UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN--(_Continued._)
"By the word of God the heavens were from of old, and the
earth, formed out of water, and by means of water, by which
waters the world that then was, being overflowed with water,
perished."--2 Peter iii., 5, 6.
3. _Geological Evidence as to the Antiquity of Man._--No geological
fact can now be more firmly established than the ascending progression
of animal life, whereby from the early invertebrates of the Eozoic and
Primordial series we pass upward through the dynasties of fishes and
reptiles and brute mammals to the reign of man. In this great series
man is obviously the last term; and when we inquire at what point he
was introduced, the answer must be in the later part of the great
Cainozoic or Tertiary period, which is the latest of the whole. Not
only have we the negative fact of the absence of his remains from all
the earlier Tertiary formations, but the positive fact that all the
mammalia of these earlier ages are now extinct, and that man could not
have survived the changes of condition which destroyed them and
introduced the species now our contemporaries. This fact is altogether
independent of any question as to the introduction of species by
derivation or by creation. The oldest geological period in which any
animals nearly related in structure to man occur is that named the
Miocene, and no traces of man have as yet been found in any deposits
of this age. All human remains known belong either to the Pleistocene
or Modern. Now the Pleistocene was characterized by one of those
periods of glacial cold which have swept over the earth--by one of
those great winters which have so chilled the continents that few
forms of life could survive them--and man comes in at the close of
this cold period, in what is called the Post-glacial age. Some
geologists, it is true, hold to an interglacial warm period, in which
man is supposed to have existed, but the evidence of this is extremely
slender and doubtful, and it carries back in any case human antiquity
but a very little way. I have, in my "Story of the Earth and Man,"
shown reason for the belief, in which I find Professor Hughes, of
Cambridge, coincides with me,[133] that the interglacial periods are
merely an ingenious expedient to get rid of the difficulties attending
the hypothesis of the universal glaciation of the northern hemisphere.
But, though man is thus geologically modern, it is held that
historically his existence on earth may have been very ancient,
extending perhaps ten or twenty, or even a hundred times longer than
the period of six or seven thousand years supposed to be proved by
sacred history. Let us first, as plainly and simply as possible,
present the facts supposed thus to extend the antiquity of man, and
then inquire as to their validity and force as arguments in this
direction.
The arguments from geology in favor of a great antiquity for man may
be summarized thus: (1) Human remains are found in caverns under very
thick stalagmitic crusts, and in deposits of earth which must have
accumulated before these stalagmites began to form, and when the
caverns were differently situated with reference to the local
drainages. (2) Remains of man are found under peat-bogs which have
grown so little in modern times that their antiquity on the whole
must be very great. (3) Implements, presumably made by men, are found
in river-gravels so high above existing riverbeds that great physical
changes must have occurred since they were accumulated. (4) One case
is on record where a human bone is believed to have been found under a
deposit of glacial age. (5) Human remains have been found under
circumstances which indicate that very important changes of level have
taken place since their accumulation. (6) Human remains have been
found under circumstances which indicate great changes of climate as
intervening between their date and that of the modern period. (7) Man
is known to have existed, in Europe at least, at the same time with
some quadrupeds formerly supposed to have been extinct before his
introduction. (8) The implements, weapons, etc., found in the oldest
of these repositories are different from those known to have been used
in historic times.
These several heads include, I think, all the really material evidence
of a geological character. It is evidence of a kind not easily
reducible into definite dates, but there can be no doubt that its
nature, and the rapid accumulation of facts within a small number of
years, have created a deep and widespread conviction among geologists
and archaeologists that we must relegate the origin of man to a much
more remote antiquity than that sanctioned by history or by the
Biblical chronology. I shall first review the character of this
evidence, and then state a number of geological facts which bear in
the other direction, and have been somewhat lost sight of in recent
discussions. Of the facts above referred to, the most important are
those which relate to caverns, peat-bogs, and river-gravels. We may,
therefore, first consider the nature and amount of this evidence.
That the reader may more distinctly understand the geological history
of these more recent periods of the earth's history which are supposed
to have witnessed the advent of man, in Western Europe at least, I
quote the following summary from Sir Charles Lyell of the more modern
changes in that portion of the world. These are:
"First, a continental period, toward the close of which the forest of
Cromer flourished; when the land was at least 500 feet above its
present level, perhaps much higher. * * * The remains of _Hippopotamus
major_ and _Rhinoceros etruscus_, found in beds of this period, seem
to indicate a climate somewhat milder than that now prevailing in
Great Britain. [This was a _Preglacial_ era, and may be regarded as
belonging to the close of the Pliocene tertiary.]
"Secondly, a period of submergence, by which the land north of the
Thames and Bristol Channel, and that of Ireland, was generally reduced
to * * * an archipelago. * * * This was the period of great
submergence and of floating ice, when the Scandinavian flora, which
occupied the lower grounds during the first continental period, may
have obtained exclusive possession of the only lands not covered with
perpetual snow. [This represents the Glacial period; but according to
the more extreme glacialists only a portion of that period.]
