It was only after the glacial period, when the earth had resumed its
normal temperature, that man was created. Whence came he?
He came from whence originated the first blade of grass which grew upon
the burning rocks of the Silurian seas; from whence proceeded the
different races of animals which have successively replaced each other
upon the globe, gradually, but unceasingly, rising in the scale of
perfection. He emanated from the supreme will of the Author of the
worlds which constitute the universe.
The earth has passed through many phases since the time when--in the
words of the Sacred Record--“the earth was without form and void; and
darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters.” We have considered all these phases; we have
seen the globe floating in space in a state of gaseous nebulosity,
condensing into liquidity, and beginning to solidify at the surface. We
have pictured the internal agitations, the disturbances, the partial
dislocations to which the earth has been subjected, almost without
interruption, while it could not, as yet, resist the force of the waves
of the fiery sea imprisoned within its fragile crust. We have seen this
envelope acquiring solidity, and the geological cataclysms losing their
intensity and frequency in proportion as this solid crust increased in
thickness. We have looked on, so to speak, while the work of organic
creation was proceeding. We have seen life making its appearance upon
the globe; and the first plants and animals springing into existence. We
have seen this organic creation multiplying, becoming more complex, and
constantly made more perfect with each advance in the progressive phases
of the history of the earth. We now arrive at the greatest event of this
history, at the crowning of the edifice, _si parva licet componere
magnis_.
At the close of the Tertiary epoch, the continents and seas assumed the
respective limits which they now present. The disturbances of the
ground, the fractures of the earth’s crust, and the volcanic eruptions
which are the consequence of them, only occurred at rare intervals,
occasioning only local and restricted disasters. The rivers and their
affluents flowed between tranquil banks. Animated Nature is that of our
own days. An abundant vegetation, diversified by the existence of a
climate which has now been acquired, embellishes the earth. A multitude
of animals inhabit the waters, the dry land, and the air. Nevertheless,
creation has not yet achieved its greatest work--a being capable of
comprehending these marvels and of admiring the sublime work--a soul is
wanting to adore and give thanks to the Creator.
God created man.
What is man?
We might say that man is an intelligent and moral being; but this would
give a very imperfect idea of his nature. Franklin says that man is one
that can make tools! This is to reproduce a portion of the first
proposition, while depreciating it. Aristotle calls man the “wise
being,” ζωον πολιτικον. Linnæus, in his “System of Nature,” after having
applied to man the epithet of wise (_homo sapiens_) writes after this
generic title these profound words: _Nosce te ipsum_. The French
naturalist and philosopher, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, says, “The
plant _lives_, the animal _lives and feels_, man _lives, feels, and
thinks_”--a sentiment which Voltaire had already expressed. “The Eternal
Maker,” says the philosopher of Ferney, “has given to man organisation,
sentiment, and intelligence; to the animals sentiment, and what we call
instinct; to vegetables organisation alone. His power then acts
continually upon these three kingdoms.” It is probably the animal which
is here depreciated. The animal on many occasions undoubtedly thinks,
reasons, deliberates with itself, and acts in virtue of a decision
maturely weighed; it is not then reduced to mere sensation.
To define exactly the human being, we believe that it is necessary to
characterise the nature and extent of his intelligence. In certain cases
the intelligence of the animal approaches nearly to that of man, but the
latter is endowed with a certain faculty which belongs to him
exclusively; in creating him, God has added an entirely new step in the
ascending scale of animated beings. This faculty, peculiar to the human
race, is _abstraction_. We will say, then, that man is an _intelligent_
being, gifted with the faculty of comprehending the _abstract_.
