The Meeting-Place of Geology and History

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Meeting-Place of Geology and History, by Sir John William Dawson

[1]

THE MEETING-PLACE
OF
GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

[2]

Sir J. William Dawson, LL.D., F.G.S.

"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

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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

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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

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"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

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"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.

[3]

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.

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York Chicago Toronto
The Religious Tract Society, London

[4]

Copyright, 1894
Fleming H. Revell Company

[5]

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.

[6]
[7]

CONTENTS

[8]
[9]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[11]

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.

CHAPTER II

THE WORLD BEFORE MAN

Man is of recent introduction on the earth. For millions of years the slow process of world-making had been going on, with reference to physical structure and to the lower grades of living creatures. Only within a few thousand years does our globe seem to have been fitted for its highest tenant. The evidence of this is to be found in any text-book of geology. I propose here merely to present the history of the earth in a series of word-pictures, introductory to our special subject.

Our first picture may be that of a nebula, vast and vaporous, containing the mixed and unconsolidated materials of the sun and planets—a void and desolate mass, slowly aggregating itself under the influence of gravitation.

Our next may be that of an incandescent globe, molten and glowing, and surrounded by a vast vaporous envelope, but tending by degrees to a condition in which it shall have a solid crust, on which the greater part of the watery vapour suspended in its atmosphere is to be condensed into a heated ocean.

Our third picture may represent the world of what geologists call the archæan, or eozoic period, when the crust had been furrowed up into ridges of land, and corresponding but wider depressions occupied by the sea. Into the latter the rains falling on the land are carrying sediment derived from the wasting rocks, though the waters are still warm and the thinner parts of the crust are still welling out rocky material, either molten or dissolved in heated water. In this period there were probably low forms of animal life in the waters and plants on the land, though we know little of their exact nature.

A fourth picture may represent that great and long-continued palæozoic period in which the waters swarmed with many forms of life, when fishes were introduced into the sea, and when the land became covered with dense forests of plants allied to the modern club-mosses, ferns, mares'-tails and pines; while insects, scorpions and snails, and some of the humbler forms of reptiles, found place on the land.

Returning after an interval, we should see a fifth picture, that of the mesozoic world. This was the age of reptiles, when animals of that class attained their highest and most gigantic forms, and occupied in the sea, on the land, and in the air the places now held by the mammals and the birds; while the continents were covered with a flora distinct alike from that of the previous and succeeding periods, replaced, however, as time went on by forests very like those of the modern world. In this age the earliest mammals or ordinary quadrupeds were introduced, few at first, small and of low rank in their class. Birds also made their appearance, and toward the close of the period fishes of modern types swarmed for the first time in the sea.

Lastly, we might see in the cenozoic, or tertiary age, the newest of all, quadrupeds dominant on the land and modern types of animal life in the sea. In this period our continents finally assumed their present forms. Toward its close and after many vicissitudes of geography and climate, and several successive dynasties of mammalian life, man and the land animals now his contemporaries occupied the world, and thus the cenozoic passes into the anthropic, or modern period, called by some, but without good reason, 'quaternary,' since it is in all respects a proper continuation of the tertiary, or cenozoic. [3]

[3] It will be seen that our six pictures are in some degree parallel with the 'days' of creation. This is not an intentional reconciliation. It merely expresses the fact of the case, whatever its significance.

This last age of the world is so intimately connected with man that it will be necessary to consider it more in detail. More particularly we may endeavour to answer, if we can, the questions of order and time involved in man's late appearance.

No geologist would expect to find any remains of man or his works in the periods represented by our five earlier pictures, because in these periods the physical conditions necessary to man and the animals nearest to him in structure do not appear to have existed, and their places in nature were occupied by lower types.

Nor for similar reasons would we expect to meet with man in the earlier part of that last, or cenozoic, period in which we still live; and in point of fact it is only in superficial deposits of the later part of this last great period of the earth's history that we actually meet with evidence of the existence of the human species.

If there is based on this fact a question as to the actual date of man's first appearance, the physical considerations indicate about twenty millions of years for the whole duration of the earth. Setting apart, say, a fourth of this time for the early pre-geologic condition of the world, the remainder may be roughly estimated as five millions for the archæan, or eozoic, six for the palæozoic, three for the mesozoic, and one for the cenozoic. [4] Of the last, the later part, in which there is a possibility of the existence of man, will be limited to less than a quarter of a million; and within this the certainly known remains of man, whether attributed as by some to the latest inter-glacial period, or to the post-glacial—a mere question of terms, and not of facts—cannot be older, according to the best geological estimates, than from seven thousand to ten thousand years. This, according to our present knowledge, is the maximum date of the oldest traces of man, and probably these are nearer in age to the smaller than to the larger number.

[4] The absolute length of these periods is, of course, a matter of estimation; but the relative lengths of the different ages may be regarded as a fair approximation, based on facts.

If the reader will take the trouble to draw on paper a scale of twenty inches, each of these will represent a million of years of the earth's history, and the known duration of the human period may be indicated by a thickish line at one end of the scale. We may thus represent to the eye the recency of man's appearance, so far as at present known to science.

It may be said that all this is mere assertion. It fairly represents, however, the conclusions reached on the latest geological evidence, though this evidence would demand for its full detail a larger space than the whole of this little volume. References are given below to works in which this evidence will be found. [5]

[5] Lyell's Students' Manual; Dana's Manual; Prestwich's Geology; The Story of the Earth, by the author.

It may also be objected that if, as held by some evolutionists, man was slowly developed from lower animals, and if his earliest known remains are still human in their characters, he must have had a vastly longer history covering the periods of his gradual change from, say, ape-like forms. This is admitted; but then we have as yet no good evidence that man was so developed, and no remains of intermediate forms are yet known to science. Even should some animal, either recent or fossil, be discovered intermediate in structure between man and the highest apes, we should still require proof that it was the ancestor of man, by the occurrence of connecting forms, or otherwise. As the facts now stand, the earliest known remains of man are still human, and tell us nothing as to previous stages of development.

We must now glance a little more particularly at what may be termed the more immediate antecedents of man. The latest great period of the earth's geological history (the cenozoic) was ingeniously subdivided by Lyell, on the ground of the percentages of extinct and surviving species of marine shells contained in its several beds. According to this method, which, with some modifications in detail, is still accepted, the eocene age, or that of the dawn of the recent, includes those formations in which the percentage of modern or still living species of marine animals does not exceed three and a half, all the other species found being extinct. The miocene (less recent) includes beds in which the percentage of living species does not exceed thirty-five. The pliocene (more recent) includes beds in which the living forms of marine life exceed thirty-five per cent, but there is still a considerable proportion of extinct species. Newer than this we have the pleistocene (most recent), in which there are scarcely as many extinct species as there are of recent in the eocene. Lastly, the modern, of course, includes only the living species of the modern seas. Other geologists, notably Dawkins and Gandry, have arrived at similar results from a consideration of the vertebrate animals of the land. In the eocene we find numerous remains of mammals, or ordinary land quadrupeds, but all are extinct, and nearly all belong to extinct genera. In the miocene there are many living genera, but no species that survive to the present time. The pliocene begins to show a few living species, and these are dominant in the succeeding pleistocene.

These several stages of the cenozoic were also characterised by great vicissitudes of geography and climate. In the early and middle portions of the eocene, much of the land of the northern hemisphere was under the sea or in the state of swamps and marshes, and there seems to have been a very mild and equable climate, insomuch that plants now limited to warm temperate regions could flourish in Greenland. It is further to be observed that regions such as Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt, which are known to us historically as among the earliest abodes of man, were at this time under the ocean, as were also rocks that now appear at great elevations in the highest mountains of Europe and Asia. For example, the limestones through which the Nile has cut its valley are marine beds of eocene age, and beds of the same period holding marine remains occur at an elevation of 16,000 feet in the Himalayan region.

