of the Drift Period are already absent in the earliest post-Glacial
deposits; the fauna approaches nearer and nearer in its composition to
that of the present day. The inland ice-masses and gigantic glaciers
began to melt away, and gradually retired to the present limits of the
glaciation that forms the remains of the Glacial Period of the Drift.
The animal forms of the beginning of the post-Glacial Period are still
living, and the plants characterising this final stage of the Drift
Period are still growing on the borders of the ice at the present day.
In the post-Glacial Period a few Northern forms--such as the reindeer,
lemming, ringed lemming, glutton, zizel, whistling hare, and jumping
mouse--still retained for a time their habitats in Central Europe.
Part of the Drift fauna--as the horse, wild ass, saiga antelope, and
Asiatic porcupine--concentrated again in the Asiatic steppes, from
which they had formerly won their territory of the Drift Period;
the specific Glacial forms--the reindeer and his above-mentioned
companions--followed the retreating ice-masses into the Far North, and
even into Polar regions. Another part--the specially Alpine forms, such
as the ibex, chamois, marmot, and Alpine hare--migrated with the Alpine
glaciers into the high valleys of the Alps, where they could continue
the life they had led in the lowlands during the Glacial Period. The
mammoth, woolly-haired rhinoceros, and cave-bear are extinct.
The present-day mammalian fauna of Europe and North Asia accordingly
bears a comparatively young character; during the Drift, and
especially in consequence of the Glacial Period, it underwent the most
considerable transformations.
[Sidenote: Coming of Man upon the Scene]
It is in the middle of this great drama of a gigantic animal world
struggling and fighting for its existence with the superior powers of
Nature, during the Interglacial period of the Drift, that man suddenly
appears upon the scene in Europe like a _deus ex machina_.
Whence he came we do not know.
Did he make his entrance into Europe in company with the Drift fauna
that immigrated from Central Asia, or have we to seek his original home
in the New World?
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE FIRST TENANTS OF THE WORLD: CREATURES THAT LIVED
BEFORE MAN
This page represents the most typical of the giant creatures that
inhabited the world before man. With possibly one exception, they
had disappeared before man came and, through long centuries, slowly
won dominion over the earth.
]
[Illustration:
THE WORLD
BEFORE
HISTORY--II
Professor
JOHANNES
RANKE
]
THE APPEARANCE OF MAN ON THE EARTH
[Sidenote: The Mystery of a Human Skull]
The remains of the Drift fauna are usually found mixed up and washed
together in caves and rock-crevices. From the investigation of the
caves in Thuringia, Franconia, and elsewhere practically proceeded
the first knowledge of the Drift fauna of Central Europe. Here,
right among the bones of primeval animals, were also found bones and
skulls of man. The strata in which they were discovered appeared
undisturbed; that they came into the old burial-places of the Drift
fauna subsequently--perhaps by an intentional burial of relatively
recent times--was thought to be out of the question. The discovery
that became most famous was Esper’s, in one of the richest caves of
“Franconian Switzerland,” the Gaillenreuth cave. There, in 1774, Esper
found a man’s lower jaw and shoulder-blade at a perfectly untouched
spot protected by a stone projection in the cave wall, in the same loam
as bones of the cave-bear and other Drift animals. Later, a human skull
with some rude potsherds of clay came to light in another place. Esper
argued thus:
As the human bones (lower jaw and shoulder-blade) lay among the
skeletons of animals, of which the Gaillenreuth caves are full,
and as they were found in what is in all probability the original
stratum, I presume, and I think not without sufficient reason, that
these human limbs are of equal age with the other animal fossils.
The Cuvier catastrophe theory could not allow this inference; according
to that theory it was a “scientific postulate” that man could not have
appeared on the earth until the alluvial period, and therefore after
the Drift fauna had become extinct. Therefore, in spite of appearances,
the human bones must have been more recent; and it was indeed
absolutely proved that the skull that Esper had found in the cave with
the rude clay potsherds originated from a burial in the floor of the
cave. As this was full of remains of Drift animals, the corpse, which
had been covered with the earth that had been thrown up in digging the
grave, was necessarily surrounded by these remains, and even appeared
embedded in them.
