones, and other characters, all of which agree, in the words of
Isaac Taylor in his _Origin of the Aryans_, in "exhibiting two
extreme types--the African with long heads, long orbits, and flat
hair; and the Mongolian with round heads, round orbits, and round
hair. The European type is intermediate, the head, the orbit, and the
hair being oval. In the East of Europe we find an approximation to
the Asiatic type; in the South of Europe to the African."
Taking these prominent anthropological characters as tests, we find
four distinct types among the earliest inhabitants of Europe, which
can be traced back from historic to neolithic times. They consist
of two long-headed and two short-headed races, and in each case one
is tall and the other short. The dolichocephalic are recognized
everywhere throughout Western Europe and on the Mediterranean basin,
including North Africa, as the oldest race, and they are thought
still to survive in the original type in some of the people of Wales
and Ireland and the Spanish Basques; while they doubtless form a
large portion, intermixed with other races, of the blood of the
existing populations of Great Britain and Ireland, of Western and
Southern France, of Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Sardinia, North Africa,
and other Mediterranean districts. This is known as the Iberian race,
and it can be traced clearly beyond history and the knowledge of
metals, into the neolithic stone age, and may possibly be descended
from some of the vastly older palæolithic types such as that of
Cro-Magnon. The type is everywhere a feeble one, of short stature,
dolichocephalic skull, narrow oval face, orthognathic teeth, weak
chin, and swarthy complexion. We have only to compare a skull of this
type with one of ruder and stronger races, to understand how the
latter must have survived as conquerors in the struggle for existence
in the early ages of the world, before gunpowder and military
discipline had placed civilization in a better position to contend
with brute force and energy. Huxley sums up the latest evidence as
to the distinctive types of these historic and prehistoric races of
Europe as follows--
1. Blond long-heads of tall stature who appear with least admixture
in Scandinavia, North Germany, and parts of the British Islands.
2. Brunette broad-heads of short stature in Central France, the
Central European Highlands, and Piedmont. These are identified with
the Ligurian race, and their most typical modern representatives are
the Auvergnats and Savoyards.
3. Mongoloid brunette broad-heads of short stature in Arctic and
Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, represented by the Lapps and other
tribes of Northern Russia, passing into the Mongols and Chinese of
Eastern Asia.
4. Brunette long-heads of short stature--the Iberian race.
Huxley adds, "The inhabitants of the regions which lie between these
five present the intermediate gradations which might be expected
to result from their intermixture. The evidence at present extant
is consistent with the supposition that the blond long-heads, the
brunette broad-heads, and the brunette long-heads--_i.e._ the
Scandinavian, Ligurian, and Iberian races--have existed in Europe
very nearly in their present localities throughout historic times
and very far back into prehistoric times. There is no proof of any
migration of Asiatics into Europe west of the basin of the Dnieper
down to the time of Attila. On the contrary, the first great
movements of the European population of which there is any conclusive
evidence are that series of Gaulish invasions of the East and South,
which ultimately extended from North Italy to Galatia in Asia Minor."
I may add, that in more recent times many of the principal movements
have been from west to east, viz. of Germans absorbing Slavs, and
Slavs absorbing or expelling Fins and Tartars.
The next question is, how far can we trace back the existence of the
present widely different fundamental types of mankind by the light of
ascertained and certain facts?
The most important of these facts is, that Egyptian monuments enable
us to say, that the existing diversities of the typical races of
mankind are not of recent origin, but have existed unchanged from the
first dawn of history, say 7000 years ago. The Egyptians themselves
have come down from the Old Empire, through all the vicissitudes of
conquests, mixtures of races, changes of religion and language, so
little altered that the fellah of to-day is often the image of the
Egyptians who built the pyramids. The wooden statue of an officer of
Chephren who died some 6000 years ago, was such a striking portrait
of the village magistrate of to-day, that the Arab workmen christened
it the "Sheik-el-beled." And these old Egyptians knew from the
earliest times three at least of the fundamental types of mankind:
the Nahsu, or negroes to the south, who are represented on the
monuments so faithfully that they might be taken as typical pictures
of the modern negro; the Lebu to the west, a fair-skinned and
blue-eyed white race, whose descendants remain to this day as Kabyles
and Berbers, in the same localities of North Africa; and to the east
various tribes of Arabs, Syrians, and other Asiatics, who are always
painted of a yellowish-brown colour, and whose features may often be
traced in their modern descendants.