In the miocene the amount of land was somewhat greater, though large areas of the continents were still under the sea, and the climate was still mild, but for reasons to be stated in the sequel it is not likely that man inhabited the warm continents of this age. The pliocene inaugurates what has been termed a continental period, when the land of the northern hemisphere was higher and more extensive than at present. It was also a time of great physical change, when much erosion of valleys and sculpturing of the surface of the land occurred, and when extensive earth movements and ejections of igneous rock increased the irregularity of the surface and gave greater variety and beauty to the land. The pliocene was altogether a most important period for giving the finishing touches of physical geography, and in it several modern species of land animals were introduced; but we have as yet, as we shall find in the sequel, no certain evidence that man was a witness of the movements and sculpturing of the earth's crust, so important in the preparation of his future home, though statements to this effect have been made on grounds which we shall have to consider.

In the course of the pliocene the previously high temperature of the northern hemisphere was sensibly lowered, and at its close the pleistocene period introduced a cold and wintry climate, along with gradual and unequal subsidence of the land, the whole producing that most dismal of the geological ages, known as the 'glacial period.' At this time much of the lower land of the continents was submerged and the mountains became covered with snow and ice, leaving space for vegetable and animal life only toward the south and in a few favoured spots in the higher latitudes. There is much difference of opinion among geologists as to the extent, duration and vicissitudes of this reign of ice, but there can be no doubt that it destroyed much of the animal and vegetable life of the pliocene, or obliged it to migrate to the southward. In this period great deposits of mud, sand and gravel were laid down, which prepared the world for a new departure in the succeeding age. This we may name the post-glacial, or early modern period, and in it we have the most certain evidence of the existence of man, though the geographical arrangement of our continents and their animal inhabitants were in many respects different from what they now are. If geologists are right in the conclusion already stated, that the close of the glacial period is as recent as 7,000 years ago, this will give us a narrow limit in time for the age of man, at least under his present conditions.

While, however, there is an absolute consensus of opinion among geologists as to the existence of man at or about the close of the glacial age, in the northern temperate regions at least, there are some facts which have been supposed to indicate a pre-glacial human period, or the advent of man even as early as the middle of the cenozoic time. These merit a short consideration.

CHAPTER III

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.

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.

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.

CHAPTER IV

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE [14]

[14] Called by some 'Palæolithic,' from the use of implements like that figured on p. [41].

We have now to inquire more particularly what we can learn as to the earliest men known to us, those who appeared in Western Asia and Europe at the close of the glacial period, when the cold had passed away and a genial climate had succeeded, and when the continents of the northern hemisphere had attained to their largest dimensions, were clothed with a rich vegetation and tenanted by an abundant mammalian fauna, including many large and important creatures now extinct.

We may first notice here a necessary limitation to our knowledge. The dry land of this age was of greater dimensions than at present. A large portion of what then was land is consequently now under the sea or deeply buried in alluvial deposits. Hence if any men of this age lived near the borders of the ocean, their remains must now be inaccessible, and the relics which we find must be those of inland tribes or of those who were driven inland by the encroachments of the waters. Our means of information are thus limited, and we must be prepared to admit that there may have been in this age great and populous communities of which we can have no record, at least of a geological character. Hence if we should find remains of only rude races of men, we should not be justified in assuming that all the peoples of the palanthropic age were of this character, more especially if we can find any indications that the men whose remains are accessible to us, though rude themselves, may have belonged to more advanced races.

FLINT HACHE OF THE ANCIENT OR CHELLEAN TYPE, AURILLAC (after Carthaillac)

The bones, implements and weapons, and débris of the feasts of these primitive peoples are to be found principally in caves of residence or of sepulture, [15] and in the alluvia deposited by rivers, and in a few cases in rock fissures or marine gravels, into which remains were drifted, or in which they were deposited by water. Here, again, we have another limitation, for it is possible that large populations may have lived on plains or in forests in perishable structures, and, like some modern savages, may have disposed of their dead in such a way that their bones could not have been preserved. In such cases we can hope to obtain, and then very rarely, only stone implements and other imperishable relics.

[15] Caverns, in relation to this subject, may be divided into those of residence, in which early men have lived and have left therein the débris of their food, the ashes and cinders of their fires, and implements, &c.; those of sepulture, in which the bodies of the dead have been deposited; and those of inundation, into which the bodies of animals or men have been drifted by floods. The same cave may, however, exhibit these different conditions in the deposits on its successive floors. Thus men may have inhabited a cave for a time; it may next have been invaded by river floods depositing mud, and it may subsequently have been used for burial.

Notwithstanding these limitations, however, it is wonderful that so much has been recovered from the ground by the diligence of collectors, and that the material thus obtained has proved so fertile in information respecting our long-perished ancestors.

Supposing, then, that we search for remains of palæocosmic men in river alluvia, or in caves of residence or burial, or in similar repositories, the question next arises, by what means can we distinguish their bones from those of later times? The following criteria are available:

(1) The remains were in their present condition at least as long ago as the date of the earliest history or tradition. This evidence is of course of greatest value in those regions in which history extends farthest back. Thus the remains of early men in the Lebanon caves, which we know date much farther back than the arrival of the first Phœnicians and Canaanites in Syria, are in a different position, in so far as history is concerned, from those occurring in countries whose written history goes back only a few centuries.

(2) The deposits containing these remains may underlie those holding relics of historic times, or may indicate different physical conditions of the districts in which they occur from those known within historic periods. This is the case with some river beds, as those of Grenelle, near Paris, and with the successive deposits in old caves of residence.

(3) They may be accompanied by remains of animals now extinct in the regions in question, and whose disappearance and replacement by the modern fauna implies great lapse of time and physical changes; as, for instance, when we find that men have left remains of their feasts holding bones of the extinct woolly rhinoceros and his contemporaries, or in now temperate climates, those of the reindeer.

(4) The remains themselves may indicate a race or races of men and a condition of the arts of life different from any known in the region in historic times. Thus we may have skulls and skeletons indicating men racially distinct from any now extant, and implements and weapons different from those in use in the times of history or tradition.

We have now to consider what evidence of this kind vindicates the assertion that man existed on our continents in the second continental or post-glacial age, or, as others will have it, in the closing period of the glacial age, and was contemporary with the mammoth and other great beasts now extinct. This evidence, which has been accumulating with great rapidity and relates to many parts of the northern hemisphere, is too voluminous to be reproduced here. [16] But a few examples of it may be given, more especially from parts of the old world whose history extends farthest back and where explorations have been most extensive.

[16] Reference may be made to Christy and Lartet, Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ; Quatrefages, Homme Fossile; Dupont, L'Homme pendant les Ages de Pierre; Carthaillac, La France Préhistorique; Dawkins, Cave Hunting and Early Man in Britain; Fossil Men and Modern Science in Bible Lands, by the author.

My first instance shall be one originally described by Canon Tristram, and which I had an opportunity to examine in 1884—the caverns or rock shelters in the face of the limestone cliff of the pass of Nahr-el-Kelb, north of Beyrout. At this place, in old caverns partly cut away in the forming of the Roman road round the cliff, there is a hard stalagmite, or modern limestone, produced by the calcareous drippings from the rock. This is filled with broken bones intermixed with flint flakes suitable for use as knives or spears or darts, and occasional fragments of charcoal. The bones are those of large animals, and have been broken for the extraction of the marrow; and the whole is evidently the remnants of the cuisine of some primitive tribe of hunters, now cemented into a somewhat hard stone by stalagmitic matter. The bones are not those of the present animals of Syria, but principally of an extinct species of rhinoceros (R. tichorhinus), a species of bison, and other large mammals which inhabited the region in the pleistocene and post-glacial periods. It is farther known that these animals had been extinct long before the early Phœnicians penetrated into this country, perhaps 3000 B.C., and that the deposits existed in their present state when the early Egyptian conquerors passed this way, at least 1500 B.C., on their march to encounter the Hittites. It is also known that the earliest historic aborigines of the Lebanon, certain rude tribes which seem to have existed there before the migration of the Phœnicians, subsisted on the modern animals of the district, and used flint implements and weapons somewhat differing from those of the earlier cave men of the region. [17] What, then, were these earlier cave men? Certainly no people known to history, unless those whom we know as antediluvians. [18]

[17] See the illustration on p. [97].