"Thirdly, a second continental period, when the bed of the glacial
sea, with its marine shells and erratic blocks, was laid dry, and when
the quantity of land equalled that of the first period. * * * During
this period there were glaciers in the higher mountains of Scotland
and Wales, and the Welsh glaciers * * * pushed before them and cleared
out the marine drift with which some valleys had been filled during
the period of submergence. * * * During this last period the passage
of the Germanic flora into the British area took place, and the
Scandinavian plants, together with northern insects, birds, and
quadrupeds, retreated into the higher grounds. * * *
"Fourthly, the next and last change comprised the breaking up of the
land of the British area once more into numerous islands, ending in
the present geographical condition of things. There were probably many
oscillations of level during this last conversion of continuous land
into islands, and such movements in opposite directions would account
for the occurrence of marine shells at moderate heights above the
level of the sea, notwithstanding a general lowering of the land. * * *
During this period a gradual amelioration of temperature took place,
from the cold of the glacial period to the climate of historical
times."[134]
The second continental period above referred to is that which appears
on the best evidence to have been the time of the introduction of man;
but such facts as that of the Settle Cave, and the implements of the
breccia in Kent's Cave, if rightly interpreted, would make man
preglacial or "interglacial."
The deposits found in caverns in France, Switzerland, Germany,
Belgium, and England have afforded a large proportion of the remains
from which we derive our notions of the most ancient prehistoric men
of Europe. From the Belgian caves, as explored by M. Dupont, we learn
that there were two successive prehistoric races, both rude or
comparatively uncivilized. The first were men of Turanian type, but of
great bodily stature and high cerebral organization, and showing
remarkable skill in the manufacture of implements and ornaments of
bone and ivory. These men are believed to have been contemporary with
the earlier postglacial mammals, as the mammoth and hairy rhinoceros,
and to have lived at a time when the European land was more extensive
than at present, stretching far to the west of Ireland, and connecting
Great Britain with the Continent. The skeletons found at Cro-Magnon,
Mentone, and elsewhere in France fully confirm the deductions of
Dupont as to this earliest race of Palaeocosmic, Palaeolithic, or
antediluvian man. This grand race seems to have perished or been
driven from Europe by the great depression of the level of the land
which inaugurated the modern era, and which was probably accompanied
by many oscillations of level as well as by considerable changes of
climate. They were succeeded by a second race, equally Turanian in
type, but of small stature, and resembling the modern Lapps. These
were the "allophylian" peoples displaced by the historical Celts, and
up to their time the reindeer seems to have existed abundantly in
France and Germany. These two successive prehistoric populations have
been termed respectively men of the "mammoth" age and men of the
"reindeer" age. The Bible record would lead us to regard the earlier
and gigantic men as antediluvian, and the smaller or Lappish race as
postdiluvian. We may therefore, having already at some length
considered the postdiluvian age, take up the mode of occurrence of the
remains of the earlier of the two races--that of the mammoth age.
The caverns themselves may be divided into those of residence, of
sepulture, and of driftage, though one cavern has often successively
assumed two at least of these characters. In the caverns of residence
large accumulations have been formed of ashes, charcoal, bones, and
other debris of cookery, among which are found flint and bone
implements, the general character of which, as well as that of the
needles, stone hammers, mortars for paint, and other domestic
appliances, are not more dissimilar from those of the Red Indian and
Esquimau races in North America than these are from one another, and
in many things, as in the bone harpoons, the resemblance is very
striking indeed. In tendency to imitative art, and in the skill of
their delineations of animals, the prehistoric men seem to have
surpassed all the American races except the semi-civilized
mound-builders and the more cultivated Mexican and Peruvian nations.
With regard to the residence of these men of the mammoth age in
caverns, several things are indicated by American analogies to which
some attention should be paid.
It is not likely that caverns were the usual places of residence of
the whole population. They may have been winter houses for small
tribes and detached families of fugitives or outlaws, or they may have
been places of resort for hunting parties at certain seasons of the
year. The large quantities of broken and uncooked bones of particular
species, as of the horse and reindeer, in some of the caverns, would
farther indicate a habit of making great battues, like those of the
American hunting tribes, at certain seasons, and of preparing
quantities of pemmican or dried meat preserved with marrow and fat for
future use. The number of bone needles found in some of the caves
would seem to hint that, like the Americans, they sewed up their
pemmican in skin bags. The multitude of flint flakes and of rude stone
implements applicable to breaking bones certainly indicates a
wholesale cutting of flesh and preparation of marrow. In the "Story of
the Earth," I have suggested in connection with this that there may
have been towns or villages of these people unknown to us, and which
would afford higher conceptions of their progress in the arts. This
anticipation appears recently to have been realized in the discovery
of such a town or fortified village of the mammoth age at Soloutre, in
France, and which seems to afford evidence that these ancient people
had already domesticated the horse, using it as food as well as a
beast of burden, in the manner of the Khirgis and certain other Tartar
tribes of Central Asia.[135] This, with the undoubtedly high cerebral
organization indicated by the skulls of the mammoth age, notably
raises our estimate of the position of man at this early date.