It is by this faculty that man is raised to a pre-eminent degree of
material and moral power. By it he has subdued the earth to his empire,
and by it also his mind rises to the most sublime contemplations. Thanks
to this faculty, man has conceived the ideal, and realised poesy. He has
conceived the infinite, and created mathematics. Such is the
distinction which separates the human race so widely from the
animals--which makes him a creation apart and absolutely new upon the
globe. A being capable of comprehending the ideal and the infinite, of
creating poetry and algebra, such is man! To invent and understand this
formula--
(_a_ + _b_)² = _a_² + 2_ab_ + _b_²,
or the algebraic idea of negative quantities, this belongs to man. It is
the greatest privilege of the human being to express and comprehend
thoughts like the following:
J’étais seul près des flots, par une nuit d’étoiles,
Pas un nuage aux cieux, sur les mers pas de voiles,
Mes yeux plongeaient plus loin que le monde réel,
Et les vents et les mers, et toute la nature
Semblaient interroger dans un confus murmure,
Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel.
Et les étoiles d’or, légions infinies,
À voix haute, à voix basse, avec mille harmonies
Disaient, en inclinant leur couronne de feu;
Et les flots bleus, que rien ne gouverne et n’arrête:
Disaient, en recourbant l’écume de leur crête:
“C’est le Seigneur, le Seigneur Dieu!”*
VICTOR HUGO, _les Orientales_.
* * * * *
* Alone with the waves, on a starry night,
My thoughts far away in the infinite;
On the sea not a sail, not a cloud in the sky,
And the wind and the waves with sweet lullaby
Seem to question in murmurs of mystery,
The fires of heaven, the waves of the sea.
And the golden stars of the heavens rose higher,
Harmoniously blending their crowns of fire,
And the waves which no ruling hand may know,
‘Midst a thousand murmurs, now high, now low,
Sing, while curving their foaming crests to the sea,
“It is the Lord God! It is He.”
The “Mécanique Céleste” of Laplace, the “Principia” of Newton, Milton’s
“Paradise Lost,” the “Orientales” by Victor Hugo--are the fruits of the
_faculty of abstraction_.
In the year 1800, a being, half savage, who lived in the woods,
clambered up the trees, slept upon dried leaves, and fled on the
approach of men, was brought to a physician named Pinel. Some
sportsmen had found him; he had no voice, and was devoid of
intelligence; he was known as the little savage of Aveyron. The Parisian
_savants_ for a long time disputed over this strange individual. Was it
an ape?--was it a wild man?
[Illustration: XXXII.--Appearance of Man.]
The learned Dr. Itard has published an interesting history of the savage
of Aveyron. “He would sometimes descend,” he writes, “into the garden of
the deaf and dumb, and seat himself upon the edge of the fountain,
preserving his balance by rocking himself to and fro; after a time his
body became quite still, and his face assumed an expression of profound
melancholy. He would remain thus for hours--regarding attentively the
surface of the water--upon which he would, from time to time, throw
blades of grass and dried leaves. At night, when the clear moonlight
penetrated into the chamber he occupied, he rarely failed to rise and
place himself at the window, where he would remain part of the night,
erect, motionless, his neck stretched out, his eyes fixed upon the
landscape lit up by the moon, lost in a sort of ecstasy of
contemplation.” This being was, undoubtedly, a man. No ape ever
exhibited such signs of intelligence, such dreamy manifestations, vague
conceptions of the ideal--in other words, that faculty of _abstraction_
which belongs to humanity alone. In order worthily to introduce the new
inhabitant who comes to fill the earth with his presence--who brings
with him intelligence to comprehend, to admire, to subdue, and to rule
the creation (PL. XXXII.), we require nothing more than the grand and
simple language of Moses, whom Bossuet calls “the most ancient of
historians, the most sublime of philosophers, the wisest of
legislators.” Let us listen to the words of the inspired writer: “And
God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his _own_
image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he
them.”
“And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, _it was_ very
good.”
* * * * *
Volumes have been written upon the question of the unity of the human
race; that is, whether there were many centres of the creation of man,
or whether our race is derived solely from the Adam of Scripture. We
think, with many naturalists, that the stock of humanity is unique, and
that the different human races, the negroes, and the yellow race, are
only the result of the influence of climate upon organisation. We
consider the human race as having appeared for the first time (the mode
of his creation being veiled in Divine mystery, eternally impenetrable
to us) in the rich plains of Asia, on the smiling banks of the
Euphrates, as the traditions of the most ancient races teach us. It is
there, where Nature is so rich and vigorous, in the brilliant climate
and under the radiant sky of Asia, in the shade of its luxuriant masses
of verdure and its mild and perfumed atmosphere, that man loves to
represent to himself the father of his race as issuing from the hand of
his Creator.