[18] For more detailed description see Modern Science in Bible Lands; also Egypt and Syria, in the Bypaths of Bible Knowledge, by the author.

From the Lebanon we may pass to the west of Europe, where in France and Belgium a vast number of interesting relics of palæocosmic man have been discovered, and have been scientifically examined.

We may take as an illustration the cave of Goyet, on the cliffs bounding the ravine of the Samson, a tributary of the Meuse. This cavern is about forty-five feet above the present ordinary level of the river, but in post-glacial times seems to have been invaded by inundations, as it shows on its floor five distinct ossiferous surfaces, separated by layers of river-mud. These successive surfaces have been carefully examined by M. Dupont, and their contents noted.

On the lowest of these, or the first in order of age, were found numerous skeletons and detached bones of the cave lion and the cave bear; the former a possible ancestor of the lion of Western Asia, the latter closely allied to the grizzly bear of North America, but both entirely extinct in Europe. One of the skeletons of the lion was of unusually large size, and so complete that when set up it forms the principal ornament of the cave collection in the Brussels Museum.

CAVE OF GOYET, BELGIUM (section after Dupont)
1 to 5, layers of clay deposited in the mammoth ages

The next surface, the second in order of time, had a greater variety of animal remains. The lion had disappeared, and instead hyenas haunted the cave, and had dragged in animal bones to be gnawed. These included remains of the cave bear, wolf, rhinoceros, mammoth, wild horse, wapiti, Irish stag, chamois, reindeer, wild ox, besides several smaller animals. The above animals are now all unknown in the fauna of modern Europe, except the reindeer, the chamois, and the wolf. But the most remarkable discovery on this surface was that of a few human bones, gnawed like the others by the hyenas. Man was thus already in the country, and contemporary with all these animals. How the hyena obtained his bones, whether from some neglected corpse or from some badly-constructed grave, will never be known; but the discovery introduces us to a tribe or family of men coming as immigrants into a region already stocked with many great quadrupeds. They probably did not yet dwell in caves, which, at a later and perhaps more inclement period, formed their homes. Dupont concludes from the condition of the bones that on both the older surfaces the cave bear was the later tenant, and had replaced the lion on the first and the hyena on the second.

The remaining surfaces introduce us to man as a cave-dweller. On the oldest of them are found not only abundance of débris of food, but worked flints and bones, objects of ornament, and evidences of the use of fire. The two higher layers show works of art in more varied and improved forms, as if a certain progress in the arts of life had taken place during the occupancy of the cave. Among the objects in the upper layers were red oxide of iron, showing the use of colouring matter for the skin or garments, bone needles, proving the manufacture of clothing by sewing, bone points for darts, skilfully-barbed bone harpoons, ornaments made of perforated teeth of animals, and fragments of bone, and a remarkable necklace of a hundred and twenty-four silicified shells of the genus Turritella, looking like spirals of agate, with a pendant made of another and larger shell. These shells are not known to occur nearer to the cave than Rheims, in Champagne. It is scarcely too much to say that this necklace might be worn by any lady of the present day. A certain amount of imitative art is also shown in the carving of animal and plant forms and fancy devices on pieces of reindeer antler, which may have served for handles of weapons or implements. But objects of much more elaborate design have been found in caverns of this age in France. (See illustrations on pp. [59] and [68].)

LANCE-HEAD FORMED OF A FLINT FLAKE (CAVE OF MOUSTIER)
Similar to weapons found in the Goyet cave. The flat face shows a bulb of percussion (after Falsan)

The food of these people, in so far as it was of an animal nature, may be learned from the broken bones, which show that here as elsewhere they carried into their caves only the legs and skulls of the larger animals they killed, leaving the carcases; though it is quite possible that, like North American hunting Indians, they may have stripped off portions of flesh from the back, and preserved the heart, liver, &c., which would of course leave no remains.

Dupont gives lists of the animals in each layer. Those in the lower of the anthropic layers consist of twenty-three species of quadrupeds and some bones of birds. Among the former were the mammoth, the rhinoceros, two species of bear, the horse, the reindeer, two other species of deer and two bovine animals. Even the lion, the hyena and the wolf were eaten by these people. It is interesting to note that the numerical preponderance was in favour of the reindeer and the wild horse, though remains were found indicating seven individuals of the mammoth, and four of the rhinoceros, as having fallen a prey to the old hunters. In the highest bed the number of species and the proportions of each one are nearly the same, so that no material change in the fauna had occurred during the occupancy of this cave. It may also be noted that while Dupont calls this a cave of the mammoth age, the French archæologists are in the habit of naming similar deposits those of the reindeer age. The age of both animals was in reality the same, except that in France the reindeer seems to have survived the mammoth, and indeed we know this to be the fact from its continuing in the forests of Germany till the Roman times.

This cave may serve as an example of the manner in which the men of the palanthropic age make their appearance. Let it be observed also that this is only one instance selected from many giving similar testimony, and that Dupont adduces evidence to show that there may have been a contemporary plain-dwelling people, of whom less is known than of the troglodytes. Let it also be noted that there are other caves in Belgium, to which we shall return later, which show how the neocosmic men contemporary with the present fauna succeeded the men of the mammoth age.

We may now inquire as to the physical characters of the men of this period. It may be stated in answer to this question that two races of men are known in the palanthropic age, both somewhat different from any existing peoples, and known respectively as the Canstadt and Cro-magnon races. As the latter is the most important and best known, we may take it first, though the former may locally at least have been the older.

The valley of the little river Vezère, a tributary of the Dordogne, in the south of France, abounding in overhanging rock-shelters, seems to have been a favourite abode of the men of the mammoth and reindeer age. The rock-shelter of Cro-magnon explored by Lartet is one of these, and that of Laugerie Basse is on the opposite side of the same stream.

The former is a shelter or hollow under an overhanging ledge of limestone, and excavated originally by the action of the weather on a softer bed. It fronts the south-west, and, having originally been about eight feet high and nearly twenty deep, must have formed a comfortable shelter from rain or cold or summer sun, and with a pleasant outlook from its front. Being nearly fifty feet wide, it was capacious enough to accommodate several families, and when in use it no doubt had trees or shrubs in front, and may have been further completed by stones, poles, or bark placed across the opening. It seems, however, in the first instance to have been used only at intervals, and to have been left vacant for considerable portions of time. Perhaps it was visited only by hunting or war-parties. But subsequently it was permanently occupied, and this for so long a time that in some places a foot and a half of ashes and carbonaceous matter, with bones, implements, &c., was accumulated. All of these, it may be remarked, belong to the palanthropic age. By this time the height of the cavern had been much diminished, and, instead of clearing it out for future use, it was made a place of burial, in which five individuals were interred. Of these, three were men, one of great age, the other two probably in the prime of life. The fourth and fifth were a woman of about thirty or forty years of age, and the remains of a fœtus.