With regard to caves of sepulture, the same remark may be made as with
regard to the caves of residence. They do not seem to have been the
burial-places of large populations, but only occasional places of
interment, few bodies being found in them, and these often interred in
the midst of culinary debris, evidencing previous or contemporary
residence. With regard to the latter, it seems to have been no
uncommon practice with some North American tribes to bury the dead
either in the floors of their huts or in their immediate proximity. It
is probable, however, that the few examples known of caves of
sepulture of this period indicate not tribal or national places of
burial, but occasional and accidental cases, happening to hunting or
war parties, perhaps remote from their ordinary places of residence.
In so far as method of burial is concerned, the men of the Palaeocosmic
or Mammoth age seem to have buried the dead extended at full length,
and not in the crouching posture usual with some later races. Like the
Americans, they painted the dead man, and buried him with his robes
and ornaments, and probably with his weapons, thus intimating their
belief in happy hunting-grounds beyond the grave.[136] I may remark
here that all the known interments of the mammoth age indicate a race
of men of great cerebral capacity, with long heads and coarsely marked
features, of large stature and muscular vigor, surpassing indeed much
in all these respects the average man of modern Europe. These
characteristics befit men who had to contend with the mammoth and his
contemporaries, and to subdue the then vast wildernesses of the
eastern continent, and they correspond with the Biblical
characteristics of antediluvian man.
Among caves of driftage may be classed some of those near Liege, in
Belgium, and, partially at least, those of Kent's Hole and Brixham, in
England. In these only disarticulated remnants of human skeletons, or
more frequently only flint implements, some of them of doubtful
character, have been found. In my "Story of the Earth," I have taken
the carefully explored Kent's Cavern of Torquay as a typical example,
and have condensed its phenomena as described by Mr. Pengelly. I now
repeat this description, with some important emendations suggested by
that gentleman in more recent reports and in private correspondence.
The somewhat extensive and ramifying cavern of Kent's Hole is an
irregular excavation, evidently due partly to fissures or joints in
limestone rock, and partly to the erosive action of water enlarging
such fissures into chambers and galleries. At what time it was
originally cut we do not know, but it must have existed as a cavern at
the close of the Pliocene or beginning of the Post-pliocene period,
since which time it has been receiving a series of deposits which have
quite filled up some of its smaller branches.
First and lowest, according to Mr. Pengelly, of the deposits as yet
known, is a "breccia," or mass of broken and rounded stones, with
hardened red clay filling the interstices. Some of the stones are of
the rock which forms the roof and walls of the cave, but the greater
number, especially the rounded ones, are from more distant parts of
the surrounding country. Many are fragments of grit from the Devonian
beds of adjacent hills. There are also fragments of stalagmite from an
old crust broken up when the breccia was deposited, and possibly
belonging to Pliocene times. In this mass, the depth of which is
unknown, are numerous bones, nearly all of one kind of animal, the
cave bear or bears, for there may be more than one species--creatures
which seem to have lived in Western Europe from the close of the
Pliocene down to the modern period. They must have been among the
earliest and most permanent tenants of Kent's Hole at a time when its
lower chambers were still filled with water. Teeth of a lion and of
the common fox also occur in this deposit, but rarely. Next above the
breccia is a floor of "stalagmite," or stony carbonate of lime,
deposited from the drippings of the roof, and in some places more than
twelve feet thick. This also contains bones of the cave bear,
deposited when there was less access of water to the cavern. Mr.
Pengelly infers the existence of man at this time from the occurrence
of chipped flints supposed to be artificial; but which, in so far as I
can judge from the specimens described and figured, must still be
regarded as of doubtful origin.
After the old stalagmite floor above mentioned was formed, the cave
again received deposits of muddy water and stones; but now a change
occurs in the remains embedded. This stony clay, or "cave earth," has
yielded an immense quantity of teeth and bones, including those of the
elephant, rhinoceros, horse, hyena, cave bear, reindeer, and Irish
elk. With these were found weapons of chipped flint, and harpoons,
needles, and bodkins of bone, precisely similar to those of the North
American Indians and other rude races. The "cave earth" is four feet
or more in thickness. It is not stratified, and contains many fallen
fragments of rock, rounded stones, and broken pieces of stalagmite. It
also has patches of the excrement of hyenas, which the explorers
suppose to indicate the temporary residence of these animals; and
besides fragments of charcoal scattered in the mass, there is in one
spot, near the top, a limited layer of burned wood, with remains which
indicate the cooking and eating of repasts of animal food by man. It
is clear that when this bed was formed the cavern was liable to be
inundated with muddy water, carrying stones and perhaps some of the
bones and implements, and breaking up in places the old stalagmite
floor.[137] One of the most puzzling features, especially to those who
take an exclusively uniformitarian view, is that the entrance of
water-borne mud and stones implies a level of the bottom of the water
in the neighboring valleys of nearly one hundred feet above its
present height. The cave earth is covered by a second crust of
stalagmite, less dense and thick than that below, and containing only
a few bones, which are of the same general character with those
beneath, but include a fragment of a human jaw with teeth. Evidently
when this stalagmite was formed the influx of water-borne materials
had ceased, or nearly so; and Mr. Pengelly appears to affirm, though
without assigning any reason, that none of these bones could, like
the masses of stalagmite, have been lifted from lower beds, or washed
into the cave from without.