We are, it will be seen, far from sharing the opinion of those
naturalists who represent man, at the beginning of the existence of his
species, as a sort of ape, of hideous face, degraded mien, and covered
with hair, inhabiting caves like the bears and lions, and participating
in the brutal instincts of those savage animals.[116] There is no doubt
that early man passed through a period in which he had to contend for
his existence with ferocious beasts, and to live in a primitive state in
the woods or savannahs, where Providence had placed him. But this period
of probation came to an end, and man, an eminently social being, by
combining in groups, animated by the same interests and the same
desires, soon found means to intimidate the animals, to triumph over the
elements, to protect himself from the innumerable perils which
surrounded him, and to subdue to his rule the other inhabitants of the
earth. “The first men,” says Buffon, “witnesses of the convulsive
movements of the earth, still recent and frequent, having only the
mountains for refuge from the inundations; and often driven from this
asylum by volcanoes and earthquakes, which trembled under their feet;
uneducated, naked, and exposed to the elements, victims to the fury of
ferocious animals, whose prey they were certain to become; impressed
also with a common sentiment of gloomy terror, and urged by necessity,
would they not unite, first, to defend themselves by numbers, and then
to assist each other by working in concert, to make habitations and
arms? They began by shaping into the forms of hatchets these hard
flints, the Jade, and other stones, which were supposed to have been
formed by thunder and fallen from the clouds, but which are,
nevertheless, only the first examples of man’s art in a pure state of
Nature. He will soon draw fire from these same flints, by striking them
against each other; he will seize the flames of the burning volcano, or
profit by the fire of the red-hot lava to light his fire of brushwood in
the forest; and by the help of this powerful element he cleanses,
purifies, and renders wholesome the place he selects for his habitation.
With his hatchet of stone he chops wood, fells trees, shapes timber, and
puts it together, fashions instruments of warfare and the most necessary
tools and implements; and after having furnished themselves with clubs
and other weighty and defensive arms, did not these first men find means
to make lighter weapons to reach the swift-footed stag from afar? A
tendon of an animal, a fibre of the aloe-leaf, or the supple bark of
some ligneous plant, would serve as a cord to bring together the two
extremities of an elastic branch of yew, forming a bow; and small
flints, shaped to a point, arm the arrow. They will soon have snares,
rafts, and canoes; they will form themselves into communities composed
of a few families, or rather of relations sprung from the same family,
as is still the case with some savage tribes, who have their game, fish,
and fruits in common. But in all those countries whose area is limited
by water, or surrounded by high mountains, these small nations, becoming
too numerous, have been in time forced to parcel out the land between
them; and from that moment the earth has become the domain of man; he
has taken possession of it by his labour, he has cultivated it, and
attachment to the soil follows the very first act of possession; the
private interest makes part of the national interest; order,
civilisation, and laws succeed, and society acquires force and
consistency.”[117] We love to quote the sentiments of a great
writer--but how much more eloquent would the words of the naturalist
have been, if he had added to his own grand eloquence of language, the
knowledge which science has placed within reach of the writers of the
present time--- if he could have painted man in the early days of his
creation, in presence of the immense animal population which then
occupied the earth, and fighting with the wild beasts which filled the
forests of the ancient world! Man, comparatively very weak in
organisation, destitute of natural weapons of attack or defence,
incapable of rising into the air like the birds, or living under water
like the fishes and some reptiles, might seem doomed to speedy
destruction. But he was marked on the forehead with the Divine seal.
