THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN
In the eocene, or earliest cenozoic, it is not pretended by anyone that
man existed, except inferentially, on the ground that if the remains we
know in the earliest caves and gravels belong to men who were developed
from apes on the method of natural selection, their ancestors must have
existed, at least in a semi-human form, in the eocene. But no such
precursors of man are yet known to us. It would have been pleasant to
believe that man arrived in time to see the beautiful forests and to
enjoy the mild climate of the golden age of the miocene, and this would
have agreed with some human traditions; but the probabilities are
against it, as we know no one species of higher animal of the many found
in the miocene that has survived to our time. The privilege of enjoying
the forests of the miocene age seems to have been reserved for some
large and specialised monkeys, which even Darwinians can scarcely claim
as probable ancestors of man.[6] It would appear also that owing to
increasing refrigeration of climate these apes were either obliged to
leave Europe for warmer latitudes or became extinct in the succeeding
pliocene.
[6] _Dryopithecus_ and _Mesopithecus_.
There are, however, in France two localities, one in the upper and the
other in the middle miocene, which have afforded what are supposed to be
worked flints.[7] The geological age of the deposits seems in both cases
beyond question, but doubts have been cast, and this seemingly with some
reason, on the artificial character of the flint flakes, while in the
case of some examples which appear to be scrapers and borers, like those
in use long afterward by semi-civilised peoples for working in bone and
skin, there are grave doubts whether they actually came from the miocene
beds. Lastly, it has even been suggested that these flints may be the
handiwork of miocene apes, a suggestion not so unreasonable as at first
sight it appears, when taken in connection with the working instincts of
beavers and other animals. Monkeys, however, seem to have less of this
gift as artificers than most other creatures. On the whole, we must
regard the existence of miocene man as not proven, though, if it should
prove to be a fact, it may be useful to some of the scoffers of these
days to know that it would not be so irreconcilable with the Biblical
account of creation as they seem to suppose. It might, however, prove a
serious stumbling-block to orthodox Darwinians, and might raise some
difficulties respecting antediluvian genealogies.
[7] Puy, Courny and Thenay.
In the pliocene of Europe there are alleged to be instances of the
occurrence of human bones. One of these is that of the skull now in the
museum of Florence, supposed to have been found in the pliocene of the
Val d'Arno. It is, however, a skull of modern type, and may have been
brought down from the surface by a landslip. But this explanation does
not seem to apply to the human remains found in lower pliocene beds at
Castelnedolo, near Brescia. They include a nearly entire human skeleton,
and are said by good observers to have been imbedded in undisturbed
pliocene beds. M. Quatrefages, who has described them, and whose
testimony should be considered as that of an expert, was satisfied that
the remains had not been interred, but were part of the original
deposit. Unfortunately the skull of the only perfect skeleton is said to
have been of fair proportions and superior to those of the ruder types
of post-glacial men. This has cast a shade of suspicion on the
discovery, especially on the part of evolutionists, who think it is not
in accordance with theory that man should retrograde between the
pliocene and the early modern period, instead of advancing. Still we may
ask, why not? If men existed in the fine climates of the miocene and
early pliocene, why should they not have been a noble race, suited to
their environment; and when the cold of the glacial period intervened,
with its scarcity and hardships, might they not have deteriorated, to be
subsequently improved when better conditions supervened? This would
certainly not be contradictory to experience in the case of varieties of
other animals, however at variance with a hypothetical idea of
necessarily progressive improvement. Let us hope that the existence of
European pliocene man will be established, and that he will be found to
have been not of low and bestial type, but, as the discoveries above
referred to if genuine would indicate, a worthy progenitor of modern
races of men.
It still remains to inquire whether man may have made his appearance at
the close of the pliocene or in the early stages of the pleistocene,
before the full development of the glacial conditions of that period.
Perhaps the most important indications of this kind are those adduced by
Dr. Mourlon, of the Geological Survey of Belgium,[8] from which it would
appear that worked flints and broken bones of animals occur in deposits,
the relations of which would indicate that they belong either to the
base of the pleistocene or close of the pliocene. They are imbedded in
sands derived from eocene and pliocene beds, and supposed to have been
_remanié_ by wind action. With the modesty of a true man of science,
Mourlon presents his facts, and does not insist too strongly on the
important conclusion to which they seem to tend, but he has certainly
established the strongest case yet on record for the existence of
tertiary man. With this should, however, be placed the facts adduced in
a similar sense by Prestwich in his paper on the worked flints of
Ightham.[9]
[8] _Bulletin de l'Académie Royale de Belgique_, 1889.
[9] _Journal of the Geological Society_, London, May 1889.
