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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face italics
(=bold italics=).
To enhance readability, small-capital text was left as
mixed-case.
THE MEETING-PLACE OF GEOLOGY AND HISTORY
* * * * *
Sir J. William Dawson, LL.D., F.G.S.
[Illustration]
"_The name of Sir William Dawson on a title page is a guarantee of two
things: one, that the book is orthodox and thoroughly evangelical; and
the other, that the matter of it is first-class, according to the
highest scientific standard._"
--The Illustrated Christian Weekly.
=The Meeting-Place of Geology and History.= Illustrated. 12mo,
cloth $1.25
Sir William Dawson's aim in this volume is aptly described by the
title. It is to fix with that measure of definiteness which the
best and latest research permits the period when human life began
on the earth, and to discuss from the geologic standpoint the many
questions of interest connected with this event. He shows in how
many different ways science confirms the teaching of Scripture in
this department of knowledge.
=Modern Ideas of Evolution as related to Revelation and Science.=
_Sixth Edition, Revised and Enlarged._ 12mo, cloth 1.50
Carefully and thoroughly revised in the light of the criticism,
favorable and adverse, which the preceding five editions have
received.
"Dr. Dawson is himself a man of eminent judicial temper, a widely
read scholar, and a close, profound thinker, which makes the blow
he deals the Evolution hypothesis all the heavier. We commend it to
our readers as one of the most thorough and searching books on the
subject yet published."--_The Christian at Work._
=The Chain of Life in Geological Time.= A Sketch of the Origin and
Succession of Animals and Plants. Illustrated. _Third and Revised
Edition._ 12mo, cloth 2.00
"The judicial style of the writer in argument is enlivened by his
ability to render science most attractive and popular. He holds to
the orthodox view of the ordered plan of the universe, and yet
considers without prejudice the alluring ideas prevalent in modern
scientific circles."--_The Christian Advocate_ (_N.Y._)
=Egypt and Syria.= Their Physical Features in Relation to Bible
History. _Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged._ With many
Illustrations. "_By-Paths of Bible Knowledge_," _Vol. VI._ 12mo,
cloth 1.20
"This is one of the most interesting of the series to which it
belongs. It is the result of personal observation, and the work of
a practised geological observer."--_The British Quarterly Review._
* * * * *
THE MEETING-PLACE OF GEOLOGY AND HISTORY
by
SIR J. WILLIAM DAWSON, LL.D., F.R.S.
Author of
"The Earth and Man," "Modern Ideas of Evolution," "The Chain of Life in
Geological Time," etc.
[Illustration]
Fleming H. Revell Company
New York · Chicago · Toronto
The Religious Tract Society, London
Copyright, 1894
Fleming H. Revell Company
PREFACE
The object of this little book is to give a clear and accurate statement
of facts bearing on the character of the debatable ground intervening
between the later part of the geological record and the beginnings of
sacred and secular history.
The subject is one as yet full of difficulty; but the materials for its
treatment have been rapidly accumulating, and it is hoped that it may
prove possible to render it more interesting and intelligible than
heretofore.
J. W. D.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. General Nature of the Subject 11
II. The World Before Man 18
III. The Earliest Traces of Man 27
IV. The Palanthropic Age 40
V. Subdivisions and Conditions of the Palanthropic Age 69
VI. End of the Palanthropic Age 85
VII. The Early Neanthropic Age 94
VIII. The Palanthropic Age in the Light of History 106
IX. The Deluge of Noah 121
X. Special Questions Respecting the Deluge 151
XI. The Prehistoric and Historic in the East 164
XII. The Neanthropic Dispersion 183
XIII. Summary of Results 210
Index 219
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Section at Trenton, on the Delaware, showing The Relation of
the Stone Implements to the Glacial (?) Gravels (after Holmes) 32
Chipped Quartzites, Modern American (after Holmes) 33
Flint Hache of the Ancient or Chellean Type, Aurillac (after
Carthaillac) 41
Cave of Goyet, Belgium (Section after Dupont) 47
Lance Head formed of a Flint Flake (Cave of Moustier). The Flat
Face shows a Bulb of Percussion (after Falsan) 49
Outline of the Skull of the 'Old Man of Cro-magnon' (after
Christy and Lartet) 54
The First Skeleton found in the Mentone Caves (after Rivière) 57
Handle of a Piercer, or Bodkin, in Bone, from Laugerie Basse,