Thanks to the superior gift of an exceptional intelligence, this being,
in appearance so helpless, has by degrees swept the most ferocious of
its occupants from the earth, leaving those only who cater to his wants
or desires, or by whose aid he changes the primitive aspects of whole
continents.
[116] It is told of a former distinguished and witty member of the
Geological Society that, having obtained possession of the rooms
on a certain day, when there was to be a general meeting, he
decorated its walls with a series of cartoons, in which the
parts of the members were strangely reversed. In one cartoon
Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri were occupied with the skeleton of
Homo sapiens; in another, a party of Crustaceans were occupied
with a cranium suspiciously like the same species; while in a
third, a party of Pterichthys were about to dine on a biped with
a suspicious resemblance to a certain well-conditioned F.G.S. of
the day.
[117] “Époques de la Nature,” vol. xii., pp. 322-325. 18mo. Paris,
1778.
* * * * *
The antiquity of man is a question which has largely engaged the
attention of geologists, and many ingenious arguments have been
hazarded, tending to prove that the human race and the great extinct
Mammalia were contemporaneous. The circumstances bearing on the question
are usually ranged under three series of facts: 1. The Cave-deposits; 2.
Peat and shell mounds; 3. Lacustrine habitations, or Lake dwellings.
We have already briefly touched upon the Cave-deposits. In the Kirkdale
Cave no remains or other traces of man’s presence seem to have been
discovered. But in Kent’s Hole, an unequal deposit of loam and clay,
along with broken bones much gnawed, and the teeth of both extinct and
living Mammals, implements evidently fashioned by the human hand were
found in the following order: in the upper part of the clay,
artificially-shaped flints; on the clay rested a layer of stalagmite, in
which streaks of burnt charcoal occurred, and charred bones of existing
species of animals. Above the stalagmite a stone hatchet, or celt, made
of syenite, of more finished appearance, was met with, with articles of
bone, round pieces of blue slate and sandstone-grit, pieces of pottery,
a number of shells of the mussel, limpet, and oyster, and other remains,
Celtic, British, and Roman, of very early date; the lower deposits are
those with which we are here more particularly concerned. The Rev. J.
MacEnery, the gentleman who explored and described them, ascertained
that the flint-instruments occupied a uniform situation intermediate
between the stalagmite and the upper surface of the loam, forming a
connecting link between both; and his opinion was that the epoch of the
introduction of the knives must be dated antecedently to the formation
of the stalagmite, from the era of the quiescent settlement of the mud.
From this view it would follow that the cave was visited posteriorly to
the introduction and subsidence of the loam, and before the formation of
the new super-stratum of stalagmite, by men who entered the cave and
disturbed the original deposit. Although flints have been found in the
loam underlying the regular crust of stalagmite, mingled confusedly with
the bones, and unconnected with the evidence of the visits of man--such
as the excavation of ovens or pits--Dr. Buckland refused his belief to
the statement that the flint-implements were found beneath the
stalagmite, and always contended that they were the work of men of a
more recent period, who had broken up the sparry floor. The doctor
supposed that the ancient Britons had scooped out ovens in the
stalagmite, and that through them the knives got admission to the
underlying loam, and that in this confused state the several materials
were cemented together.
In 1858 Dr. Falconer heard of the newly-discovered cave at Brixham, on
the opposite side of the bay to Torquay, and he took steps to prevent
any doubts being entertained with regard to its contents. This cave was
composed of several passages, with four entrances, formerly blocked up
with breccia and earthy matter; the main opening being ascertained by
Mr. Bristow to be seventy-eight feet above the valley, and ninety-five
feet above the sea, the cave itself being in some places eight feet
wide. The contents of the cave were covered with a layer of stalagmite,
from one to fifteen inches thick, on the top of which were found the
horns of a Reindeer; under the stalagmite came reddish loam or
cave-earth, with pebbles and some angular stones, from two to thirteen
feet thick, containing the bones of Elephants, Rhinoceros, Bears,
Hyænas, Felis, Reindeer, Horses, Oxen, and several Rodents; and, lastly,
a layer of gravel, and rounded pebbles without fossils, underlaid the
cave-earth and formed the lowest deposit.