The same may be said of the wild and domestic animals of the various
countries, which are the same now, unless where subsequently
imported, as when they were first known to the ancient Egyptians.
We start, therefore, with this undoubted fact, that a period of
6000 or 7000 years has been insufficient to make any perceptible
change in the types of pure races, whether of the animal or of human
species. And doubtless this period might be greatly extended if we
had historical records of the growth of Egyptian civilization in the
times prior to Menes, for in the earliest records we find accounts of
wars both with the Nahsu and the Lebu, implying large populations of
those races already existing both to the south and west of the valley
of the Nile.
These positive dates carry us back so far that it is of little use to
investigate minutely the differences of races shown by the remains
of the neolithic period. They were very marked and numerous, but
we have no evidence to show that they were different from those of
more recent times, or that their date can be certainly said to be
much older than the oldest Egyptian records. All we can infer with
certainty is, that whether the neolithic period be of longer or
shorter duration, no changes have taken place in the animal fauna
contemporary with man which cannot be traced to human agency or other
known causes. No new species have appeared, or old ones disappeared,
in the course of natural evolution, as was the case during the
quaternary and preceding geological periods.
The neolithic is, however, a mere drop in the ocean of time compared
with the earlier periods in which the existence of palæolithic man
can be traced by his remains; and as far back as we can go we find
ourselves confronted by the same fact of a diversity of races. As
we have seen in the chapter on Quaternary man, Europe, where alone
skulls and skeletons of the palæolithic age have been discovered,
affords at least three very distinct types--that of Canstadt, of
Cro-Magnon, and of Furfooz.
The Canstadt type, which includes the men of Neanderthal and Spy,
and which was widely diffused, having been found, as far south as
Gibraltar, is apparently the oldest, and certainly the rudest and
most savage, being characterized by enormous brow-ridges, a low
and receding forehead, projecting muzzle, and thick bones with
powerful muscular attachments. It is very dolichocephalic, but
the length is due mainly to the projection of the posterior part
of the brain, the total size of which is below the average. The
Cro-Magnon type, which is also very old, being contemporary with
the cave-bear and mammoth, is the very opposite of that of Canstadt
in many respects. The superciliary ridges are scarcely marked, the
forehead is elevated, the contour of the skull good, and the volume
of the brain equal or superior to that of many modern civilized
races. The stature was tall, the nose straight or projecting, and
the chin prominent. The only resemblance to the Canstadt type is,
that they are both dolichocephalic chiefly on the posterior region,
and both prognathous; but the differences are so many and profound
that no anthropologist would say that one of these races could have
been derived directly from the other. Still less could he say that
the small round-headed race of Furfooz could have been a direct
descendant of either of the two former. It is found in close vicinity
with them over an extensive area, but generally in caves and deposits
which, from their geological situation and associated fauna, point to
a later origin. In fact, if we go by European evidence alone, we may
consider it proved that the oldest known races were dolichocephalic,
that the brachycephalic races came later, and that as long ago as in
neolithic times, considerable intercrossing had taken place, which
has gone on ever since, producing the great variety of intermediate
types which now prevail over a great part of Europe.
This inference of the priority of the Canstadt type is strengthened
by its undoubted approximation to that of the most savage existing
races and of the anthropoid apes. If we take the skulls and skeletons
of Neanderthal and Spy, and compare them with those of modern
civilized man, we find that while they are still perfectly human,
they make a notable approximation towards a savage and Simian type in
all the peculiarities which have been described by anthropologists
as tests. The most important of all, that of the capacity and form
of the brain, is best illustrated by the subjoined diagram of the
skulls of the European, the Neanderthal, and the chimpanzee placed in
superposition.
[Illustration: L'HOMME AVANT L'HISTOIRE. (From Debierre.)]
It will be seen at a glance that the Neanderthal skull, especially in
the frontal part, which is the chief seat of intelligence, is nearer
to the chimpanzee than to modern man. And all the other characters
correspond to this inferiority of brain. The enormous superciliary
ridges; the greater length of the fore-arm; the prognathous jaws,
larger canine teeth, and smaller chin; the thicker bones and stronger
muscular attachments; the rounder ribs; the flatter tibia, and many
other characters described by palæontologists, all point in the same
direction, and take us some considerable way towards the missing link
which is to connect the human race with animal ancestors.