These bones, with others to be mentioned in connection with them, unquestionably belong to some of the oldest human inhabitants known in Western Europe. They have been most carefully examined by several competent anatomists and archæologists, and the results have been published with excellent figures in the Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ, where will also be found details of their characters and accompaniments, among which last were about three hundred small shells of different species pierced for stringing or attachment to garments. These men are, therefore, of the utmost interest for our present purpose, and I shall try so to divest the descriptions of anatomical details as to give a clear notion of their character. The doubts at one time cast on the age of these skeletons have been removed by the discovery of others at Laugerie Basse, Mentone, &c. They are no doubt palanthropic, though not of the earliest part of the period. The 'Old Man of Cro-magnon' was of great stature, being nearly six feet high. More than this, his bones show that he was of the strongest and most athletic muscular development; and the bones of the limbs have the peculiar form which is characteristic of athletic men habituated to rough walking, climbing, and running; for this is, I believe, the real meaning of the enormous strength of the thigh-bone and the flattened condition of the leg in this and other old skeletons. It occurs to some extent, though much less than in this old man, in American skeletons. His skull presents all the characters of advanced age, though the teeth had been worn down to the sockets without being lost; which, again, is a character often observed in rude peoples of modern times. The skull proper, or brain-case, is very long—more so than in ordinary modern skulls—and this length is accompanied with a great breadth; so that the brain was of greater size than in average modern men, and the frontal region was largely and well developed. The face, however, presented very peculiar characters. It was extremely broad, with projecting cheek-bones and heavy jaw, in this resembling the coarse types of the American face, and the eye-orbits were square and elongated laterally in a manner peculiar to the skulls of this age. The nose was large and prominent, and the jaws projected somewhat forward. This man, therefore, had, as to his features, some resemblance to the harsher type of American physiognomy, with overhanging brows, small and transverse eyes, high cheek-bones, and coarse mouth. He had not lived to so great an age without some rubs, for his thigh-bone showed a depression which must have resulted from a severe wound—perhaps from the horn of some wild animal or the spear of an enemy.

OUTLINE OF THE SKULL OF THE 'OLD MAN OF CRO-MAGNON' (after Christy and Lartet)

The woman presented similar characters of stature and cranial form modified by her sex, and in form and visage closely resembled her sisters of the American wilderness in the pre-Columbian times. If her hair and complexion were suitable, she would have passed at once for an American-Indian woman, but one of unusual size and development. Her head bears sad testimony to the violence of her age and people. She died from the effects of a blow from a stone-headed pogamogan or spear, which has penetrated the right side of the forehead with so clean a fracture as to indicate the extreme rapidity and force of its blow. It is inferred from the condition of the edges of this wound that she may have survived its infliction for two weeks or more. If, as is most likely, the wound was received in some sudden attack by a hostile tribe, they must have been driven off or have retired, leaving the wounded woman in the hands of her friends to be tended for a time, and then buried, either with other members of her family or with others who had perished in the same skirmish. Unless the wound was inflicted in sleep, during a night attack, she must have fallen, not in flight, but with her face to the foe, perhaps aiding the resistance of her friends or shielding her little ones from destruction. With the people of Cro-magnon, as with the American Indians, the care of the wounded was probably a sacred duty, not to be neglected without incurring the greatest disgrace and the vengeance of the guardian spirits of the sufferers.

Unreasonable doubts have been cast on the burial of the dead by palæocosmic men. The burial of men of the Cro-magnon race at that place and at Laugerie Basse and Mentone is established by the most unequivocal evidence; and interments of men of the Canstadt race have been found at Spy, in Belgium. Of course, even if interment proper had not been practised, there might have been cremation, as among the Tasmanians, or burial on stages or in huts, as among some American Indians. Still, that interment was practised we know, and this carries with it the certainty that our palæocosmic men must have had some simple ideas of religion.

THE FIRST SKELETON FOUND IN THE MENTONE CAVES (after Rivière)

The skulls of these people have been compared to those of the modern Esthonians or Lithuanians; but on the authority of M. Quatrefages it is stated that, while this applies to the probably later race of smaller men found in some of the Belgian caves, it does not apply so well to the people of Cro-magnon. Are, then, these people the types of any ancient, or of the most ancient, European race? The answer is that they are types of the cave men of the mammoth age in Europe. Another example is the remarkable skeleton of Mentone, in the south of France, found under circumstances equally suggestive of great antiquity. Dr. Rivière, in a memoir on this skeleton, illustrated by two beautiful photographs, shows that the characters of the skull and of the bones of the limbs are similar to those of the Cro-magnon skeleton, indicating a perfect identity of race, while the objects found with the skeleton are similar in character. I had an opportunity of verifying his description by an examination of the skeleton in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, in 1883; and more recent discoveries at Mentone have confirmed the conclusion that this man really represents a race of giants, some of them seven feet high, who inhabited Southern Europe in the palanthropic age. A similar skeleton found by Carthaillac, at Laugerie Basse, was buried under a great thickness of accumulated débris of cookery, as well as of large stones fallen from above. This skeleton had its shell ornaments in place on the forehead, arms, legs and feet, in a manner which would induce the belief that they had been attached to a head-dress, sleeves, leggings, and shoes or moccasins. (See illustration on p. [79].)

HANDLE OF A PIERCER, OR BODKIN, IN BONE, FROM LAUGERIE BASSE, IN FORM OF A DEER
(a) Hollow for thumb; (b) hollow for finger. Reduced to one-half. From a cast of the original

FLINT FLAKE KNIFE, FOUND IN THE HAND OF THE 'GIANT' SKELETON OF MENTONE (after Evans)

The ornaments of Cro-magnon were perforated shells from the Atlantic and pieces of ivory. Those at Mentone were perforated Neritinæ from the Mediterranean and canine teeth of the deer. In both cases there was evidence that these ancient people painted themselves with red oxide of iron, and used bodkins of bone, and long and beautifully-formed flint knives, perhaps for dividing their food, or perhaps for sacrificial purposes. Skulls found at Clichy and Grenelle in 1868 and 1869 are described by Professor Broca and M. Fleurens as of the same general type, and the remains found at Gibraltar and in the cave of Paviland, in England, seem also to have belonged to this race. The celebrated Engis skull from one of the Belgian caves, which is believed to have belonged to a contemporary of the mammoth, is also of this type, though less massive than that of Cro-magnon; and lastly, even the somewhat degraded Neanderthal skull, found in a cave near Düsseldorf, though, like those of Clichy, Canstadt, Spy and Gibraltar, inferior in frontal development, is referable to the same peculiar long-headed style of man, in so far as can be judged from the portion that remains, though certainly to a ruder and more degraded variety, commonly known as the Canstadt man as distinguished from the Engis or Cro-magnon.

NEANDERTHAL SKULL—TWO OUTLINES: THE OUTER GIVING THE MORE CORRECT FORM (from Science)

SKULL OF CANSTADT TYPE FOUND AT SPY, BELGIUM, BY FRAIPONT AND LOHEST

Let it be observed, then, that these skulls are probably the oldest known in the world, and they are all referable to two varieties of one race of men; and let us ask what they tell as to the position and character of palanthropic man. The testimony is here fortunately well-nigh unanimous. All anatomists and archæologists admit the high and human character of the Engis and even the Neanderthal skulls.

Broca, who has carefully studied the Cro-magnon skulls, has the following general conclusions: 'The great volume of the brain, the development of the frontal region, the fine elliptical profile of the anterior portion of the skull, and the orthognathous form of the upper facial region, are incontestably evidences of superiority, which are met with usually only in the civilised races. On the other hand, the great breadth of face, the alveolar prognathism, the enormous development of the ascending ramus of the lower jaw, the extent and roughness of the muscular insertions, especially of the masticatory muscles, give rise to the idea of a violent and brutal race.'

He adds that this apparent antithesis, seen also in the limbs as well as in the skull, accords with the evidence furnished by the associated weapons and implements of a rude hunter-life, and at the same time of no mean degree of taste and skill in carving and other arts. He might have added that this is the antithesis seen in the American tribes, among whom art and taste of various kinds, and much that is high and spiritual even in thought, coexisted with barbarous modes of life and intense ferocity and cruelty. The god and the devil were combined in these races, but there was nothing of the mere brute.

Rivière remarks, with expressions of surprise, the same contradictory points in the Mentone skeleton: its grand development of brain-case and high facial angle—even higher apparently than in most of these ancient skulls—combined with other characters which indicate a low type and barbarous modes of life.

Another point which strikes us in reading the descriptions of these skeletons is the indication which they seem to present of an extreme longevity. The massive proportions of the body, the great development of the muscular processes, the extreme wearing of the teeth among a people who predominantly lived on flesh and not on grain, the obliteration of the sutures of the skull, along with indications of slow ossification of the ends of the long bones, point in this direction, and seem to indicate a slow maturity and great length of life in this most primitive race.