[Sidenote: The Story of the Caves]
It was ascertained that in very early times, but yet long after the
Drift Period, the dwellers near by had had a predilection for using
the caves as burial-places, so that the fact of human bones coming
together with bones of Drift animals in the floor of the same cave is
easily explained. Moreover, it was found that from the earliest times
down to the present day the caves had been used by hunters, herdsmen,
and others as places of shelter in bad weather, as cooking-places,
and sometimes even--especially in very early times--as regular
dwelling-places for longer periods, so that refuse of all kinds, and
often of all ages and forms of civilisation that the land has seen
from the Drift Period down to modern times, must have got into the
floors of the caves. If these were damp and soft, the remains of every
century were trodden in and got to lie deeper and deeper, so that, for
instance, the fragments of a cast-iron saucepan were actually found
right among the bones of regular Drift animals in a cave in Upper
Franconia.
[Sidenote: The Caves do not Prove Drift Man]
The discoveries of human remains in caves appeared discredited by
this, and to be of no value as proofs of the co-existence of man with
the Drift fauna. And indeed this position must practically be still
taken at the present day: all cave-finds are to be judged with the
greatest caution. They in themselves would never have been sufficient
to establish the existence of Drift Man, although, according to the
general change in scientific thought that led to the overthrow of
Cuvier’s theory, Drift Man is now just as much a postulate of science
as was formerly the case for the opposite assumption.
[Sidenote: Finding the First Drift Man]
The first sure proofs were adduced in France by Boucher de Perthes,
in the Drift beds of the Somme valley, near Abbeville, at the end of
the third decade of the nineteenth century. Fully recognising the
inadequacy of proof given by cave-finds, he had sought for the relics
of man in the undisturbed Drift beds of gravel and coarse sand that
contains the bones of Drift animals, which by their covering and depth
precluded all suspicion of having been subsequently dug over. And he
was successful. He had argued in exactly the same manner as Esper
had formerly done, but with better right. In the stratified Drift
formations every period is sharply defined by the layers of differently
coloured and differently composed strata horizontally overlying one
another. Here the proofs begin. They are irrefutable if it is shown
that the relics of man have been there since the deposit. Being no less
immovable than this stratum in which they lie, as they came with it,
they were likewise preserved with it; and as they have contributed to
its formation, they existed before it.
[Sidenote: The Overthrow of Cuvier’s Famous Theory]
That is the line of thought according to which Boucher de Perthes was
able, in 1839, to lay before the leading experts in Paris--at their
head Cuvier himself--his discoveries proving the former existence of
Drift man. But his demonstrations were not then sufficient to break
the old ban of prejudices that were apparently founded on such good
scientific bases; his proofs of the presence of man in the Somme
valley at the time of the Drift, contemporaneously with the extinct
Drift animals, were ridiculed. It was twenty years before these
long-neglected discoveries in the Somme valley concerning the early
history of man were recognised by the scientific world. This was only
made possible by Lyell, whose authority as a geologist had risen
above Cuvier’s, placing the whole weight of it on Boucher’s side,
after having personally travelled over the Somme valley three times
in the year 1859, and having himself examined all the chief places
where relics of Drift Man had been discovered. According to Lyell’s
description, the Somme valley lies in a district of white chalk, which
forms elevations of several hundred feet in height. If we ascend to
this height we find ourselves on an extensive tableland, showing only
moderate elevations and depressions, and covered uninterruptedly for
miles with loam and brick earth about five feet thick and quite devoid
of fossils. Here and there on the chalk may be noticed outlying
patches of Tertiary sand and clay, the remains of a once extensive
formation, the denudation of which has chiefly furnished the Drift
gravel material in which the relics of man and the bones of extinct
animals lie buried. The Drift alluvial deposit of the Somme valley
exhibits nothing extraordinary in its stratification or outward
appearance, nor in its composition or organic contents. The stratum
in which the bones of the Drift fauna are found intermingled with the
relics of man is partly a marine and partly a fluviatile deposit. The
human relics in particular are mostly buried deep in the gravel; almost
everywhere one has to pass down through a mass of overlying loam with
land shells, or a fine sand with fresh-water molluscs, before coming to
beds of gravel, in which the relics of Drift Man are found.