Still there are other considerations which must make us pause before
asserting too positively that in following Quaternary man up to
the Canstadt type, we are on the track of original man, and can
say with confidence that by following it up still further we shall
arrive at the earlier form from which man was differentiated. In
the first place, Europe is the only part of the world where this
Canstadt type has hitherto been found. We have abundant evidence from
palæolithic stone implements that man existed pretty well over the
whole earth in early Quaternary times, but have hitherto no evidence
from human remains outside of Europe from which we can draw any
inference as to the type of man by whom these implements were made.
It is clear that in Europe the oldest races were dolichocephalic,
but we have no certainty that this was the case in Asia, in so many
parts of which round-headed races exclusively prevail, and have done
so from the earliest times. Again, we have no evidence as to the
origin of another of the most strongly marked types, that of the
Negro, or of the Negrito, Negrillo, Bushmen, Australian, or other
existing races who approach most nearly to the Simian type. The
only evidence we have of the type of races who were certainly early
Quaternary, and may very possibly go back to an older geological
age than that of the men of Neanderthal and Spy, comes from the New
World, from California, Brazil, and Buenos Ayres, and points to a
type not so savage and Simian as that of Canstadt, but rather to
that which characterizes all the different varieties of American
man, though here also we find evidence of distinct dolichocephalic
and brachycephalic races from the very earliest times. Another
difficulty in the way of considering the Canstadt type as a real
advance towards primitive man and the missing link, arises from
the totally different and very superior type of Cro-Magnon being
found so near it in time, as proved by the existence in both of the
cave-bear, mammoth, and other extinct animals. We can hardly suppose
the Cro-Magnon type to have sprung by slow evolution in the ordinary
way of direct succession, from such a very different type as that of
Canstadt during such a short interval of time as a small portion of
one geological period. Again, it is very perplexing to find that the
only Tertiary skulls and skeletons for which we possess really strong
evidence, those of Castelnedolo, instead of showing, as might be
expected, a still more rude and Simian aspect than that of Canstadt,
show us the Canstadt type indeed, but in a milder and more human form.
All that can be said with certainty is, that as far as authentic
evidence carries us back, the ancestral animal, or missing link, has
not been discovered, but that man already existed from an enormous
antiquity, extending certainly through the Quaternary into the
Pliocene, and probably into the Miocene period, and that at the
earliest date at which his remains have been found the race was
already divided, as at present, into several sharply distinguished
types.
This leaves the question of man's ultimate origin completely open to
speculation, and enables both monogenists and polygenists to contend
for their respective views with plausible arguments, and without
fear of being refuted by facts. Polygeny, or plural origins, would
at first sight seem to be the most plausible theory to account for
the great diversities of human races actually existing, and which can
be shown to have existed from such an immense antiquity. And this
seems to have been the first guess of primitive nations, for most of
them considered themselves as autochthonous, sprung from the soil,
or created by their own native gods. But by degrees this theory gave
place to that of monogeny, which has been for a long while almost
universally accepted by the civilized world. The cause of this
among Christians, Jews, and Mahometans has been the acceptance of
the narratives in Genesis, first of Adam and secondly of Noah, as
literally true accounts of events which actually occurred. This is
an argument which has completely broken down, and no competent and
dispassionate thinker any longer accepts the Hebrew Scriptures as a
literal and conclusive authority, on facts of history and science
which lie within the domain of human reason. The question, therefore,
became once more an open one, but as the old orthodox argument
for monogeny faded into oblivion, a new and more powerful one was
furnished by the doctrine of Evolution as expounded by Darwin. The
same argument applies to man as to the rest of the animal world, that
if separate species imply separate creations, these supernatural
creations must be multiplied to such an extent as to make them
altogether incredible; as for instance 150 separate creations for
the land shells alone of one of the group of Madeira islands; while
on the other hand genera grade off into species, species into races,
and races into varieties, by such insensible degrees, as to establish
an irresistible inference that they have all been developed by
evolution from common ancestors. No one, I suppose, seriously doubts
that this is in the main the true theory of life, though there may
still be some uncertainty as to the causes and mode of operation,
and of the different steps and stages of this evolution. Monogeny
therefore in this general sense of evolution from some primitive
mammalian type, may be accepted as the present conclusion of science
for man as it has come to be for the horse, dog, and so many other
animals which are his constant companions. Their evolution can in
many cases be traced up, through successive steps, to some more
simple and generalized type in the Eocene; and it may be permitted
to believe that if the whole geological record could be traced as
far back as that of the horse, in the case of man and the other
quadrumana, their pedigree would be as clearly made out. This,
however, does not conclude the question, for it is quite permissible
to contend that in the case of man, as in that of the horse, though
the primary ancestral type in the Eocene may be one, the secondary
types from which existing races are more immediately derived may be
more than one, and may have been evolved in different localities.