Should this be established, the curious result will follow that man must
have been the witness of two great continental subsidences, or deluges,
that of the early pleistocene and the early modern, the former of which,
and perhaps the latter also, must have been accompanied with a great
access of cold in the northern hemisphere. It seems, however, more
likely that the facts will be found to admit of a different explanation.
Every reader of the scientific journals of the United States must be
aware of the numerous finds of 'palæolithic' implements in 'glacial'
gravels, indicating a far greater antiquity of man in America than on
other grounds we have a right to imagine. I have endeavoured to show, in
a work published several years ago,[10] how much doubt on geological
grounds attaches to the reports of these discoveries, and how uncertain
is the reference of the supposed implements to undisturbed glacial
deposits, and how much such of the 'palæoliths' as appear to be the work
of man resemble the rougher tools and rejectamenta of the modern
Indians. But since the publication of that work, so great a number of
'finds' have been recorded, that despite their individual improbability,
one was almost overwhelmed by the coincidence of so many witnesses. Now
the bubble seems to have been effectually pricked by Mr. W. H. Holmes,
of the American Geological Survey, who has published his observations
in the _American Journal of Anthology_ and elsewhere.[11]
[10] _Fossil Man_, London, 1880.
[11] _Science_, November 1892; _Journal of Geology_, 1893.
[Illustration: SECTION AT TRENTON, ON THE DELAWARE, SHOWING THE RELATION
OF THE STONE IMPLEMENTS TO THE GLACIAL (?) GRAVELS (after Holmes)]
One of the most widely-known examples was that of Trenton, on the
Delaware, where there was a bed of gravel alleged to be pleistocene, and
which seemed to contain enough of 'palæolithic' implements to stock all
the museums in the world. The evidence of age was not satisfactory from
a geological point of view, and Holmes, with the aid of a deep
excavation made for a city sewer, has shown that the supposed implements
do not belong to the undisturbed gravel, but merely to a talus of loose
_débris_ lying against it, and to which modern Indians resorted to find
material for implements, and left behind them rejected or unfinished
pieces. This alleged discovery has therefore no geological or
anthropological significance. The same acute and industrious observer
has inquired into a number of similar cases in different parts of the
United States, and finds all liable to objections on similar grounds,
except in a few cases in which the alleged implements are probably not
artificial. These observations not only dispose, for the present at
least, of palæolithic man in America, but they suggest the propriety of
a revision of the whole doctrine of 'palæolithic' and 'neolithic'
implements as held in Great Britain and elsewhere. Such distinctions are
often founded on forms which may quite as well represent merely local or
temporary exigencies, or the _débris_ of old work-*shops, as any
difference of time or culture.
[Illustration: CHIPPED QUARTZITES, MODERN AMERICAN (after Holmes)
Upper line (1 to 6), unfinished and rejected pieces. Lower line (7 to
18), progress of development from the unfinished oval form to finished
lance and arrow-heads.]
For the present, therefore, we may afford to pass over with this slight
notice the alleged occurrence of miocene and pliocene man, and this the
rather since, if such men ever existed in the northern hemisphere, the
cold and submergence of the pleistocene must have cut them off from
their more modern successors in such a way that man must practically
have made a new beginning at the close of the glacial age.
I do not refer here to the finds of skulls and implements in the
auriferous gravels of Western America. Some of these, if genuine, might
go back to the pliocene age, but in so far as the evidence now
available indicates, they all belong to the modern races of Indians,
and, in one way or another, by fraud or error, have had assigned to them
a fabulous antiquity.
There still seems reason to believe that remains of man and his works
exist in beds which are overlaid by boulders and gravel, implying a cold
climate. These may indicate the last portion of the glacial period
proper, in which case the beds with human remains may be called
inter-glacial, or they may indicate a partial relapse to the cold
conditions occurring after the glacial age had passed away, and in the
early part of the modern period. My own view is, that it is most natural
to draw the boundary line of the pleistocene and anthropic or modern at
the point where the earliest certain evidences of man appear, and that
the anthropic age will be found to include not only an early period of
mild climate succeeding the glacial age, but a little later a return of
cold, not comparable with that of the extreme glacial period, but
sufficient seriously to affect human interests, and which almost
immediately preceded those physical changes which carried away
palæocosmic man, or the man of the earliest period, and many of his
companion animals, and introduced the neanthropic or later human age. We
shall find facts bearing on this in the sequel.