The next bed marks a new change. It is a layer of black mould from
three to ten inches thick. Its microscopic structure does not seem to
have been examined; but it is probably a forest soil, introduced by
growth, by water, by wind, and by ingress of animals, all of them
modern, and contains works of art from the old British times before
the Roman invasion up to the porter bottles and dropped half-pence of
modern visitors. Lastly, in and upon the black mould are many fallen
blocks from the roof of the cave.
There can be no doubt that this cave and the neighboring one of
Brixham have done very much to impress the minds of British geologists
with ideas of the great antiquity of man; and they have, more than any
other postglacial monuments, shown the existence of some animals now
extinct up to the human age. Of precise data for determining time,
they have, however, given nothing. The only measures which seem to
have been applied, namely, the rate of growth of stalagmite and the
rate of erosion of neighboring valleys, are, from the very sequence of
the deposits, obviously worthless; and the only apparently constant
measure, namely, the fall of blocks from the roof, seems not to have
been applied, and Mr. Pengelly declares that it can not be practically
used. We are therefore quite uncertain as to the number of centuries
involved in the filling of this cave, and must remain so until some
surer system of calculation can be devised. We may, however, attempt
to sketch the series of events which it indicates.
The animals found in Kent's Hole are all "postglacial," some of them
of course survivors from "preglacial" times, and some of them still
surviving. They therefore inhabited the country after it rose from the
great glacial submergence. Perhaps the first colonists of the coast of
Devonshire in this period were the cave bears, migrating on floating
ice, and subsisting like the arctic bear and the black bear of
Anti-costi, on fish, and on the garbage cast up by the sea. They may
have found Kent's Hole a sea-side cavern, with perhaps some of its
galleries still full of water and filling with breccia, with which the
bones of dead bears became mixed. In the case of such a deposit as
this breccia, however, the precise time when its materials were
finally laid down in their present form, or the length of time
necessary for its accumulation, can not be definitely settled. It may
be a result of continued torrential action or of some sudden
cataclysm. As the land rose, these creatures for the most part betook
themselves to lower levels, and in process of time the cavern stood
upon a hill-side, perhaps several hundreds of feet above the sea; and
the mountain streams, their beds not yet emptied of glacial detritus,
washed into it stones and mud, and probably bones also, while it
appears that hyenas occupied the cave at intervals, and dragged in
remains of mammals of many species which had now swarmed across the
plains elevated out of the sea, and multiplied in the land. This was
the time of the cave earth; and before its deposit was completed,
though how long before an unstratified and therefore probably
often-disturbed bed of this kind can not tell, man himself seems to
have been added to the inhabitants of the British land. In pursuit of
game he sometimes ascended the valleys beyond the cavern, or even
penetrated into its outer chambers; or perhaps there were even in
those days rude and savage hill-men, inhabiting the forests and
warring with the more cultivated denizens of plains below, which are
now deep under the waters. Their weapons, and other implements dropped
in the cavern or lost in hunting, or buried in the flesh of wounded
animals which crept to the streams to assuage their thirst, are those
found in the cave earth. The absence of the human bones may merely
show that the mighty hunters of those days were too hardy, athletic,
and intelligent often to perish from accidental causes, and that they
did not use this cavern for a place of burial. The fragments of
charcoal show that they were acquainted with fire, and possibly that
they sometimes took shelter in the cave. But the land again subsided.
The valley of that now nameless river, of which the Rhine and the
Thames may have alike been tributaries, disappeared under the sea; and
perhaps some tribe, driven from the lower lands, took up its abode in
this cave, now again near the encroaching waves, and left there the
remains of their last repasts ere they were driven farther inland or
engulfed in the waters. For a time the cavern may have been wholly
submerged, and the charcoal of the extinguished fires became covered
with its thin coating of clay. But ere long it re-emerged to form part
of an island, long barren and desolate; and the valleys having been
cut deeper by the receding waters, it no longer received muddy
deposits, and the crust formed by drippings from its roof contained
only bones and pebbles washed by rains and occasional land floods from
its own clay deposits. Finally, the modern forests overspread the
land, and were tenanted by the modern animals. Man returned to use the
cavern again as a place of refuge or habitation, and to leave there
the relics contained in the black earth. This seems at present the
only intelligible history of this curious cave and others resembling
it; though, when we consider the imperfection of the results obtained
even by a large amount of labor, and the difficult and confused
character of the deposits in this and similar caves, too much value
should not be attached to such histories, which may at any time be
contradicted or modified by new facts or different explanations of
those already known. The time involved depends very much on the answer
to the question whether we should regard the postglacial subsidence
and re-elevation as somewhat sudden, or as occupying long ages at the
slow rate at which some parts of our continents are now rising or
sinking.