The picture would be incomplete did we not add that Quatrefages has described a single skull, that of Truchère, from deposits of this age, which shows that these gigantic men were contemporaneous with a feebler race of smaller stature and with different cranial characters, and inhabiting in all likelihood a more eastern region.

It is further significant that there is evidence to show that the larger and stronger race was that which prevailed in Europe at the time of its greatest elevation above the sea and greatest horizontal extent, and when its fauna included many large quadrupeds now extinct. This race of giants was thus in the possession of a greater continental area than that now existing, and had to contend with gigantic brute rivals for the possession of the world. It is also not improbable that this early race became extinct in Europe in consequence of the physical changes which occurred in connection with the subsidence that reduced the land to its present limits, and that the feebler race which succeeded came in as the appropriate accompaniment of a diminished land-surface and a less genial climate in the early historic period. The older races are those usually classed as palæolithic, and are supposed to antedate the period of polished stone; but this may, to some extent, be a prejudice of collectors, who have arrived at a foregone conclusion as to distinctions of this kind. Judging from the great cranial capacity of the older race and the small number of their skeletons found, it might be fair to suppose that they represent rude outlying tribes belonging to nations which elsewhere had attained to greater population and culture.

Lastly, all of these old European races were Turanian, Mongolian, or American in their head-forms and features, as well as in their habits, implements, and arts. In other words, their nearest affinities were with races of men which in the modern world are the oldest and most widely distributed.

The reader, reflecting on what he has learned from history, may be disposed here to ask, Must we suppose Adam to have been one of these Turanian men, like the 'Old Man of Cro-magnon'? In answer, I would say that there is no good reason to regard the first man as having resembled a Greek Apollo or an Adonis. He was probably of sterner and more muscular mould. But he was probably more akin to the more delicate and refined race represented by the solitary skull of Truchère, while the gigantic palæocosmic men of the European caves are more likely to have been representatives of that terrible and powerful race who filled the antediluvian world with violence, and who reappear in postdiluvian times as the Anakim and traditional giants, who constitute a feature in the early history of so many countries. Perhaps nothing is more curious in the revelations as to the most ancient cave men than that they confirm the old belief that there were 'giants in those days.' At the same time we must bear in mind that the more diminutive race which survived must have existed previously in some part of the world, and must have furnished the survivors of the succeeding subsidence (see illustration on p. [82]).

And now let us pause for a moment to picture these so-called palæolithic men. What could the 'Old Man of Cro-magnon' have told us, had we been able to sit by his hearth and listen understandingly to his speech?—which, if we may judge from the form of his palate-bones, must have resembled more that of the Americans or Mongolians than of any modern European people. He had, no doubt, travelled far, for to his stalwart limbs a long journey through forests and over plains and mountains would be a mere pastime. He may have bestridden the wild horse, which seems to have abounded at the time in France, and he may have launched his canoe on the waters of the Atlantic. His experience and memory might extend back a century or more, and his traditional lore might go back to the times of the first mother of our race. Did he live in that wide post-pliocene continent which extended westward through Ireland? Did he know and had he visited the more cultured nations that lived in the great plains of the Mediterranean Valley, or on that nameless river which flowed through the land now covered by the German Ocean? Had he visited or seen from afar the great island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could almost see in the sunset sky the islands of the blest? Could he have told us of the huge animals of the antediluvian world, and of the feats of the men of renown who contended with these animal giants? We can but conjecture all this. But, mute though they may be as to the details of their lives, the man of Cro-magnon and his contemporaries are eloquent of one great truth, in which they coincide with the Americans and with the primitive men of all the early ages. They tell us that primitive man had the same high cerebral organisation which he possesses now, and, we may infer, the same high intellectual and moral nature, fitting him for communion with God and headship over the lower world. They indicate also, like the mound-builders, who preceded the North American Indian, that man's earlier state was the best—that he had been a high and noble creature before he became a savage. It is not conceivable that their high development of brain and mind could have spontaneously engrafted itself on a mere brutal and savage life. These gifts must be remnants of a noble organisation degraded by moral evil. They thus justify the tradition of a Golden and Edenic Age, and mutely protest against the philosophy of progressive development as applied to man, while they bear witness to the similarity in all important characters of the oldest prehistoric men with that variety of our species which is at the present day at once the most widely extended and the most primitive in its manners and usages. [19]

[19] Perhaps no feature of this early human age is more remarkable than its artistic productions. Recent testimony, more especially that of the very careful explorers of the deposits at Spy, in Belgium, seems to show existence of the potter's art, though this until lately was denied. These people ornamented their clothing with pearly and coloured shells, and made beautiful necklaces. We have already noticed that found in the cave of Goyet. At Sordes, in the Pyrenees, in a very old interment of this period, there was a necklace of forty-three teeth of the cave lion and cave bear, carved with figures of animals (see p. [71]). The handle of a piercer, represented on p. [59], is a marvel of skilful adaptation of an animal form to produce a handle fitted to be firmly and conveniently grasped by the human hand. The figure of the mammoth on p. [68] shows how a few bold lines may produce a vigorous and truthful sketch; and multitudes of such carvings and drawings have been found in France as well as in Germany and Belgium. Even the chipping of flint is an art requiring much skill to produce the fine knives, spears, &c., so commonly found, and there is evidence that these were fitted into strong and probably artistic handles. All this and much more testifies to the fact that our palæocosmic men were no mean artists as well as artificers.

OUTLINE OF MAMMOTH, CARVED ON A PLATE OF IVORY, FROM THE CAVE OF LA MADELEINE

CHAPTER V

SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS OF THE PALANTHROPIC AGE

While all geologists and archæologists are agreed in the existence of the men contemporary with the mammoth and reindeer in Europe, and in the fact of two or even three races of men having existed in that period, various opinions are entertained as to the succession of events and the chronological classification of the remains. Mortillet, whose arrangement has been usually adopted in France, recognises a period of chipped stone or palæolithic period, corresponding to the palanthropic age, and a period of polished stone, corresponding to the neanthropic age. Within the former he believes that it is possible to separate different ages, [20] from the character of the implements and other remains. The first two are characterised by the presence of two elephants, the mammoth and another species (E. antiquus), the next two by the mammoth associated with the cave bear and reindeer, the last by the nearly entire predominance of the reindeer. Dupont is content in Belgium to recognise a mammoth age and a reindeer age, but the latter perhaps includes some deposits which are properly neanthropic.

[20] Respectively the Achulienne, Chellienne, Mousterienne, Soloutrienne, and Magdalenienne.

Carthaillac places the whole palanthropic age as quaternary, properly so-called, which he separates from the tertiary on the one hand and the modern on the other, and divides his quaternary into two stages, the first characterised by E. antiquus and Mortillet's Chellean men, the second by the mammoth and reindeer—the earlier of these two periods being warm and moist, the latter cold and dry. The [table] appended to this chapter is modified from those of Carthaillac. Dawkins, while admitting a similar twofold division, calls the earlier men those of the river gravels, the latter those of the caves.

This twofold division of the palanthropic age requires some consideration. In the first place, there is reason to believe that the Canstadt race locally preceded that of Cro-magnon. I say locally, for no one supposes that they are distinct species, and as varietal forms they may have originated from a common intermediate ancestor, or the humbler race may be the earlier, and the higher race an improvement on it, or the lower race may have been a degraded type of the higher. Probably also there was a third, the Truchère race, and the Cro-magnon race may have been a half-breed or metis progeny.