[Sidenote: Animals of the Ice Age]
Everything shows that the relics of man are here in a secondary
_situs_, deposited in the same way as the bones of extinct animals
and the whole geological material in which everything is embedded.
That is the reason why the finds cannot be more exactly dated. They
doubtless belong to the general drift, but whether to the Postglacial
Period, or the warmer Interglacial Period, cannot be decided. The fauna
admits of no absolute limitation, owing to its being mixed from both
periods. The mammalia most frequently found in the strata in question
are the mammoth, Siberian rhinoceros, horse, reindeer, ure-ox, giant
fallow-deer, cave-lion, and cave-hyena. In very similar Drift deposits
of the Somme near Amiens traces of man were found beside the bones of
the hippopotamus and the elephant.
These animals were chiefly prevalent in France and Germany in the
Preglacial and Interglacial Periods of the Drift. Part of the animal
remains found near Abbeville, particularly those of the cave-lion
and cave-hyena, also point to the warmer Interglacial Period; on the
other hand, the mammoth, Siberian rhinoceros, and especially the
reindeer, appear to indicate with all certainty the second Glacial and
Postglacial Periods. The bones of the older Drift animals may have been
washed out of other primary _situs_; the reindeer had certainly already
taken possession of those parts of France when the relics of man were
embedded.
[Illustration: Lyell
Cuvier
Boucher De Perthes
THE OVERTHROW OF A FAMOUS THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE EARTH AND MAN
When Cuvier was supreme among geologists his theory that the great
geological ages ended with sudden catastrophes which annihilated
all life, and that all life was then created afresh, was
universally accepted. One result of this theory was the disbelief
in the existence of man before the Glacial Age. Boucher de Perthes
sought to establish the former existence of Drift Man on finding
human relics in the Somme Valley; but not until Sir Charles Lyell
threw his influence on the side of De Perthes was the Preglacial
existence of man admitted, and the long-accepted theory of Cuvier
overthrown.
]
In spite of the most eager search for similar relic-beds affording sure
evidence of Drift Man, only a very few have as yet been discovered
that can be placed by the side of those in the Somme valley. Two are
in Germany, and are the more valuable as a more exact date can be
given to them within the Drift Period. One is near Taubach (Weimar),
the other at the source of the Schussen. The one at Taubach belongs
to the Interglacial Period, that at the source of the Schussen to
the Postglacial Period. The former lies on the moraines of the first
Glacial Period, which was followed by the Interglacial Period; the
latter on the moraines of the second Glacial Period, which slowly
passed into the Postglacial Period.
[Sidenote: The Climate of the Ice Age]
The Drift relic-bed in the calc-tufa near Taubach lies, as we have
said, over the remains of the first Glacial Period, and according to
Penck, one of the best authorities on the Drift, belongs to the warmer
intermediate epoch between the two great periods of glaciation. The
proofs given by the plant and animal remains agree entirely with the
proofs given by the conditions of stratification. In the rich fauna
found there, animals indicating a cold climate are entirely absent, and
a comparison of the whole of the finds proves that at the time when
man was present there no kind of arctic conditions can have prevailed.