Thus in the case of the dog, it is almost certain that some of the
existing races have been derived from wolves, and others from jackals
and foxes; but this is quite consistent with the belief that all the
canine genus have been evolved from the marsupial Carnivora of the
Eocene, through the Arctocyon, who was a generalized type, half dog
and half bear. In fact, we have the authority of Darwin himself, as
quoted in the beginning of this chapter, for saying that this would
be quite consistent with his view of the origin of species.
Now the controversy between monogenists and polygenists has turned
mainly on these comparatively recent developments of secondary types.
It has been fought to a great extent before the immense antiquity of
the human race had been established, and it had become almost certain
that its original starting-point must be sought at least as far back
as in the Eocene period.
The main argument for monogeny has been that the different races
of mankind are fertile among themselves. This is doubtless true to
a great extent, and shows that these races have not diverged very
far from their ancestral type. But the researches of Darwin and his
successors have thrown a good deal of new light on the question of
hybridity. Species can no longer be looked upon as separated from one
another and from races by hard-and-fast lines, on one side of which
is absolute sterility and on the other absolute fertility; but rather
as blending into one another by insensible gradations from free
intercrossing to sterility, according as the differences from the
original type became more pronounced and more fixed by heredity.
To revert to the case of dogs, we find free interbreeding between
races descended from different secondary ancestors, such as wolves,
jackals, and foxes, though freer, I believe, and more permanent
as the races are closer; but as the specific differences become
more marked, the fertility does not abruptly cease, but rapidly
diminishes. Thus Buffon's experiment shows that a hybrid cross
between the dog and the wolf may be produced and perpetuated for at
least three generations, and the leporine cross between the hare and
rabbit is almost an established race. On the other hand, we see in
the mule the last expiring trace of fertility in a cross between
species which have diverged so far in different directions as the
horse and the ass.
The human race repeats this lesson of the animal world, and shows
a graduated scale of fertility and permanence in crosses, between
different types according as they are closely or distantly related.
Thus if we take the two extremes, the blond white of North temperate
Europe and the Negro of Equatorial Africa, the disposition to union
is almost replaced by repugnance which is only overcome under special
circumstances, such as slavery, and an absence of women of their own
race; while the offspring, the mulatto, is everywhere a feeble folk,
with deficient vitality, diminished fertility, and prone to die out,
or revert to one or other of the original types. But where the types
are not so extremely divergent the fertility of the cross increases,
as between the brunet white of Southern Europe and the Arab or Moor
with the Negro, and of the European with the native Indian of America.
Perhaps the strongest argument for polgyeny is that derived from the
different constitutions of different races as regards susceptibility
to climatic and other influences.
At present, and as far back as history or tradition enables us to
trace, mankind has, as in the case of other animals, been very much
restricted to definite geological provinces. Thus in the extreme
case of the fair white and the Negro, the former cannot live and
propagate its type south of the parallel of 40°, or the latter north
of it. This argument was no doubt pushed too far by Agassiz, who
supposed the whole world to be divided into a number of limited
districts, in each of which a separate creation both of men, animals,
and plants had taken place suited to the environment. This is
clearly inconsistent with facts, but there is still some force in
it when stripped of exaggeration, and confined to the three or four
leading types which are markedly different. Especially it bears on
the argument, on which monogenists mainly rely, of the peopling of
the earth by migration from one common centre. No doubt migration
has played a very great part in the diffusion of all animal and
vegetable species, and their zoological provinces are determined very
much by the existence of insurmountable barriers in early geological
times. No doubt also man is better organized for migration than
most other terrestrial animals, and history and tradition show that
in comparatively recent times he has reached the remotest islands
of the Pacific by perfectly natural means. But this does not meet
the difficulty of accounting, if we place the origin of man from a
single pair anywhere in the northern hemisphere, for his presence in
palæolithic times in South Africa and South America. How did he get
across the equatorial zone, in which only a tropical fauna, including
the tropical Negro, can now live and flourish? Or _vice versâ_, if
the original Adam and Eve were black, and the Garden of Eden situated
in the tropics, how did their descendants migrate northwards, and
live on the skirts of the ice-caps of the glacial period? Or how did
the yellow race, so tolerant of heat and cold, and of insanitary
conditions, and so different in physical and moral characters from
either the whites or the blacks, either originate from them, or give
rise to them? The nearest congeners of man, the quadrumana, monkeys
and apes, are all catarrhine in the Old World, and all platyrhine
in America. Why, if all are descended from the same pair of
ancestors, and have spread from the same spot by migration? We can
only reconcile the fact that it is so with the facts of evolution,
by throwing the common starting-point or points of the lines of
development much further back into the Eocene, or even further; and
if this be true for monkeys, why not for man?