TOOTH OF CAVE BEAR, WITH ENGRAVING OF A SEAL, FROM A COLLAR FOUND AT SORDES, PYRENEES (after Carthaillac)

Again, there was an undoubted change of fauna within the palanthropic age, and this dependent on or accompanied by a change of climate. The earlier elephant of the period (E. antiquus) and its companion animals are believed to have been suited to a warm climate, and to have entered Europe from the south-east. With, or immediately after, them came man, and this conclusion harmonises with human physiology, for we know that man must have originated in a warm climate, and must in the first place have been a feeder on fruits and grains or other nutritious vegetable products. In this early stage he would be nearly destitute of implements and weapons. But in the succeeding cold period, one tribe after another might be obliged to resort to hunting habits, to the use of fire and of clothing, and of natural and artificial shelter. Hence the peculiarities of the cave men, who, while they advanced in art, may have also advanced in ferocity and warlike habits, under the pressure of necessity and competition. Hence also their association more and more closely with such animals as the reindeer, the hairy mammoth, and the woolly rhinoceros, while the previous species had migrated to the south or perished. Thus it would appear that the men of the mammoth age may not be really the most primitive men, but a derivative from them under pressure of a severe climate. This possibility may be summed up as follows. If the early part of the post-glacial or palanthropic era was characterised by a milder climate than its later period, this may have had much to do with the change in implements and weapons. The earliest men probably subsisted merely on natural fruits and other vegetable productions. To secure these in a mild climate they would require no implements, except perhaps to dig for roots or to crack nuts. If they migrated into a colder climate, or if the climate became more severe, they might be obliged to become hunters and fishermen, and would invent new implements and weapons, not because they had advanced in civilisation, but, as Lamech has it in Genesis, 'because of the ground which the Lord had cursed,' and which would no longer yield food to them. At the same time they might contend with one another for the most sheltered and productive stations, and so war might further stimulate that very questionable advance in civilisation which consists in the improvement of weapons of destruction. We have much to learn as to these matters; but we must, if we have any regard to physiology and to natural probability, start from the idea that the most primitive men were frugivorous and fitted for a mild climate. In this case we should expect that these earliest men would leave behind them scarcely any weapons or implements except of the simplest kind, and that their apparent progress in the arts of war and the chase might in reality be evidence, up to a certain point at least, of increasing barbarism. Primitive as well as modern men present in these respects strange paradoxes.

We have to inquire in the sequel as to the cause of the final disappearance of the palæocosmic men, and as to the question whether history is cognisant of any such human period as that which has occupied us in this chapter, or whether, as has sometimes been assumed, it is altogether prehistoric.

On the subject of the correlation of the French and Belgian discoveries as to primitive man, a most interesting and important communication was made by Dupont to the Geological Society of Belgium in 1892. [21] The veteran explorer of the Belgian caves addresses himself in this paper to a careful comparison of the geological relations, animal remains and human relics in these caves, and in the gravels and 'quaternary' clays associated with them. He arrives at the conclusion, which I had already stated, [22] that these deposits are contemporaneous and show similar stages, but that the mammoth age properly so-called, in which the primitive people fed on the mammoth and its companion the woolly rhinoceros, extended to a later date in Belgium than in France, so that the mammoth age of Dupont and the reindeer age of the French archæologists overlap one another. He notes in connection with this that there is evidence of the continued existence of the mammoth in the so-called reindeer age of France, in the discovery in caves of that period of plates of ivory with the portrait of the mammoth engraved on them. It would therefore appear either that the mammoth earlier became extinct or rare in France, perhaps on account of climatal changes, or perhaps because of destruction by man, or that the habits of the French populations changed in such a way as to cause them to confine themselves to smaller game. In either case, we now find that the whole palanthropic age is one period. On the other hand, Dupont agrees with Mortillet that there is a hiatus, physical, palæontological and anthropological, between the so-called palæolithic and neolithic periods, that is, between the palanthropic and neanthropic ages.

[21] Bulletin de la Société Belge de Géologie, janvier 1893. This paper should be studied by all interested in the subject.

[22] Fossil Men.

Dupont holds that the plain-dwellers (Pedionomytes, as he calls them) were the earliest known men, corresponding to the oldest gravel remains of Dawkins and Prestwich, and points out that their implements are in size and form, though not in material and finish, allied to those of the polished stone age, which might thus be regarded as an improved continuation or revival of this first period. This might be read to mean, as above maintained, that the earliest men were peaceful and perhaps in part agricultural, that they were succeeded by lawless, powerful, artistic and savage peoples, and when the latter were swept away that a remnant of the primitive stock repossessed the land. If this proves to be the net result, it will correspond exactly with our old historical beliefs.

I was struck in reading this paper with a remark of Dupont on the unprogressive character of the men of the mammoth age, who seem to have made so little advance in the arts of life during the period of their occupation of Europe. Perhaps he makes too great an estimate of the length of their residence, or does not sufficiently consider how long men about their stage of civilisation have remained at the same point in the historic period. Nor does he consider the possibility of the cave men belonging to ruder tribes of a race which may have inhabited better if more perishable residences elsewhere. In any case, all experience shows that to such a people any great advance in the arts could come only by missionary influence from abroad, or by the appearance of some great inventive genius among themselves; and no good fortune of this kind seems to have happened to the Canstadt or Cro-magnon men, or if it did, they rejected their opportunity, as so many others have since done.

Still, perhaps, we need not pity them too much. They lived in a young and fresh condition of the earth, enjoyed a vigorous health, and were gifted with rare strength and energy. They were bountifully provided for by nature as to food and clothing, were in slavery to no man, lived in families bound together by ties of affection, and were free to migrate over vast territories according to the exigencies of the seasons. They had some taste in dress and ornaments, and no doubt enjoyed their clever carvings on bone and ivory as much as any modern lovers of art their most finished treasures. A Cro-magnon 'brave,' tall, muscular and graceful in movement, clad in well-dressed skins, ornamented with polished shells and ivory pendants, with a pearly shell helmet, probably decked with feathers, and armed with his flint-headed lance and skull-cracker of reindeer antler handsomely carved, must have been a somewhat noble savage, and he must have rejoiced in the chase of the mammoth, the rhinoceros, the bison, and the wild horse and reindeer, and in launching his curiously-constructed harpoons against the salmon and other larger fish that haunted the rivers.

Nor was he destitute of higher hopes. He laid his dead reverently in the bosom of mother earth, with such things as had been pleasant or useful in life, and his rudimentary bible, or 'book of the dead,' must have at least included the idea—'This corruptible shall put on incorruption, this mortal immortality.' That is the meaning of such funeral gifts in every part of the world, and has always been so, as far as we can learn. But the belief in immortality implies also a belief in a God or gods. For if there is a spiritual world for the dead, there must be a Power to care for them there. Whether these beliefs were originally implanted in him when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, or were taught to him by special revelation, we do not know, but they were there as a foundation on which he could, with the aid of his sense of right and wrong, build a happy and harmless life. That he did not always do so we have some sad evidence, to be gathered even from his bones; and the testimony of tradition is that his great sin was that of inhuman violence, and it was for this that he was swept away by the Flood, and replaced by men of more peaceful mould, whom but for that catastrophe he would soon have annihilated.

Carthaillac [23] devotes a chapter to the mortuary customs of the men of the quaternary (palanthropic) age. He shows that the statement sometimes made that these men did not care for the dead is entirely incorrect, though he believes that we know comparatively little of their burials, owing to the circumstance that only those in caverns were likely to be preserved or discovered. The discoveries at Spy, in Belgium, show that even the Canstadt race, the lowest in development, and probably in art, interred the bodies of their dead, while a large number of interments of the Cro-magnon race are known. He calls attention to the fact that in all of these the body lies on its side. The hands are brought up to the head or neck, and the knees are bent, sometimes slightly, sometimes very strongly, so as to give the body a crouching posture (p. [79]). The idea seems to have been to place the body in the attitude of sleep or of rest. The deceased was arrayed in the garments and ornaments worn during life, and not infrequently a quantity of red oxide of iron was buried with, or has been scattered over, the body. Flint knives and lances seem often to have been placed with the dead. It is needless to say that all this recalls the burial customs of many rude tribes of men up to modern times.

[23] Homme Préhistorique.