In these beds no human bones were found, but in almost every part of the
bone-bed were flint-knives, one of the most perfect being found thirteen
feet down in the bone-bed, at its lowest part. The most remarkable fact
in connection with this cave was the discovery of an entire left
hind-leg of the Cave-bear lying in close proximity to this knife; “not
washed in a fossil state out of an older alluvium, and swept afterwards
into this cave, so as to be mingled with the flint implements, but
having been introduced when clothed in its flesh.” The implement and the
Bear’s leg were evidently deposited about the same time, and it only
required some approximative estimate of the date of this deposit, to
settle the question of the antiquity of man, at least in an affirmative
sense.
Mr. H. W. Bristow, who was sent by the Committee of the Royal Society to
make a plan and drawings of the Brixham Cave, found that its entrance
was situated at a height of ninety-five feet above the present level of
the sea. In his Report made to the Royal Society, in explanation of the
plan and sections, Mr. Bristow stated that, in all probability, at the
time the cave was formed, the land was at a lower level to the extent of
the observed distance of ninety-five feet, and that its mouth was then
situated at or near the level of the sea.
The cave consisted of wide galleries or passages running in a north and
south direction, with minor lateral passages branching off nearly at
right angles to the main openings--- the whole cave being formed in the
joints, or natural divisional planes, of the rock.
The mouth or entrance to the cave originated, in the first instance, in
an open joint or fissure in the Devonian limestone, which became widened
by water flowing backwards and forwards, and was partly enlarged by the
atmospheric water, which percolated through the cracks, fissures, and
open joints in the overlying rock. The pebbles, forming the lowest
deposit in the cave, were ordinary shingle or beach-gravel, washed in by
the waves and tides. The cave-earth was the residual part of the
limestone rock, after the calcareous portion had been dissolved and
carried away in solution; and the stalactite and stalagmite were derived
from the lime deposited from the percolating water.
With regard to bone-caves generally, it would seem that, like other such
openings, they are most common in limestone rocks, where they have been
formed by water, which has dissolved and carried away the calcareous
ingredient of the rock. In the case of the Brixham cave, the mode of
action of the water could be clearly traced in two ways: first, in
widening out the principal passages by the rush of water backwards and
forwards from the sea; and, secondly, by the infiltration and
percolation of atmospheric water through the overlying rock. In both
cases the active agents in producing the cave had taken advantage of a
pre-existing fissure or crack, or an open joint, which they gradually
enlarged and widened out, until the opening received its final
proportions.
The cave presented no appearance of ever having been inhabited by man;
or of having been the den of Hyænas or other animals, like Wookey Hole
in the Mendips, and some other bone-caves. The most probable supposition
is, that the hind quarter of the Bear and other bones which were found
in the cave-earth, had been washed into the cave by the sea, in which
they were floating about.
We draw some inferences of the greatest interest and significance from
the Brixham cave and its contents.
We learn that this country was, at one time, inhabited by animals which
are now extinct, and of whose existence we have not even a tradition;
that man, then ignorant of the use of metal, and little better than the
brutes, was the contemporary of the animals whose remains were found in
the cave, together with a rude flint-implement--the only kind of weapon
with which our savage ancestor defended himself against animals scarcely
wilder than himself.
We also learn that after the cave had been formed and sealed up again,
as it were, together with all its contents, by the deposition of a solid
crust of stalagmite--an operation requiring a very great length of time
to effect--the Reindeer (_Cervus Tarandus_) was indigenous to this
country, as is proved by the occurrence of an antler of that animal
which was found lying upon, and partly imbedded in, the stalagmite
forming the roof or uppermost, that is, the latest formed, of the
cave-deposits.
Lastly, we learn that, at the time the cave was formed, and while the
land was inhabited by man, that part of the country was lower by
ninety-five feet than it is now; and that this elevation has probably
been produced so slowly and so gradually, as to have been imperceptible
during the time it was taking place, which extended over a vast interval
of time, perhaps over thousands of years.