One point seems quite clear, that monogeny is only possible by
extending the date of human origins far back into the Tertiaries.
On any short-dated theories of man's appearance upon earth--as
for instance that of Prestwich, that palæolithic man probably
only existed for some 20,000 or 25,000 years before the neolithic
period--some theory like that of Agassiz, of separate creations in
separate zoological provinces, follows inevitably. If the immense
time from the Miocene to the Recent period has been insufficient to
differentiate the Hylobates and Dryopithecus very materially from the
existing anthropoid apes, a period such as 40,000 or 50,000 years
would have gone a very little way in deriving the Negro from the
white, or the white from the Negro. To deny the extension of human
origins into the Tertiaries is practically to deny Darwin's theory
of evolution altogether, or to contend that man is an exception to
the laws by which the rest of the animal creation have come into
existence in the course of evolution.
The question of the locality in which the human species first
originated depends also very materially on the date assigned for
human origins. The various speculations which have been hazarded on
this subject are almost all based on the supposition that this origin
took place in comparatively recent times when geographical and other
causes were not materially different from those of the present day.
It was for ages the accepted belief that all mankind were descended
primarily from a single pair of ancestors, who were miraculously
created in Mesopotamia, and secondarily from three pairs who were
miraculously preserved in the ark in Armenia. This of course never
had any other foundation than the belief in the inspired authority of
the Bible, and when it came to be established that this, as regards
its scientific and prehistoric speculations, was irreconcilable
with the most certain facts of science, the orthodox account of the
Creation fell with it. The theory of Asiatic origin was, however,
taken up on other grounds, and still lingers in some quarters,
mainly among philologists, who, headed by Max Müller, thought they
had discovered in Sanscrit and Zend the nearest approach to a common
Aryan language. Tracing backwards the lines of migration of these
people, the Sanscrit-speaking Hindoos and the Zend-speaking Iranians,
they found them intersecting somewhere about the Upper Oxus, and
jumped at the conclusion that the great elevated plateau of Pamir,
the "roof of the world," had been the birthplace of man, as it was of
so many of the great rivers which flowed from it to the north, south,
east, and west. This theory, however, has pretty well broken down,
since it has been shown that other branches of the Aryan languages,
specially the Lithuanian, contain more archaic elements than either
Sanscrit or Zend; that language is often no conclusive test of race;
that Aryan migrations have quite as often or oftener been from west
to east than from east to west; and that all history, prehistoric
traditions, and linguistic palæontology point to the principal Aryan
races having been located in Northern and Central Europe and in
Central and Southern Russia very much as we find them at the present
day.
The question of the locality of human origins is now being debated
on very different grounds, and although it is not denied that Max
Müller's "somewhere in Asia" may turn out to be a correct guess, it
is denied that there is at present a particle of evidence to support
it. For really the whole question is very much one of guesswork.
The immense antiquity which on the lowest possible estimate can
be assigned for the proved existence of man, carries us back to a
period when geological, geographical, and climatic conditions were
so entirely different, that all inferences from those of the present
period are useless. For instance, certainly half the Himalayas, and
probably the whole, were under the sea; the Pamir and Central Asia,
instead of being the roof of the world, may have been fathoms deep
under a great ocean; Greenland and Spitzbergen were types of the
north temperate climate best suited for the highest races of man.