Mr. Pengelly thinks it possible, but not proved, that the lower
breccia of Kent's Cavern may be interglacial or preglacial in age. One
case only is known where a human bone has been found in a cavern under
deposits supposed to be of the nature of the glacial drift. It is that
of the Victoria Cave, at Settle, in Yorkshire. At this place a human
fibula was found under a layer of boulder clay. But there are too many
chances of this bone having come into this position by some purely
local accident to allow us to attach much importance to it until
future discoveries shall have supplied other instances of the
kind.[138]
I may close this survey of the cave deposits with a summary of the
results of M. Dupont, as obtained from two of the caves explored by
him, that of Margite and that of Frontal. In the first of these
caverns, resting on rolled pebbles which covered the floor, were four
distinct layers of river mud deposited by inundations, and amounting
to two yards and a half in thickness. In all of these layers were
bones. The lowest contained rude flint implements, and bones of the
mammoth, rhinoceros, bear, horse, chamois, reindeer, stag, and hyena.
In the overlying deposits are some flint implements of more artistic
form and a greater prevalence of the bones of the reindeer. In the
second cave, that of Frontal, over a similar deposit of alluvial mud
of the mammoth age, was found a sepulchre containing the remains of
sixteen individuals, of the second or diminutive Lappish race before
referred to. The door of the cave had been closed by these people with
a slab of stone, and in front was a hearth for funeral feasts, built
on the deposits of the mammoth age, and containing bones of animals
all recent or now living in Belgium, and without any traces of the
bones of the extinct quadrupeds. This burial-place belonged to the
Neocosmic yet prehistoric race which replaced the Palaeocosmic men of
the mammoth age.
What is the absolute antiquity of the Palaeocosmic age in Europe? We
have no monumental or historical chronology to answer this question,
but only the measures of time furnished by the accumulation of
deposits, by the deposition of stalagmite, by the gradual extinction
of animals, and by the erosion of valleys and other physical changes.
These somewhat loose measures have been applied in various ways, but
the tendency of geologists, from the prevalence of uniformitarian
views, and the prejudice created by familiarity with the long times of
previous geologic periods, has been to assign to them too great rather
than too little value, both as measures of time and as indicating a
remote antiquity.
With reference to the accumulation of deposits, whether derived from
disintegration of the roof and walls of the cave, introduced by land
floods or river inundations or by the residence of man, their rate is
of very difficult estimation. Loose stones fallen from the roof, as in
the case of Kent's Cave, would give a fair measure of time if we could
be sure that the climate had continued uniform, and that there had
been no violent earthquakes. Mr. Pengelly has, however, hopelessly
given up this kind of evidence. Where, as in the case of many of these
caves, land floods and river inundations have entered, these may have
been frequent or separated by long intervals of time, and they may
have been of great or small amount. Where, for instance, as in one of
the Belgian caves, there are six beds of ossiferous mud, but for the
fact that five layers of stalagmite separate them we might not have
known whether they represent six annual inundations, or floods
separated by many centuries from each other.
In the case of the Victoria Cave at Settle, Dawkins, reasoning from
the accumulation of two feet of detritus over British remains that may
be supposed to be 1200 years old, gives a basis which would at the
same rate of deposit allow about 5000 years for the date of
palaeolithic men; but Prestwich and others, on the basis of stalagmite
deposits, claim a vastly higher antiquity for the men who made the
implements found in Kent's Hole and Brixham.
If we now turn to these stalagmite floors, when we consider that they
have been formed by the slow solution of limestone by rain-water
charged with carbonic acid, and the dropping of this water on the
floor, and when we are told that in Kent's Cavern a marked date shows
that the stalagmite has grown at the rate of only one twentieth of an
inch since 1688, and that there are two beds of stalagmite, one of
which is in some places twelve feet thick, we are impressed with the
conviction of a vast antiquity. But when we are told by Dawkins that
the rate of deposit in Ingleborough Cave may be estimated at a quarter
of an inch per annum, and when we consider that the present rate of
deposit in Kent's Hole is probably very different from what it was in
the former condition of the country, stalagmite becomes a very unsafe
measure of time. With respect again to the accumulation of
kitchen-midden stuff in the course of the occupancy of caverns, this
proceeds with great rapidity, when caves are steadily occupied and it
is not the practice to cleanse out the debris of fires, food, and
bedding. Even when the occupation is temporary, a tribe of savages
engaged with the preparation of dried meat and pemmican in a very
short time produce a considerable heap of bones and other
rejectamenta.