in Form of a Deer 59
Flint Flake Knife, found in the Hand of the 'Giant' Skeleton of
Mentone (after Evans) 59
Neanderthal Skull--two Outlines: the Outer giving the more
Correct Form (from _Science_) 60
Skull of Canstadt Type found at Spy, Belgium, by Fraipont and
Lohest 61
Outline of Mammoth, Carved on a Plate of Ivory, from the Cave
of La Madeleine 68
Tooth of Cave Bear, with Engraving of a Seal, from a Collar
found at Sordes, Pyrenees (after Carthaillac) 71
The Skeleton of Laugerie Basse, Dordogne, showing the Position
of the Perforated Shells on the Limbs and Forehead (after
Carthaillac) 79
Skull from Truchère, showing a peculiar Palanthropic Type allied
to Neanthropic Races (after Quatrefages) 82
Flint Flakes of two Types, from Palanthropic and Neanthropic
Caves in the Lebanon 97
Restoration of the Sepulchral Cave of Frontal, Belgium (after
Dupont) 99
Cromlech at Fontanaccia, Corsica (after De Mortillet) 105
Map showing the Geographical and Geological Relations of the
Site of Eden, as described in Genesis 117
Map showing Lines of Postdiluvian Migrations from Shinar, as in
Genesis x. 185
Head illustrating the most Ancient Type of Cushite Turanian,
from Tel-loh (after de Sarzec). The cap is perhaps an imitation
of the antediluvian shell-caps, like that of the 'Man of
Mentone' 191
THE MEETING-PLACE
OF
GEOLOGY AND HISTORY
CHAPTER I
GENERAL NATURE OF THE SUBJECT
The science of the earth and the history of man, though cultivated by
very different classes of specialists and in very different ways, must
have their meeting-place. They must indeed not only meet, but overlap
and run abreast of each other throughout nearly the whole time occupied
by the existence of man on the earth. The geologist, from his point of
view, studies all the stratified crust of the earth, down to the mud
deposited by last year's river inundations. The historian, aided by the
archæologist, has written and monumental evidence carrying him back to
the time of the earliest known men, many thousands of years ago.
Throughout all this interval the two records must have run more or less
parallel to each other, and must be in contact along the whole line.
The geologist, ascending from the oldest and lowest portions of the
earth's crust, and dealing for millions of years with physical forces
and the instinctive powers of animals alone, at length as he approaches
the surface finds himself in contact with an entirely new agency, the
free-will and conscious action of man. It is true that at first the
effects of these are small, and the time in which they have been active
is insignificant in comparison with that occupied by previous geological
ages; but they introduce new questions which constantly grow in
importance, down to those later times in which human agency has so
profoundly affected the surface of the earth and its living inhabitants.
Finally, the geologist is obliged to have recourse to human observation
and testimony for his information respecting those modern causes to
which he has to appeal for the explanation of former changes, and has to
adduce effects produced by human agency in illustration of, or in
contrast with, mutations in the pre-human periods.
The historian, on the other hand, finds, as he passes backward into
earlier ages, documentary evidence failing him, and much of what he can
obtain becoming mythical, vague or uncertain, or difficult of
explanation by modern analogies, until at length he is fain to have
recourse to the pick-axe and spade, and to endeavour to disinter from
the earth the scanty relics of primeval man, much as the geologist
searches in the bedded rocks for the fossils which they contain. He has
even learned to use for these earliest ages the term prehistoric, and so
practically to transfer them to the domain of the archæologist and
geologist.
It is evident, therefore, that if we seek for the meeting-place of
geology and history, we shall find not a mere point or line of contact,
but a series of such points, and even a complicated splicing together of
different threads of investigation, which it may be difficult to
disentangle, and which the geological specialist alone, or the
historical specialist alone, may be unable fully to understand. The
object of this little volume will be to unravel as many as possible of
these threads of contact, and to make their value and meaning plain to
the general reader, so that he may not, on the one hand, blindly follow
mere assertions and speculations, or, on the other, fail to appreciate
ascertained and weighty facts relating to this great and important
matter of human origins.