There is some reason to believe that occasionally, at least, the flesh has been partially removed from the bones before interment. This reminds us of the custom of some American tribes, who were in the habit of disinterring the dead after a temporary burial, carefully cleaning the bones, and then placing them wrapped in skins in their tribal ossuaries. It would seem, however, that the primitive men when they removed the flesh did so in a recent state. Perhaps this practice was resorted to only when the body had to be kept for some time, or carried some distance for interment. If the body was disembowelled and the remaining flesh and ligaments dried, it would be reduced very nearly to the condition of the imperfect mummies of the Guanches of the Canaries and of the Peruvians. Thus we may suppose that we have here a rudimentary condition of the art of the embalmer.

THE SKELETON OF LAUGERIE BASSE, DORDOGNE, SHOWING THE POSITION OF THE PERFORATED SHELLS ON THE LIMBS AND FOREHEAD (after Carthaillac)

Some questions still remain as to the races of men actually known to us in the palanthropic age. It has already been explained that in the earliest part of this period, that characterised by the presence of the Elephas antiquus in Europe, there are evidences of the existence of man, and this in a more genial climate than that prevailing later. Of these men we have no certain osseous remains. Should these be found, we may anticipate that their characters would be peculiar, and would indicate a frugivorous rather than a carnivorous mode of life, and less of rude power than that evidenced by the Canstadt and Cro-magnon races.

Of the latter, though both are of the same faunal period, and therefore geologically contemporaneous, the former, the lower of the two in point of physical development, is apparently in Western Europe the older, and represents the earlier part of the mammoth age, when the climate had become cooler and Elephas primigenius had succeeded to E. antiquus. The Cro-magnon race, beginning in this period, goes on to the close of the mammoth age, which, as already stated, coincides with the reindeer age of the French archæologists. This Cro-magnon race I am disposed to regard as a mixed or half breed tribe, produced by the union of the Canstadt peoples with the higher race already hinted at. This last may possibly be represented by a few skulls more resembling those of the men of the neanthropic age, which are occasionally found in the burials of the Cro-magnon people, and of which that found at Truchère has been already referred to.

We have thus traces of two primitive or antediluvian races, one probably mild and subsisting on vegetable food, and another fierce, rude and carnivorous, perhaps a product of degeneracy of the former; and a third, or mixed race, of greater physical power and energy than either of the others. This is of course merely a hypothetical reading of the facts, but it is by no means improbable, and would, as we shall see, bring them into close relation with the teachings of history and tradition as to the antediluvian age.

The most careful and elaborate studies of these several types have been made by MM. Quatrefages and Hamy. The former sums up the races of fossil or 'quaternary' men as six in number, viz.: (1) The Canstadt; (2) the Cro-magnon; (3) the mesitocephalic race of Furfooz; (4) the sub-brachycephalic race of Furfooz; (5) the race of Grenelle; (6) the race of Truchère. Of these only three (namely, Nos. 1, 2, and 6) properly belong to the palanthropic age. The races of Furfooz [24] and of the upper beds of Grenelle are neanthropic, because they are found with the animal remains of that age, and they resemble in cranial characters the neanthropic peoples.

[24] Noticed later, in [Chapter VII].

The Canstadt and Cro-magnon races resemble each other in being long-headed or dolichocephalic, and in having strong and coarsely-made facial bones, but the Canstadt race has a comparatively low forehead with strong superciliary arches, and round eye-sockets. The Cro-magnon race has a brain-case of more than ordinary capacity, a more elevated forehead, and eye-sockets singularly elongated horizontally. Broca has measured the cubic contents of the Cro-magnon skull, and gives as the result 1,590 cubic centimetres, or 119 centimetres more than the average of 125 modern Parisian skulls. The Canstadt men were of moderate stature, but strongly built and muscular. The Cro-magnon race was of great stature, some skeletons approaching to seven feet in height, and affording evidence of immense muscular development.

SKULL FROM TRUCHÈRE, SHOWING A PECULIAR PALANTHROPIC TYPE ALLIED TO NEANTHROPIC RACES (after Quatrefages)

The race of Truchère is represented by only a single skull; but Quatrefages vouches for it as belonging to the age of the mammoth. It is a well-formed brachycephalic cranium of unusually great internal capacity, and would be regarded anywhere as indicating a race of high and refined cerebral endowment. If really of the mammoth age, it may have belonged to a straggler or captive from a higher and more cultured tribe, introduced accidentally into a sepulchre of the Cro-magnon period. It connects itself with the speculation in the preceding pages as to the existence of such a race. This skull resembles, as we should expect, the type of the neanthropic men who spread over the earth at the beginning of that later age.

Table Showing Relations of Later Cenozoic Ages in Europe

	Geological Periods	Geography and Climate	Fauna	Periods	Epochs
	Modern or neanthropic	The actual climate and geographical arrangements	Modern quadrupeds, including domestic animals	So-called of Iron, Bronze, and Polished Stone	Recent Roman Gaulish Iberian
	Post-glacial or palanthropic	Cold and dry, with widely extended continents. Extension of glaciers &c. Warm and moist, extended continents	Reindeer, mammoth (Elephas primigenius), hairy rhinoceros (R. tichorhinus), Elephas antiquus and R. Merkii	So-called palæolithic or Age of Chipped Stone	Magdalenian Soloutrian Mousterian Chellean
	Pleistocene or glacial	Glacial period.Submergence and diminished continents	Arctic animals and plants	No certain trace of Man
	Pliocene	First continental period. Mild climate	Elephas meridionalis, Rhinoceros leptorhinus, and other extinct mammals

CHAPTER VI

END OF THE PALANTHROPIC AGE

The palanthropic age came to a tragic end, and is somewhat definitely separated from that which succeeded it. This appears from several considerations which are too often overlooked by writers who have a prejudice in favour of everything passing imperceptibly and by slow degrees into that by which it is followed—an exaggerated uniformitarianism beyond that of Lyell, but in harmony with the hypothesis of Darwin, to which many anthropologists appear to tie themselves hopelessly.

Three facts are here specially important. The Canstadt and Cro-magnon races are physically different from any modern races, and give place at the close of this age to peoples as distinct from them as any now existing, and who, on the other hand, while separated from the palæocosmic men preceding them, are linked with the races of modern times. It is no doubt true that occasional and abnormal human skulls may to this day be seen on living men which are more or less of the Canstadt or Cro-magnon type. These are good evidences of the unity of man through all the ages, but no race exists having all the peculiarities of these ancient peoples, which thus belong not to a distinct species but to a distinct racial variety of man.

Secondly, at the close of the palanthropic age we find a great change in land animals—a number of important species hunted by early man having disappeared, and the more meagre modern fauna having come in at once. Thus it may be affirmed that the land fauna of this primitive time was distinct from that now living. This implies either long time or a great physical break.

Thirdly, this change of fauna consists not so much in the introduction of new species as in the extinction of old forms, either absolutely or locally; and this agrees with the fact of diminution of land area, since it seems to be a law of the geological succession that increasing land brings in new land animals; diminishing land area leads to extinction, and not to introduction.

Fourthly, in accordance with this we find that, at the close of the palanthropic age, the continents of the northern hemisphere experienced a subsidence from which they have only partially recovered up to the present time, and which introduced the modern geographical and climatal features. This appears from raised beaches and beds of rubble, loam and loess of modern date overlying the débris of the glacial period and holding the remains of post-glacial animals. These are widely spread over the whole northern hemisphere, and ascend in some districts to high levels. An interesting illustration has recently been given by Dr. Nuesch and M. Boule, in the deposits under a rock-shelter at Schweizersbild, near Schaffhausen. [25] These show an overlying deposit with 'neolithic' implements and bones of recent animals, a bed of rubble and loam destitute of human remains, and below this a bed containing bone implements, worked flints, and traces of cookery of the palanthropic period. The whole rests on a bed of rolled pebbles, supposed to be the upper part of the glacial deposits. This shows the interval between the palanthropic and neanthropic periods, and also the post-glacial date of man in Switzerland, and it accords with a great many other instances.