Looking next to the extinction of animals, we find that the species
found in the oldest deposits containing human remains are in part
still extant. Others which are locally extinct we know existed in
Europe until historical times, that is, within the last two thousand
years. How long previously to this the others became extinct we have
no certain means of knowing, though it seems probable that they
disappeared gradually and successively. We have, however, farther to
bear in mind the possibility of cataclysms or climatal changes which
may have proved speedily fatal to many species over large areas. In
any case we have this certain fact that, though the time elapsed has
been sufficient for the extinction of many species, it does not seem
to have sufficed to effect any noteworthy change on those that
survived. Farther, we may consider that time is only one factor in
this matter, and not the one which is the efficient cause of change,
since we know no reason why one species of animal should not continue
to be reproduced as long as another, but for the occurrence of
physical changes of a prejudicial character.
We have still remaining the changes which have taken place in the
erosion of valleys since the caverns were occupied. Dupont informs us
that the openings of some of the caverns once flooded by rivers are
now in limestone cliffs two hundred feet above the water, while no
appreciable lowering of the bottoms of the ravines is taking place
now. This would in some contingencies put back the period of filling
of the caves to an indefinite antiquity. But then the questions
occur--Was there once more water in the rivers or more obstruction at
their outlets, or was the erosive power greater at one time than now,
or were the river valleys excavated in still more ancient time, and
partly filled with mud when the water entered the caves, and may this
mud have been since swept away? So, in like manner, the waters flowing
in the channels near Brixham Cave and Kent's Hole were apparently
about seventy feet higher in times of flood than at present, but the
time involved is subject to the same doubts as in the case of the
Belgian caves. Hughes has well remarked that elevations of the land,
by causing rivers to form waterfalls and cascades, which they cut
back, may greatly accelerate the rate of erosion. Farther, there is
the best reason to believe that in the glacial period many old valleys
were filled with clay, and that the modern cutting consisted merely in
the removal of this clay. Belt has shown in a recent paper[139] good
reason to believe that this is the case with the Falls of Niagara, and
that the cutting actually effected through rock within the later
Pleistocene and modern period has been that only of the new gorge from
the whirlpool to Queenstown, the main part of the ravine being of
older date and merely re-excavated. This would greatly reduce the
ordinary estimate of time based on the cutting of the Niagara gorge.
This leads us next to consider the occurrence of human remains and
objects of art in the river-gravels themselves, and the amount of
excavation and deposit involved in the deposition of these gravels.
In the river-gravels of the Somme, and of many other rivers in France
and Southern England, chipped flints and rude flint implements are
found in so great quantity as to imply that the beds and banks of
these streams were resorted to for flint material, and that the
unfinished and rejected implements left in the holes and trenches, or
on the heaps where the work was carried on, were afterward sorted by
running water, perhaps in abnormal floods and debacles, such as occur
in all river valleys occasionally, perhaps in that great diluvial
catastrophe which seems to have terminated the residence of
Palaeocosmic man in Europe. Wilson has well shown how the heaps left by
American tribes in and near their flint quarries would furnish the
material for such accumulations. The time required for the erosion of
the valleys and the deposit of the gravels has been very variously
estimated. In the case of the Somme, which river is not appreciably
deepening its bed, if we suppose it to have cut its wide valley to the
depth of one hundred and fifty feet out of solid chalk since the
so-called "high level" gravels of France and the South of England were
deposited, the time required shades off into infinity. So Evans, in
his work on "The Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain," looking
upon the amount of excavation of wide and deep valleys since the stone
implements of Bournemouth are supposed to have been deposited in
gravel, says, "Who can fully comprehend how immensely remote was the
epoch when that vast bay was high and dry land?" and he becomes
poetical in delineating the view that must have met the eyes of
"palaeolithic" man. And undoubtedly, if one is to be limited to the
precise nature and amount of causes now at work in the district, the
time must not only be "immensely remote," but illimitably so. The
difficulty lies with the exaggerated uniformitarianism of the
supposition that such causes could have produced the results. But,
for reasons to be immediately stated, the time required is liable to
numerous deductions; and recently Tylor, Pattison, Collard, and others
have insisted ably on these deductions, as has also Professor Hughes,
of Cambridge. I have myself urged them strongly in the work already
referred to.