In the meantime, we may consider it as established beyond cavil that man
was already in Europe immediately after the close of the glacial period,
and was contemporary with the species of animals, many of them large
and formidable, which at that time occupied the land. He must have
entered on the possession of a world more ample and richer in resources
than that which remains to us. The early post-glacial age was, like the
preceding pliocene, a time of continental elevation, in which the dry
land spread itself widely over the now submerged margins of the sea
basins. In Europe, the British Islands were connected with the mainland,
and Ireland was united to England. The Rhine flowed northward to the
Orkneys, through a wide plain probably wooded and swarming with great
quadrupeds, now extinct or strange to Europe. The Thames and the Humber
were tributaries of the Rhine. The land of France and Spain extended out
to the hundred-fathom line. The shallower parts of the Mediterranean
were dry land, and that sea was divided into two parts by land
connecting Italy with Africa. Possibly portions of the shallower areas
of the Atlantic were so elevated as to connect Europe and America more
closely than at present.
Connected with this elevation of the continents out of the sea was a
great change of climate, whereby the cold of the pleistocene age passed
away and a milder climate overspread the northern hemisphere, while the
newly-raised land and that vacated by snow and ice became clothed with
vegetation, and were occupied by a rich quadrupedal fauna, including
even in the northern parts of Europe, Asia, and America, species of
elephant, rhinoceros, and other genera now confined to the warmer
climates. This new and noble world was the rich heritage of primeval
man.
Pictet has estimated the number of species of mammals inhabiting
Europe in the palanthropic period at ninety-eight,[12] of which only
fifty-seven now live there, the remainder being either wholly or locally
extinct--that is, they are either not now existing in any part of the
world, or are found only beyond the limits of Central, Western, and
Southern Europe. The extinct species also include the largest and
noblest of all. It has been remarked that the assemblage of palanthropic
species in Europe and Western Asia is so great and varied that with our
present experience we can scarcely imagine them to have existed
contemporaneously in the same region. For example, the association of
species of elephant and rhinoceros, the musk-sheep, the reindeer, the
Cape hyena, and the hippopotamus seems to be incongruous.
[12] Zittel, in a recent paper (1893), gives 110 species of mammals in
the pleistocene and early modern. Of these about twenty of the largest
and most important are extinct.
Various theories have been proposed to remove the difficulty. Modern
analogies will allow us to believe in such astounding facts if we take
into account the probability of a warm climate, especially in summer,
along with a wooded state of the country providing much shelter, and
wide continental plains affording facilities for seasonal migrations.
There were no doubt also climatal changes in the course of the age,
which may have tended to the remarkable mixture of animal types in its
deposits. In connection with this there is now every reason to believe
that while, in its earlier part, the palanthropic age was distinguished
by a warm climate, in its later portion a colder and more inclement
atmosphere crept over the northern hemisphere. As an illustration of
this, it is known that in the earlier part of the period a noble species
of elephant named _Elephas antiquus_, and a rhinoceros (_R. Merkii_),
abounded in Europe; but as the age advanced these species disappeared,
and were replaced by the mammoth (_E. primigenius_) and the woolly
rhinoceros (_R. tichorhinus_), animals clothed like the musk-ox in dense
wool and hair, and evidently intended for a rigorous climate. With and
succeeding these last species, the reindeer becomes characteristic and
abundant. It is, as we shall see, a point of much importance in what may
be called the prehistoric history of man, that he was introduced in a
period of genial temperature as well as of wide continental extension,
and survived to find his physical environment gradually becoming less
favourable, and the age ending in that great cataclysm which swept so
many species of animals and tribes of men out of existence, and reduced
the dry land of our continents to its present comparatively limited
area.
I should, perhaps, have noticed here the worked flints found so
abundantly in some parts of the south of England, which have long
attracted the attention of collectors, and have in some cases been
referred to glacial or pre-glacial times. I believe, however, they are
all really post-glacial, though in some cases belonging to the earliest
portion of that period.[13]
[13] Prestwich on 'Ightham Beds,' _Journ. Geol. Soc._, 1893; Dawkins,
_Journ. Anthrop. Soc._, 1894.
We may close the present chapter by presenting to the eye in a tabular
form the series of events included in the pleistocene and modern periods
of the great cenozoic time.
LATER CENOZOIC, OR TERTIARY PERIOD
(_In Ascending Order, or from the Older to the Newer_)
Newer Pliocene.--A continental period of long duration, elevated land,
much erosion, much volcanic action.
Pleistocene.--Irregular elevation and depression of the land, ending in
wide submergence with cold climate. Glaciers on all mountains near to
coasts and ice-drift over submerged plains. Glacial period, with an
inter-glacial mild period in the middle and great submergence of the
continents toward the close.
Anthropic.--_Palanthropic_, or post-glacial, in which the land emerges
and attains a very wide extension, and is inhabited by a varied
mammalian fauna. Man appears in Europe, Asia, and North Africa.
Terminated by a recurrence of cold and great subsidence, deluging all
the lower lands. _Neanthropic._--Area of continents smaller than in the
previous period. Surviving races of men and species of animals repeople
the world. Modern races of men and modern animals.