In like manner language ceases to be an available factor in any
attempt to trace human origins to their source. It is doubtless true
that at the present day different fundamental types of language
distinguish the different typical races of the human family. Thus
the monosyllabic type, consisting of roots only without grammar,
characterizes the Chinese and its allied races of the extreme east of
Asia; the agglutinative, in which different shades of meaning were
attached to roots, by definite particles glued on to them as it were
by prefixes or suffixes, is the type adopted by most of the oldest
and most numerous races of mankind in the Old World as their means
of conveying ideas by sound; while in the New World the common type
of an immense variety of languages is polysynthetic, or an attempt
to splutter out as it were a whole sentence in a single immensely
long word made up of fragments of separate roots and particles, a
type which in the Old World is confined to the Euskarian of the
Spanish Basque. And at the head of all as refined instruments for
the conveyance of thought, the two inflectional languages, the Aryan
and Semitic, by which, though in each case by a totally different
system, roots acquire their different shades of meaning by particles,
no longer mechanically glued on to them, but melted down as it were
with the roots, and incorporated into new words according to definite
grammatical rules.
But this carries us back a very little way. Judging by philology
alone, the Chinese, whose annals go back only to about 2500 B.C.,
would be an older race than the Egyptians or Accadians, whose
languages can be traced at least 2000 years further back. And if
we go back into prehistoric and geological times we are absolutely
ignorant whether the neolithic and palæolithic races spoke these
languages, or indeed spoke at all. Some palæontologists have fancied
that there was evidence for some of the older palæolithic races being
speechless, and christened them "Homo alalus," but this is based
on the solitary fact that a single human jaw, that of Naulette, is
wanting in the genial tubercle, absent also in anthropoid apes, to
which one of the muscles of the tongue is attached. But apart from
this being a single instance, some of the best anatomists deny that
this genial tubercle is really essential to speech, which the latest
physiological researches show to be dependent on the development of
a small tract in the third frontal convolution of the right side of
the brain, any injury to which causes aphasia, or loss of the power
of speech, though its physical organs of the larynx remain unimpaired.
It is probable, however, that from the very first man had a certain
faculty, like other animals, of expressing meaning by sounds and
gestures, and the researches of Romanes, and quite recently those
of Professor Garner on the language of monkeys and apes, make this
almost certain. But at what particular moment in the course of the
evolution of man this faculty ripened into what may be properly
called language is a matter of the purest conjecture. It may have
been in the Tertiary, the Quaternary, or not until the Recent period.
All we can say is, that when we first catch sight of languages, they
are already developed into the present distinct types, arguing,
as in the case of physical types, either for distinct miraculous
creations, or for such an immensely remote ancestry as to give time
for the fixation of separate secondary types before the formation
of language. Thus, if we confine ourselves to the most perfect and
advanced, and apparently therefore most modern form of language
of the foremost races of the world, the inflectional, we find two
types, the Semitic and Aryan, constructed on such totally different
principles that it is impossible for one to be derived from the
other, or both to be descended from a common parent. The Semitic
device of expressing shades of meaning by internal flexion, that is,
by ringing the changes of vowels between three consonants, making
every word triliteral, is fundamentally different from the Aryan
device for attaining the same object by fusing roots and added
particles into one new word in which equal value is attached to
vowels and consonants. We can partly see how the latter may have been
developed from the agglutinative, but not how the stiff and cramped
Semitic can have been derived either from that or from the far more
perfect and flexible type of the Aryan languages. It has far more the
appearance of being an artificial invention implying a considerable
advance of intellectual attainment, and therefore of comparatively
recent date. In any case we may safely accept the conclusion that
there is nothing in language which assists us in tracing back human
origins into geological times, or indeed much further than the
commencement of history.
We are reduced, therefore, to geological evidence, and this gives us
nothing better than mere probabilities, or rather guesses, as to the
original centre or centres of human existence upon the earth. The
inference most generally drawn is in favour of the locality where
the earliest traces of human remains have been found, and where the
existence of the nearest allied species, the apes and monkeys, can be
carried back furthest. This locality is undoubtedly Eur-Africa, that
is the continent which existed when Europe and Africa were united by
one or more land connections. And in this locality the preference
must be assigned to Western Europe and to Africa north of the Atlas;
in fact to the portion of this ancient continent facing the Atlantic,
and Western Mediterranean, then an inland sea. Thus far Central
and South-Western France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Algeria have
afforded the oldest unequivocal proofs of the existence of man, and
of the coexistence of anthropoid apes. Accordingly Darwin inclined
to the view that North Africa was probably the scene of man's first
appearance, and the latest authority on the subject, Brinton, in his
_Races and Peoples_, gives at length reasons for assigning this to
somewhere in Eur-Africa.