In the first place, when we see a deep river valley in which the
present stream is doing an almost infinitesimal amount of deepening,
we are not to infer that this represents all its work past and
present. In times of unusual flood it may do in one week more than in
many previous years. Farther, if there have been elevations or
depressions of the land, when the land has been raised the cutting
power has at once been enormously increased, and when depressed it has
been diminished, or filling has taken the place of cutting. Again, if
the climate in time past has been more extreme, or the amount of
rainfall greater, the cutting action has then been proportionally
rapid. Perhaps no influence is greater in this respect than that which
is known to the colonists in Northeastern America as "ice-freshets,"
when in spring, before the ice has had time to disappear from the
rivers, sudden thaws and rains produce great floods, which rushing
down over the icy crust, or breaking and hurling its masses before
them, work terrible havoc on the banks and alluvial flats, depositing
great beds of gravel, and sweeping away immense masses that had lain
undisturbed for centuries. Now we know that in Europe the human period
was preceded by what has been termed the glacial age, and as it was
passing away there must have been unexampled floods and ice-freshets,
and a temporary "pluvial period," as it has been called, in which the
volume of the rivers was immensely increased. Farther, it is an
established fact that the period of the appearance of man was a time
when the continents in the northern hemisphere were more elevated
than at present, and when consequently the cutting action of rivers
was at a maximum. This was again followed by a period of depression,
accompanied probably by many local cataclysms, if not by a general
deluge; and there are strong geological reasons to believe that this
convulsion was connected with the disappearance from Europe of
Palaeocosmic man, and many of the animals his contemporaries. This view
I advocated some time ago in my "Story of the Earth;" and more
recently Mr. Pattison, in an able paper read before the Victoria
Institute, has developed it in greater detail, and supported it by a
great mass of geological authority. If the Palaeocosmic period was one
of continental elevation, when the greater seats of population were in
the valleys of great rivers now covered by the German Ocean and the
English Channel, and when the valleys of the Thames and the Somme were
those of upland streams frequented by straggling parties and small
tribes, and the seats of extensive flint factories for the supply of
the plains below, and if this state of things was terminated by a
diluvial debacle, we can account for all the phenomena of the drift
implements without any extravagant estimate of time.
I quote with much pleasure on this subject the following from the
report of a lecture on "Geological Measures of Time," by Professor
Hughes, before the Royal Institution of London. Hughes was, like
myself, a companion of Sir Charles Lyell in some of his journeys,
though belonging to a younger generation of geologists, and is an
accurate observer and reasoner.
"Another method of estimating the lapse of time is founded upon the
supposed rate at which rivers scoop out their channels. Although no
very exact estimates have been attempted, still the immense quantity
of work that has been done, as compared with the slow rate at which a
river is now excavating that same part of the valley, is often
appealed to as a proof of a great lapse of time.
"The fact of such an enormous lapse of time is not questioned, but
this part of the evidence is challenged.
"The previous considerations of the rate of accumulation of silt on
the low lands prepares us to inquire whether there is any waste at all
along the alluvial plains. Several examples were given to show that
the lowering of valleys was brought about by receding rapids and
waterfalls; for instance, following up the Rhine, its terraces could
often be traced back to where the waterfall was seen to produce at
once almost all the difference of level between the river reaches
above and below it. At Schaffhausen the river terrace below the hotel
could be traced back and found to be continuous with the river margin
above the fall. The wide plains occurring here and there, such as the
Mayence basin, were due to the river being arrested by the hard rocks
of the gorges below Bingen so long that it had time to wind from side
to side through the soft rocks above the gorges. When waterfalls cut
back to such basins or to lakes they would recede rapidly, tapping the
waters of the lake, eating back the soft beds of the alluvial plains,
and probably in both cases leaving terraces as evidence, not of
upheavals or of convulsions, but of the arrival of a waterfall which
had been gradually travelling up the valley. So when the Rhone cuts
back from the falls at Belgarde we shall have terraces where now is
the shore of Geneva; so also when the Falls of Schaffhausen, and ages
afterward when the Falls of Laufenburg have tapped the Lake of
Constance, there will be terraces marking its previous levels. And so
we may explain the former greater extent of the Lake of Zurich, which
stood higher and spread wider by Utznach and Wetzikon before it was
tapped by the arrival of waterfalls, which cut back into it and let
its waters run off until they fell to their present level.
"A small upheaval near the mouth of a river would have a similar
effect. The Thames below London and the Somme below St. Acheul can now
only just hand on the mud brought down from higher ground; but suppose
an elevation of a hundred feet over those parts of England and France
(quite imperceptible if extended over 10,000, 1000, or even 100
years), and the rivers would tumble over soft mud and clay and chalk,
and soon eat their way back from Sheppey to London, and from St.
Valery to Amiens.
"So when we want to estimate the age of the gravels on the top of the
cliff at the Reculvers, or on the edge of the plateau of St. Acheul,
we have to ask, not how long would it take the rivers to cut down to
their present level from the height of those gravels at the rate at
which that part of their channel is being lowered now, but how long
would it take the Somme or Thames, which once ran at the level of
those gravels, to cut back from where its mouth or next waterfall was
then to where it runs over rapids now. We ought to know what movements
of upheaval and depression there have been; what long alluvial flats
or lakes which may have checked floods, but also arrested the
rock-protecting gravel; how much the wash of the estuarine waves has
helped. In fact, it is clear that observations made on the action of
the rivers at those points now have nothing to do with the calculation
of the age of the terraces above, and that the circumstances upon
which the rate of recession of the waterfalls and rapids depends are
so numerous and changeable that it is at present unsafe to attempt any
estimate of the time required to produce the results observed."