There is no reindeer, no lemming. The roe, stag, wolf, brown bear,
beaver, wild boar, and aurochs were at that time inhabitants of these
regions, and the only inference they allow is that of a temperate
climate. The mollusc fauna, in which also all Glacial forms are absent,
also leads to the same conclusion; all that occur are familiar to us
from those of the present day in the same district. The fauna would
really appear quite modern were it not that a very ancient stamp is
imparted to it by several extinct types. With the modern animals
enumerated are associated the cave-lion, cave-hyena, ure-elephant, and
Merckian rhinoceros, characterising the whole deposit as a distinctly
Drift one, which is still further proved stratigraphically by the
covering of “loess.” The Taubach relic-bed is a typical illustration
of the climatic and biological conditions of the warmer Interglacial
Period; the regions of Central Europe, which had been covered with
masses of ice in the first Glacial Period, had, after the ice melted,
become once more accessible to the banished plants and animals of
the Preglacial Period, until they were annihilated, or at least
driven definitely from their old habitats by the second Glacial
Period. The celebrated relic-bed at the source of the Schussen, near
Schussenried, at a little distance from Ulm, brings us--in strong
contrast to Taubach--into quite glacial surroundings. It was on the
glacier-moraines of the last great glaciation, and belongs, therefore,
to that period which must still be reckoned as part of the Drift--the
Postglacial Period, which gradually passed into the warmer present
period. Under the tufa and peat at the source of the Schussen we find
the type of a purely northern climate, with exclusively northern flora
and fauna; everything corresponds to climatic conditions such as
prevail nowadays on the borders of eternal snow and ice, or begin at
70° north latitude.
[Sidenote: Flora and Fauna of the Ice Age]
Schimper, one of the best authorities on mosses at the present day,
found among the plant-remains under the tufa at the source of the
Schussen only mosses of northern or high Alpine forms. Among them was a
moss brought from Lapland by Wahlenberg, which, according to Schimper,
occurs in Norway near the chalets on the Dovrefjeld, on the borders of
eternal snow, and also in Greenland, Labrador, and Canada, and on the
highest summits of the Tyrolese Alps and the Sudetic Mountains. It has
a special preference for the pools in which the water of the snow and
glaciers flows off with its fine sand. There were also found mosses
which have now emigrated to cold regions, to Greenland and the Alps.
The most numerous animals were the reindeer, and yellow and Arctic
foxes, as distinctly Arctic forms; and there were also the brown bear
and wolf, a small ox, the hare, the large-headed wild horse--which
always occurs in the Drift as the companion of the reindeer--and,
lastly, the whistling swan, which now breeds in Spitzbergen or Lapland.
There is an absence of all the present animal forms of Upper Swabia, as
well as of the extinct Drift animals, either of which would indicate a
warmer climate.
More decided climatic or biological contrasts than those afforded by
the relic-beds at Taubach and the source of the Schussen could not be
imagined; here we have with certainty two perfectly different periods
before us, but both belonging to the general Drift Era.
Although almost all the other places where Drift Man has been found
exhibit peculiarities, Taubach and the source of the Schussen seem the
best representatives of the two chief types in Europe. Places giving
better proof have not yet come to light anywhere in the Old World.
[Illustration: REVEALING THE UNKNOWN LIFE OF THE PREHISTORIC PAST
A section of the earth, representing excavators in the act of
discovering the remains of mammals in a cave in the South of
England. Our illustration is reproduced from Buckland’s “Reliquiæ
Diluvianæ,” London, 1822.
]
[Sidenote: Evidence from South America]
At first sight the palæontological strata of South America, in which
the presence of man has been proved by Ameghino, appear to give a very
different picture. The animal forms occurring here contemporaneously
with man deviate to such an extent from those familiar to us in
the Drift of the Old World that it required the keen eye and the
complete grasp of the whole palæontological material of the world that
characterise Von Zittel to recognise and establish the connections
here, while the discoverer himself thought that he must date his
discoveries of man back to the Tertiary Period. The strata in which
the earliest traces of man as yet appear to be proved in South America
are the extensive “loess-like” loam deposits of the so-called “pampas”
formation in Argentina and Uruguay, with their almost incomparable
wealth of animal remains, particularly conspicuous among which are
gigantic representatives of edentates that now occur only in small
species in South America: Glyptodontia (with the gigantic _Glyptodon
reticulatum_) and dasypoda; also of the gravigrada, the giant sloth
(_Megatherium americanum_). The toxodontia were also large animals, now
extinct. But besides the specifically South American forms, numerous
“North American immigrants” also appear in the pampas formation. It was
only at the close of the Tertiary Period that the southern and northern
halves of America grew together into one continent, and the faunæ of
North and South America, so characteristically different, then began to
intermingle with one another. The South American autochthons migrate
northward; on the other hand, North American types--as the horse, deer,
tapir, mastodon, _Felis_, _Canis_, etc.--use the newly-opened passage
to extend their range of distribution. The northern animal forms are
very conspicuous among the animal world of South America, hitherto
cut off from North America and characterised by the above-mentioned
wonderful and, in part, gigantic edentates, marsupials, platyrhine
apes, etc. Of the great elephantine animals of North America only
the mastodon crossed over to South America. In the middle and latest
Tertiary formations the genus mastodon is widely distributed over
Europe, North Africa, and South Asia. In North America the oldest
species of the mastodon appear in the Middle Tertiary (Upper Miocene),
but the most species are found in the latest Tertiary (Pliocene) and
the Drift (Pleistocene); in South America the mastodon is limited to
the time of the pampas formation. Its tusks are long and straight, or
slightly curved upward; its lower jaw also possesses two tusks, which
project in a straight direction, but are considerably less than the
upper tusks in size. From the results of Ameghino’s investigations man
appears to have come to South America with these northern immigrants,
especially with the mastodon. In Ameghino’s lists of the animals of
the pampas formation Von Zittel describes man, like the animal forms
enumerated above, as an immigrant from North America, and as a northern
type.