But it must be remembered that this inference rests entirely on the
fact that the district in question has been more or less explored,
while the rest of the earth can hardly be said to have been explored
at all, for anything prior to those Quaternary paleolithic implements
which prove the existence of man already spread over nearly the
whole of the habitable globe. Nor would the origin of the white
race in Eur-Africa, even if it were established, help us to account
for the existence of the Negro race on the other side of the Atlas
and the Sahara, or of the yellow race in Eastern Asia, or of the
American race. Indeed America may fairly compete with Eur-Africa for
the honour of being the original seat of the human race, for the
geological conditions and the animal fauna of the auriferous gravels
of California point to the Calaveras skull and other numerous human
remains and implements found in them being of Tertiary age, and
quite possibly as old or even older than anything which has been
found in Europe.[17] The wide diffusion of the same peculiar racial
type over the whole continent of America down to Cape Horn, and its
capability of existing under such different conditions of climate
and environment, also point to its being an extremely ancient and
primitive race, and the generic distinction between the apes and
monkeys of the Old and New Worlds is a remarkable circumstance which
is not accounted for by any monogenist theory of the origin of the
order of quadrumana.
[17] If Ameghino's discoveries of an anthropoid type in the Lower
Eocene of Patagonia should be confirmed, it would incline the
balance of evidence in favour of South America, or rather of the
temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, as the most probable
scene of the evolution of the quadrumana, including the human
variety, from ancestral forms allied to the marsupials of the
Secondary period.
It is to be observed also, that although all American races have
a certain peculiar type in common, still there are differences
which show that secondary types must have existed from a very
early period, intercrossing between which must have given rise to
numerous varieties. Thus, according to Morton, dolichocephaly was
most prevalent among the tribes who inhabited the eastern side of
the continent facing the Atlantic both in North and South America,
while brachycephaly prevailed on the western, side facing the
Pacific. Great differences of colour and stature are also found
often among contiguous tribes, and irrespective of latitude. On the
whole, however, the American type approximates in many important
particulars, such as colour, hair, and anatomical structure, more
nearly to the yellow races of Eastern Asia than to any other, though
it is a fairly open question which of the two may have been the
earliest to appear in the immensely remote ages of the Tertiary
period.
Another theory is that man probably originated in some continent
of the Arctic Circle, where, as we know from fossil remains of the
Miocene and Eocene periods, Greenland and Spitzbergen enjoyed a mild
climate and forest vegetation, admirably adapted for the evolution
of a temperate mammalian fauna, including the human species. This is
a very plausible theory, but at present it is a mere theory, like
that of a lost Atlantis, or submerged continents in the Pacific or
Indian Oceans. The only thing approaching to evidence to support
it is, as far as I am aware, that Sir Joseph Hooker and other
eminent botanists think that the diffusion of the forest trees and
other flora of America can be traced along lines radiating from the
extreme north, along the mountain chains and elevated plateaux which
form the backbone of the continent from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.
There seems a probability also that the evolution of the human race,
which turns mainly on the development of the erect stature, which
is the basis of the larger brain and other anatomical differences
between man and the other quadrumana, must have taken place not in
tropical regions of dense forests, where climbing would have had a
decided advantage over walking in the struggle for life, but rather
in some region of wide plains and open forests, where it would be an
advantage to see enemies or prey at a distance, or over tall grass or
ferns.
It must be admitted, however, that in our present state of knowledge
all these theories of the place, time, and manner of human origins
are speculations rather than science. We have proof positive that man
was already spread over most parts of the world in the Quaternary
period, and the irresistible inference that he must have existed
long before, is confirmed by conclusive evidence as to the finding
of his remains and implements in the earliest Quaternary and latest
Pliocene periods, and very strong evidence for carrying them back
into the Miocene. Anthropoid apes, which are so similar to man in
physical structure, and in their ways are as highly specialized
from any more general and primitive ancestral form as man himself,
undoubtedly did exist in the Miocene period, and have come down to
us with comparatively little change. It puzzles the best anatomists
to find any clear distinction between the present Hylobates and the
Hylobates of the Middle Miocene, while that between the white man and
the Negro is clear and unmistakable. Why then should "Homo" not have
existed as soon as "Hylobates," and why should any prepossession in
favour of man's recent creation, based mainly on exploded beliefs
in the scientific value of the myths and guesses of the earliest
civilized nations of Asia, stand in the way of accepting the enormous
and rapidly increasing accumulation of evidence, tracing back the
evolution of the mammal man to the same course of development as
other mammals?