Perhaps it may not be out of place here to describe the mode of
formation of bone-caves generally, and the causes which have produced
the appearances these now present.
Caves in limestone rocks have two principal phases--one of formation,
and one of filling up. So long as the water which enters the cavities in
the course of formation, and carries off some of the calcareous matter
in solution, can find an easy exit, the cavity is continually enlarged;
but when, from various causes, the water only enters in small
quantities, and does not escape, or only finds its way out slowly, and
with difficulty, the lime, instead of being removed, is re-deposited on
the walls, roof, sides, and floor of the cavity, in the form of
stalactites and stalagmite, and the work of re-filling with solid
carbonate of lime then takes place.
Encouraged by the Brixham discoveries, a congress of French and English
geologists met at Amiens, in order to consider certain evidence, on
which it was sought to establish as a fact that man and the Mammoth were
formerly contemporaries.
The valley of the Somme, between Abbeville and Amiens, is occupied by
beds of peat, some twenty or thirty feet deep, resting on a thin bed of
clay which covers other beds, of sand and gravel, and itself rests on
white Chalk with flints. Bordering the valley, some hills rise with a
gentle slope to a height of 200 or 300 feet, and here and there, on
their summits, are patches of Tertiary sand and clay, with fossils, and
again more extensive layers of loam. The inference from this geological
structure is that the river, originally flowing through the Tertiary
formation, gradually cut its way through the various strata down to its
present level. From the depth of the peat, its lower part lies below the
sea-level, and it is supposed that a depression of the region has
occurred at some period: again, in land lying quite low on the
Abbeville side of the valley, but above the tidal level, marine shells
occur, which indicate an elevation of the region; again, about 100 feet
above the valley, on the right bank of the river, and on a sloping
surface, is the Moulin-Quignon, where shallow pits exhibit a floor of
chalk covered by gravel and sand, accompanied by gravel and marly chalk
and flints more or less worn, well-rounded Tertiary flints and pebbles,
and fragments of Tertiary sandstone. Such is the general description of
a locality which has acquired considerable celebrity in connection with
the question of the antiquity of man.
The Quaternary deposits of Moulin-Quignon and the peat-beds of the Somme
formerly furnished Cuvier with some of the fossils he described, and in
later times chipped flint-implements from the quarries and bogs came
into the possession of M. Boucher de Perthes; the statements were
received at first not without suspicion--especially on the part of
English geologists who were familiar with similar attempts on their own
credulity--that some at least of these were manufactured by the workmen
of the district. At length, the discovery of a human jaw and tooth in
the gravel-pits of St. Acheul, near Amiens, produced a rigorous
investigation into the facts, and it seems to have been established to
the satisfaction of Mr. Prestwich and his colleagues, that
flint-implements and the bones of extinct Mammalia are met with in the
same beds, and in situations indicating very great antiquity. In the
sloping and irregular deposits overlooking the Somme, the bones of
Elephants, Rhinoceros, with land and fresh-water shells of existing
species, are found mingled with flint-implements. Shells like those now
found in the neighbouring streams and hedge-rows, with the bones of
existing quadrupeds, have been obtained from the peat, with flint-tools
of more than usual finish, and together with them a few fragments of
human bones. Of these reliquiæ, the Celtic memorials lie below the
Gallo-Roman; above them, oaks, alders, and walnut trees occur, sometimes
rooted, but no succession of a new growth of trees appear.
The theory of the St. Acheul beds is this: they were deposited by
fluviatile action, and are probably amongst the oldest deposits in which
human remains occur, older than the peat-beds of the Somme--but what is
their _real_ age? Before submitting to the reader the very imperfect
answer this question admits of, a glance at the previous discoveries,
which tended to give confirmation to the observations just narrated, may
be useful.