According to Von Zittel’s statements there is no longer any doubt that
the pampas formation, and with it early man, of South America, is to be
assigned to the Drift Era; he sums up the case in these words:
In South Asia and South America the Tertiary Period is followed
by Drift faunæ, which in the main are composed of species still
existing at the present day, but yet show somewhat closer relations
to their Tertiary predecessors.
[Illustration:
THE WORLD
BEFORE
HISTORY--III
Professor
JOHANNES
RANKE
]
THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE STONE AGE
[Sidenote: Man a Witness of the Flood]
The oldest remains affording us knowledge of man are not parts of his
body--not the skeleton from which, in the case of primeval animals, we
have learned to reconstruct their frame--but evidences of the human
mind. Until the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes turned the scale,
search had been made in vain among the bones of the fossil fauna for
remains of the skeleton of fossil man of undoubtedly the same age; it
was not bones, but tools, by which the Abbeville antiquary proved that
man had been a “witness of the Flood” in Europe; tools which taught
irrefutably that the mental powers of fossil man of the Drift were
similar in kind to, if possibly less in degree than, those of living
members of mankind. The Drift tools prove that, even in that early
epoch to which we have learned from Boucher to trace him back, man was
distinctively man.
Boucher de Perthes was an expert archæologist, and he knew that in
Europe, in a very early period of civilisation, men had made their
tools and weapons of stone, as many tribes and races in a backward
state of civilisation--for example in South America, the South Sea
Islands, and many other places--do at the present day. These stone
implements are practically indestructible, and from ancient times
manifold superstitions have attached to the curious articles that the
peasant turns up out of the earth in ploughing. Such stone weapons were
called lightning-stones by the Romans, as they are by country-folk at
the present day. Scientific archæology occupied itself with them at an
early date. In 1778 Buffon declared the so-called lightning-stones, or
thunder-stones, to be the oldest art-productions of primeval man, and
as early as 1734, Mahudel and Mercati had pronounced them to be the
weapons of antediluvian man. Such views determined the line of thought
in Boucher’s researches. From the very beginning he sought, in the
undisturbed Drift beds of his home, not so much for the bones of Drift
Man as for his tools, which he suspected to be of the form of the
lightning-stones, although he knew that, so far as was hitherto known,
these belonged to a very much later epoch--that is, specially to the
Alluvial or “Recent” Period.
His expectations were crowned with success. Deep below the mass of
overlying loam and sand, right in the strata of gravel and coarse sand,
he found stone tools, which without the slightest doubt had been worked
by the hand of man for definite and easily recognisable purposes as
implements and weapons. Although to a certain extent ruder, they are
practically the same forms as the tools, weapons, and implements of
stone that we see in use among so-called “savages” of the present day.
It is the tool artificially prepared for a certain purpose that raises
man above the animal world to-day, as it did in the time of the Drift.
[Sidenote: Drift Man’s Three Kinds of Tools]
[Sidenote: The Chief Forms of Tools]