I may close this discussion by quoting from the paper of my friend Mr.
Pattison, already referred to, the following summing up of his
conclusions, in which I fully concur:
"We may assume it as established that there was a time when
England was connected with the Continent, when big animals
roamed in summer up the watercourses and across the uplands,
and man, armed only with rude stones, followed them into the
marshes and woods, hunted them for sustenance, and consumed
them in shelter of caves, then accessible from the river
levels. This state of things was continued until disturbed
by oscillations of surface, accompanied by excessive
rainfalls and rushes of water from the water-sheds of the
rivers, until the great animals were driven out or
destroyed, and man ceased to visit these parts. The
disturbances continued, the Strait of Dover was formed, the
configuration of the soft parts of the islands and
continents was fixed, action subsided, and the present state
of things obtained. Man resumed his residence, but with loss
of the mammoth and its companions. The reindeer now
constituted the type of a state of things which lasted down
to the historic period, without any other from that time to
this. * * *
"Chronologists are agreed that about 2000 years B.C. Abraham
migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and that at this time
Egypt at least was old in civilization. Beyond this we have
no positive scale of time in Scripture; for it is evident,
from the narrative itself, that the latter does not cover
the whole time. * * *
"Ussher estimates from Scripture the creation of man as
about 2000 years before this. During the latter portion of
this time civilization was proceeding under settled
governments in the East, interrupted, says the record and
tradition, by a flood. * * *
"So Lucretius:
'Thus, too, the insurgent waters once o'erpowered,
As fables tell, and deluged many a state;
Till, in its turn, the congregated waves
By cause more potent conquered, heaven restrain'd
Its ceaseless torrents, and the flood decreased.'
Barbarism covered the whole Western world; neither in the
2000 years before Abraham, nor in the 2000 years afterward,
have we any light reflected from these regions to the East.
In this 4000 years, or in the somewhat longer period which
probably will be ultimately settled as warranted by the
record, we place hypothetically all the phenomena of the
later mammalian age, including the introduction of man as a
hunter, the first occupation of the caves by him also, the
diluvial phenomena of the wide valleys, the oscillations and
disturbances of the earth's crust, alterations in the
coast-line, and physical settlement of the country; after
this comes the second occupation of the caves. In short, if
we say that, hypothetically, the whole first known human age
occurred within 4000 years of the Christian era, no one can
say that it is geologically impossible. Who can say that
1643 years is insufficient to comprise all the phenomena
that occurred during a period confessedly characterized by
more rapid and extensive action than at present--a period
during which ruptures in the earth's crust, oscillations,
and permanent uprising took place, and the intermittent
action of violent floods caused the deposit and disturbance
and resettlement of the gravels and brick-earth? There is
nothing to interfere with the prevalent opinion that man was
introduced here while the glacial period was dying out, and
while it was still furnishing flood-waters sufficient to
scour and re-sort the gravels of the valleys down which they
flowed. This supposition may be extended to both the great
continents."
To conclude: Our mode of reconciling the Mosaic history of
antediluvian man with the disclosures of the gravels and caves would
be to identify Palaeocosmic man, or man of the mammoth age, with
antediluvian man; to suppose that the changes which closed his
existence in Europe as well as Western Asia were those recorded in the
Noachian deluge; and that the second colonization of the diminished
and shrunken Europe of the modern period was effected by the
descendants of Noah. It may be asked--Must we suppose that the Adam of
the Bible was of the type of the coarsely featured and gigantic men of
the European caverns? I would answer--Not precisely so; but it is
quite possible that Adam may have been Turanian in feature. We should
certainly suppose him to have been a man well developed in brain and
muscle. Such men as those found in the caves would rather represent
the ruder "Nephelim," the "giants that were in those days," than Adam
in Eden. Farther, the new colonists of Europe after the deluge would
no doubt be a very rude and somewhat degenerate branch of Noachidae,
probably driven before more powerful tribes in the course of the
dispersion. The higher races of both periods are probably to be looked
for in Western Asia; but even there we must expect to find cave men
like those whose remains were found by Tristram in the caves near
Tyre, and like the Horim of Moses; and we must also expect to find the
antediluvian age in the main an age of stone everywhere, and its arts,
except in certain great centres of population, perhaps not more
advanced than those of the Polynesians, or those of the agricultural
American tribes before the discovery of America by Columbus.
As a geologist, and as one who has been in the main of the school of
Lyell, and after having observed with much care the deposits of the
more modern periods on both sides of the Atlantic, I have from the
first dissented from those of my scientific brethren who have
unhesitatingly given their adhesion to the long periods claimed for
human history, and have maintained that their hasty conclusions on
this subject must bring geological reasoning into disrepute, and react
injuriously on our noble science. We require to make great demands on
time for the prehuman periods of the earth's history, but not more
than sacred history is willing to allow for the modern or human age.