This is the more necessary since, even in works of some pretension,
there are tendencies on the one hand to overlook geological evidence in
favour of written records, or even of conjectural hypotheses, and on the
other to reject all early historical testimony or tradition as
valueless. We shall find that neither of these extremes is conducive to
accurate conclusions. Researches of a geologico-historical character
necessarily also bring us in view of the early history of our sacred
books. This may be to some extent an evil, as inviting the excitement of
religious controversy; but on the other hand the fact that the early
history incorporated in the Bible goes back to the introduction of man,
and connects this with the completion of the physical and organic
preparations for his advent, has many and important uses. It would seem
indeed that it is a great advantage to our Christian civilisation that
our sacred books begin with a history of creation, giving an idea of
order and progress in the creative work. Whether we regard the days of
creation as literal days or days of vision of a seer, or whether we hold
them to be days of God and His working, suitable to the Eternal One and
His mighty plan, and bearing the same relation to Him that ordinary
working days bear to us, we cannot escape the idea of an orderly work in
time. This, while it delivers the Bible reader from the extravagant
myths current among heathen peoples, ancient and modern, predisposes him
to expect that something may be learned from nature as to its beginning
and progress. In like manner the short statements in Genesis respecting
the early history of man have awakened curiosity as to human origins,
and have led us to search for further details derivable from ancient
monuments. The ordinary Christian who believes his Bible is thus so far
on his way toward a rational geology and archæology, and cannot say with
truth that he is absolutely ignorant of the pre-human history of the
earth. His notions, it is true, may be imperfect, either by reason of
the brevity of the record to which he trusts, or of his own imperfect
knowledge of its contents, but they give to historical and archæological
inquiry an interest and importance which they could not otherwise
possess.[1]
[1] It is an interesting fact that the pecuniary means, the skill and
labour expended in research in the more ancient historic regions, have
to so large an extent been those of Christians interested in the Bible
history. Yet some _littérateurs_, who have contributed nothing to these
results, attempt to distort and falsify them in the interest of an
unhistorical and unscientific criticism, and even to taunt the Bible as
adverse to archæological inquiry.
The earth has indeed, especially in our own time, and under the impulse
of Christian civilisation, made wonderful revelations as to its early
history, to which we do well to take heed, as antidotes to some of the
speculations which are palmed upon a credulous world as established
truths. We have now very complete data for tracing the earth from its
original formless or chaotic state through a number of formative and
preparatory stages up to its modern condition; but perhaps the parts of
its history least clearly known, especially to general readers, are
those that relate to the beginning and the end of the creative work. The
earlier stages are those most different from our experience and whose
monuments are most obscure. The later stages on the other hand have left
fewer monuments, and these have been complicated with modern changes
under human influence. Besides this, it is always difficult to piece
together the deductions from merely monumental evidence and the
statements of written or traditional history. There would seem, however,
to be now in our possession sufficient facts to link the human period to
those which preceded it, and thereby to sweep away a large amount of
misconception and misrepresentation in one department at least of the
relations of natural science with history.
I have called the subject with which we are to deal the meeting-place of
two sciences. In reality, however, it might be embraced under the name
anthropology, the science of man, which covers both his old prehistoric
ages as revealed by geology and archæology, and the more modern world
which is still present, or of which we have written records. The main
point to be observed is that it is necessary to place distinctly before
our minds the fact that we are studying a period in which, on the one
hand, we have to observe the precautions necessary in geological
investigation, and on the other to examine the evidence of history and
tradition. A failure either on the one side or the other may lead to the
gravest errors.
In studying the subjects thus indicated it will be necessary first to
notice shortly the history of the earth before the human period, and its
condition at the time of man's introduction. We may then inquire as to
the earliest known remains of man preserved in the crust of the earth,
and trace his progress through the earlier part of the anthropic or
human period, in so far as it is revealed to us by the relics of man
and his works preserved in the earth. We shall then be in a position to
inquire as to the form in which the same chain of events is presented to
us by history and tradition, and to discover the leading points in which
the two records agree or appear to differ.
It may be necessary here to define a few terms. The two latest of the
great geological periods may be termed respectively the _pleistocene_
and the modern, or _anthropic_, the latter being the human period or age
of man. The pleistocene includes what has been called the glacial age, a
period of exceptional cold and of much subsidence and elevation of the
land, in the northern hemisphere at least. The modern, or anthropic, is
for our present purpose divisible into two sections--the early modern,
or _palanthropic_, sometimes called quaternary, or post-glacial, and
which may coincide with the antediluvian period of human history; and
the _neanthropic_, extending onward to the present time.[2]
[2] The terms 'Palæolithic' and 'Neolithic' have been used for the men
of the Palanthropic and Neanthropic ages; but these are objectionable,
as implying that these ages can be best distinguished by the use of
certain stone implements, which is not the fact. I have preferred,
therefore, to call the earlier races of men _palæocosmic_, and the later
_neocosmic_, where it may be necessary to refer to them _as races_;
while the _periods_ to which they belong are respectively the
_Palanthropic_ and _Neanthropic_. By the use of these terms all
ambiguity will be avoided.