Implements of stone and flint have been continually turning up during
the last century and a half in all parts of the world. In the
neighbourhood of Gray’s Inn Lane, in 1715, a flint spear-head was picked
up, and near it some Elephants’ bones. In the alluvium of the Wey, near
Guildford, a wedge-shaped flint-tool was found in the gravel and sand,
in which Elephants’ tusks were also found. Under the cliffs at
Whitstable an oval-shaped flint-tool was found in what had probably been
a fresh-water deposit, and in which bones of the Bear and Elephant were
also discovered. Between Herne Bay and Reculver five other flint-tools
have been found, and three more near the top of the cliff, all in
fresh-water gravel. In the valley of the Ouse, at Beddenham, in
Bedfordshire, flint-implements, like those of St. Acheul, mixed with the
bones of Elephant, Rhinoceros, and Hippopotamus, have been found, and
near them an oval and a spear-shaped implement. In the peat of Ireland
great numbers of such implements have been met with. But nowhere have
they been so systematically sought for and classified as in the
Scandinavian countries.
The peat-deposits of those countries--of Denmark especially--are formed
in hollows and depressions, in the northern drift and Boulder clay, from
ten to thirty feet deep. The lower stratum, of two or three feet in
thickness, consists of _sphagnum_, over which lies another growth of
peat formed of aquatic and marsh plants. On the edge of the bogs trunks
of Scotch firs of large size are found--a tree which has not grown in
the Danish islands within historic times, and does not now thrive when
planted, although it was evidently indigenous within the human period,
since Steenstrup took with his own hands a flint-implement from beneath
the trunk of one. The sessile variety of the oak would appear to have
succeeded the fir, and is found at a higher level in the peat. Higher up
still, the common oak, _Quercus robur_, is found along with the birch,
hazel, and alder. The oak has in its turn been succeeded by the beech.
Another source from which numerous relics of early humanity have been
taken is the midden-heaps (Kjökken-mödden) found along the Scandinavian
coast. These heaps consist of castaway shells mixed with bones of
quadrupeds, birds, and fishes, which reveal in some respects the habits
of the early races which inhabited the coast. Scattered through these
mounds are flint-knives, pieces of pottery, and ashes, but neither
bronze nor iron. The knives and hatchets are said to be a degree less
rude than those of older date found in the peat. Mounds corresponding to
these, Sir Charles Lyell tells us, occur along the American coast, from
Massachusetts and Georgia. The bones of the quadrupeds found in these
mounds correspond with those of existing species, or species which have
existed in historic times.
By collecting, arranging, and comparing the flint and stone implements,
the Scandinavian naturalists have succeeded in establishing a
chronological succession of periods, which they designate--1. The Age of
Stone; 2. The Age of Bronze; 3. The Age of Iron. The first, or Stone
period, in Denmark, corresponded with the age of the Scotch fir, and, in
part, of the sessile oak. A considerable portion of the oak period
corresponded, however, with the age of _bronze_, swords made of that
metal having been found in the peat on the same level with the oak. The
_iron_ age coincides with the beech. Analogous instances, confirmatory
of these statements, occur in Yorkshire, and in the fens of
Lincolnshire.
The traces left indicate that the aborigines went to sea in canoes
scooped out of a single tree, bringing back deep-sea fishes. Skulls
obtained from the peat and from tumuli, and believed to be
contemporaneous with the mounds, are small and round, with prominent
supra-orbital ridges, somewhat resembling the skulls of Laplanders.
The third series of facts (_Lake-dwellings_, or _lacustrine
habitations_) consisted of the buildings on piles, in lakes, and once
common in Asia and Europe. They are first mentioned by Herodotus as
being used among the Thracians of Pæonia, in the mountain-lake Prasias,
where the natives lived in dwellings built on piles, and connected with
the shore by a narrow causeway, by which means they escaped the assaults
of Xerxes. Buildings of the same description occupied the Swiss lakes,
in the mud of which hundreds of implements, like those found in Denmark,
have been dredged up. In Zurich, Moosseedorf near Berne, and Lake
Constance, axes, celts, pottery, and canoes made out of single trees,
have been found; but of the human frame scarcely a trace has been
discovered. One skull dredged up at Meilen, in the Lake of Zurich, was
intermediate between the Lapp-like skull of the Danish tumuli and the
more recent European type.