As regards the course of this evolution, all we know with any
certainty is, that as far as we can trace it back, the human species
was already differentiated into distinct races, and that in all
probability the present fundamental types were already formed. When
and where the primitive stock or stocks may have originated, and
the secondary ancestral races may have branched off from it, is at
present unknown. All we can say is, that the more we examine the
evidence, the more it points to extreme antiquity even for these
secondary stocks, and makes it probable that we must go, as in the
case of the horse and other existing mammals, at least as far back as
into the Eocene to look for the primitive generalized type or types
from which these secondary lines of quadrumanous and human evolution
have taken their origin. As regards the secondary types themselves,
there is no certainty as to the place or time of their origin, but
the balance of evidence points rather in favour of polygeny, that
is, of their having followed slightly different lines of evolution
from the common starting-point, under different circumstances of
environment and in different localities; so that when man, as we
know him, first appeared, he was already differentiated into races
distinct though not very far apart.
In conclusion, I may remark that these hotly-contested questions
as to monogeny or polygeny, and as to the place of man's first
appearance on earth, lose most of their importance when it is
realized that human origins must be pushed back at least as far as
the Miocene, and probably into the Eocene period. As long as it was
held that no traces of man's existence could be found, as Cuvier
held, until the Recent period; or even as some English geologists
still contend, until the post-glacial, or at any rate the glacial
or Quaternary periods, it was evident that the facts could only be
explained by the theory of a series of supernatural interferences.
Agassiz's theory, or some modification of it, must be adopted, of
numerous special creations of life at special centres, as of the
Esquimaux and polar bear in Arctic regions, the Negro and gorilla in
the tropics, and so forth. This theory has been completely given up
as regards animals, in favour of the Darwinian theory of evolution by
natural causes, and no one now believes in a multiplicity of miracles
to account for the existence of animal species. Is man alone an
exception to this universal law, or is he like the rest of creation,
a product of what Darwinians call "Evolution," and enlightened
theologians "the original impress"?
The existing species of anthropoid apes, the orang, the chimpanzee,
and the gorilla, do not differ more widely from one another than
do many of the extreme types of the human species. In colour,
hair, volume of brain, form of skull, stature, and a hundred other
peculiarities, the Negro and the European stand further apart than
those anthropoids do from one another, and no naturalist from Mars or
Saturn, investigating the human family for the first time, and free
from prepossession, would hesitate to class the white, black, yellow,
red, and perhaps five or six other varieties, as different species.
In the case of these anthropoid apes no one supposes that they were
miraculously created in recent times. On the contrary, we find their
type already fully developed in the Miocene, and we infer, that like
the horse, camel, and so many other existing mammals, their origin
may be traced step by step backwards to some lower and generalized
type in the Eocene. Who can doubt that physical man, an animal
constructed almost exactly on the same anatomical ground-plan as
the anthropoids, came into existence by a similar process? The only
answer would be, if it could be proved, that his existence on earth
had been so short as to make it impossible that so many and so great
specific variations as now exist, and some of which have been proved
to have existed early in the Quaternary period, could have been
developed by natural means and by the slow processes of evolution.
But this is just where the evidence fails, and is breaking down more
and more every year and with every fresh discovery.
Recent man has given place to Quaternary man; post-glacial to
inter-glacial and pre-glacial; and now the evidence for the existence
of man or of some ancestral form of man, in the Tertiary period,
has accumulated to such an extent that there are few competent
anthropologists who any longer deny it.
But with this extension of time the existence of man, instead of
being an anomaly and a discord, falls in with the sublime harmony of
the universe, of which it is the dominant note.
THE END.
_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay._
Transcriber's note:
The spelling of words in languages other than English, have been
left as they appear in the book. Minor spelling inconsistencies,
mainly hyphenated words, have been harmonized.
Obvious typos have been corrected. An "Illustration"
section has been added as an aid to the reader.