The age of the different formations in which these records of the human
race are found will probably ever remain a mystery. The evidence which
would make the implements formed by man contemporaneous with the Mammoth
and other great Mammalia would go a great way to prove that man was also
pre-glacial. Let us see how that argument stands.
At the period when the upper Norwich Crag was deposited, the general
level of the British Isles is supposed to have been about 600 feet above
its present level, and so connected with the European continent as to
have received the elements of its fauna and flora from thence.
By some great change, a period of depression occurred, in which all the
country north of the mouth of the Thames and the Bristol Channel was
placed much below the present level. Moel Tryfaen experienced a
submergence of at least 1,400 feet, during which it received the erratic
blocks and other marks, indicative of floating icebergs, which have been
described in a former chapter. The country was raised again to something
like its original level, and again occupied by plants, Molluscs, Fishes
and Reptiles, Birds, and Mammifera. Again subsidence takes place, and,
after several oscillations, the level remains as we now find it. The
estimated time required for these various changes is something enormous,
and might have extended the term to double the number of years. The unit
of the calculation is the upward rate of movement observed on the
Scandinavian coast; applied to the oscillation of the ancient coast of
Snowdonia, the figures represent 224,000 years for the several
oscillations of the glacial period. Adding the pre-glacial period, the
computation gives an additional 48,000 years. But, let us repeat, the
figures and data are somewhat hypothetical.
With regard to the St. Acheul beds--said to be the most ancient
formation in which the productions of human hands have been found--they
are confessedly older than the peat-beds, and the time required for the
production of other peat-beds of equal thickness has been estimated at
7,000 years. The antiquity of the gravel-beds of St. Acheul may be
estimated on two grounds:--1. General elevation above the level of the
valley. 2. By estimating the animal-remains found in the gravel-beds,
and not in the peat. The first question implies the denudation of the
valley below the level of the gravel, or the elevation of the whole
plateau. Each of these operations would involve an incalculable time,
for want of data. In the second case, judging from the slow rate at
which quadrupeds have disappeared in historic times, the extinct Mammoth
and other great animals must have occupied many centuries in dying out,
for the notion that they died out suddenly from sharp and sudden
refrigeration, is not generally admitted.
With regard to the three ages of stone, bronze, and iron, M. Morlot has
based some calculations upon the condition of the delta of Tinière, near
Villeneuve, which lead him to assign to the oldest, or stone period, an
age of 5,000 to 7,000 years, and to the bronze period from 3,000 to
4,000. We may, then, take leave of this subject with the avowal that,
while admitting the probability that an immense lapse of time would be
required for the operations described, we are, in a great measure,
without reliable data for estimating its actual extent.
The opinion which places the creation of man on the banks of the
Euphrates in Central Asia is confirmed by an event of the highest
importance in the history of humanity, and by a crowd of concordant
traditions, preserved by different races of men, all tending to confirm
it. We speak of the Asiatic deluge.
[Illustration: Fig. 200.--Mount Ararat.]
The Asiatic deluge--of which sacred history has transmitted to us the
few particulars we know--was the result of the upheaval of a part of the
long chain of mountains which are a prolongation of the Caucasus. The
earth opening by one of the fissures made in its crust in course of
cooling, an eruption of volcanic matter escaped through the enormous
crater so produced. Volumes of watery vapour or steam accompanied the
lava discharged from the interior of the globe, which, being first
dissipated in clouds and afterwards condensing, descended, in torrents
of rain, and the plains were drowned with the volcanic mud. The
inundation of the plains over an extensive radius was the immediate
effect of this upheaval, and the formation of the volcanic cone of Mount
Ararat, with the vast plateau on which it rests, altogether 17,323 feet
above the sea, the permanent result. The event is graphically detailed
in the seventh chapter of Genesis.
11. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the
seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the
great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.