[25] Nouvelles archives des Missions, &c. vol. iii. Noticed in Natural Science, 1893.

Were these changes sudden or gradual? Experience has no answer, for no similar events have occurred in historic times, and though there are records in the geological history of many mutations in the elevation of the land, we have no information as to their rate of progress, and we know little of their causes. The changes of this kind known to us in modern times are merely local, not general, and in regard to their rate are of two kinds. Some are abrupt and accompanied with earthquake shocks. These are very local, and usually occur in regions of volcanic activity. Others are so slow and gradual as to be scarcely perceptible, and are often of wider distribution. It is evident, however, that these slight and local phenomena furnish but little clue to the mutations of past periods. These were on a far grander scale and affected vast areas. We have no modern instances of these almost world-wide depressions of continents under the sea, though we know that these have occurred, one of them within the human period, and it is idle to speculate as to their rate or duration in the absence of facts. We know pretty certainly, however, from the gauges of time which can be applied to the close of the glacial period, that this latest subsidence must have occurred within six thousand years of our time.

With reference to the particular movement in question, we know that the close of the palanthropic period was accompanied by a movement at least equal to the difference between the wide lands of the second continental period and the shrunken dimensions of the present lands. Besides this we find on the surface of the land modern raised beaches, deposits of loess and plateau gravels, intrusions of mud into caves of considerable elevation, and evidences, as in Siberia, of large herds of animals perishing on elevated lands on which they seem to have taken refuge. [26] In short, no geological fact can be better established than the post-glacial subsidence.

[26] Prestwich, 'Evidence of Submergence of Western Europe,' Trans. Royal Society, 1893; 'Possible Cause for the Origin of the Tradition of the Flood,' Trans. Vict. Inst., 1894; Dawkins, Journal Anthrop. Inst., February 1894. Kingsmill and Skertchly (Nature, November 10, 1892) report the Asiatic loess to be marine, and to extend far upward on the Caspian plain and the Pamirs, so that all Asia must have been submerged within a very recent period. See also Fossil Man, by the author, 1880.

Putting these facts together, we cannot doubt that the submergence at the close of the palanthropic age was very considerable, and that it was followed by a partial re-emergence. Further, there is no evidence of any serious fractures or folding of the crust taking place at the time, though it is possible that great lava ejections like some of those of Western America may belong to this period. It is therefore allowable to suppose that the cause of submergence may have been either depression of the land, or elevation of the bed of the ocean throwing its waters over the land, or possibly a combination of both. Movements of these kinds have recurred again and again in geological time. Their causes are mysterious, but their effects have been of the most stupendous character. Fortunately, they occur at rare intervals, and that to which we are now referring is the last of which we have any record, and differs from all others in having occurred at a time when man was widely spread over the world.

The geological chronometers already referred to inform us that the land of the northern hemisphere rose from the great pleistocene submergence about eight thousand to ten thousand years ago, and the second continental period with its forests and its teeming and widely-extended animal and human life, may have been established within two thousand years of that time, or say six thousand to eight thousand years ago. How long the second continental or palanthropic period continued intact we do not know, but we can scarcely allow it less than two thousand years. Perhaps it was considerably longer. Now on historical evidence produced by Egypt, Chaldea, and other ancient countries in the Mediterranean region, we can trace the neanthropic age continuously back to, say, three thousand years B.C., or nearly five thousand years in all. Adding to this two thousand years for the palanthropic age, we are carried back to a time within one thousand years of the earliest we can assign on geological grounds to the termination of the great glacial period. Therefore, unless we suppose the last continental subsidence to have begun some time before the close of the palanthropic age, and to have continued to some degree into the beginning of the neanthropic, we cannot assign to it a very long time. That it could not have been sudden in the sense of being instantaneous is evident, because in that case terrestrial denudation of a stupendous character must have ensued, and no animal life except that of mountain tops and elevated table-lands could have escaped its destructive effects, but that it was by no means secular or long-continued is certain.

Thus we seem shut up to the conclusion that the close of the palanthropic age was marked by great geological vicissitudes of the character of submergence, leading primarily to vast destruction of animal life, and secondarily to permanent changes both in geography and climate, under which new conditions the neanthropic age was inaugurated. How this took place we have to inquire in the sequel. In the meantime we may merely remark that since the two principal races of primitive men known to us in Europe seem to have perished, we must infer that individuals of a third race beyond the limits of Europe were destined to survive, and again to replenish the earth in the new era, and that possibly these may be represented by the solitary Truchère skull. In the case of many of the more bulky and unwieldy animals inhabiting the plains the case was different. They perished, or if any survived the submergence they were unable to multiply under the new conditions.

Desperate attempts have been made in the interests of extreme uniformitarianism to discredit the abrupt change from palæocosmic to neocosmic men. It has been supposed that the latter replaced the former as conquerors—a most unlikely theory, when their relative powers are considered. It has been conjectured that as the cold decreased the old races of men followed the reindeer to the north and became Arctic peoples. But why did they not rather attack the new animals, which in that case must have come in from the south? It has even been supposed that the Esquimaux may be their descendants; but they are quite different in physical characters, and have no nearer resemblance in their arts than other rude peoples. In opposition to all this we have not only the remarkable change in the races of men and in their animal associates, but when we know that the whole geographical features of our continents have changed since the palanthropic age, and that not only are our continents reduced in size since the continental post-glacial period, but that there is evidence of re-elevation as well as subsidence, and this within a short period—say eight thousand years less the historic period on the one hand and the early palanthropic on the other—it seems impossible to doubt the greatness and suddenness of the physical break that divides the anthropic age into two distinct portions. All this may be held to be certainly known as geological fact, and it would be folly to overlook it in any discussions as to primitive man, or in any comparisons of the evidence afforded by his remains with that of early human history or tradition.

But if man was a witness of and sufferer in this great catastrophe, and if any men survived it, did they preserve no tradition or memory of such a stupendous event? We may imagine this to be possible. The survivors may have belonged to the rudest and most isolated of the races of men, and may have had no means of knowing the extent of the disaster or of preserving its memory. On the other hand, they may have attained to a sufficient degree of culture to have had some means of perpetuating the memory of great events. If so, we may imagine that the great diluvial cataclysm which separates the human or anthropic period into two parts may have left an indelible mark in the history or tradition of mankind. We shall inquire into this in the sequel, but must first consider what geological monuments remain of the early neanthropic age in Europe. [27]

[27] A valuable paper by Dawkins 'On the relation of the Palæolithic to the Neolithic Period,' reaches me when correcting the proof of this volume. (Reprint from Journal of Anthropological Society, February 1894.)

In the meantime I may remark that, if we take the Canstadt people to represent the ruder tribes of the antediluvian Cainites, the feebler folk of Truchère to represent the Sethites, and the giant race of Cro-magnon and Mentone as the equivalent of the 'mighty men' or Nephelim of Genesis who arose from the mixture of the two original stocks, we shall have a somewhat exact parallel between the men of the caves and gravels and those we have so long been familiar with in the Book of Genesis.

CHAPTER VII

THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE

There has been much confusion among anthropologists respecting the distinction of this from the preceding age. The Cro-magnon race has been classed as neanthropic, and has been confounded with a very dissimilar people which succeeded it after an interval of some duration. The gap between the disappearance of the earlier race and the arrival of the newer has thus been overlooked, and no account has been taken of the great intervening faunal and geographical changes. This has arisen from neglecting or being unable to appreciate the geological part of the evidence; and the somewhat lamentable result has been that it is difficult for the ordinary reader to arrive at any certainty, in the midst of conflicting statements all based on imperfect data. In these circumstances it will be well to begin this chapter with some examples of the relations of these different races.

At Grenelle, near Paris, on the river Seine, there is a succession of old inundation beds of that river, extending from the oldest part of the anthropic to modern times, and furnishing what may be regarded as a chronological series for Northern France, as many human remains have been from time to time deposited on this old eddy of the Seine and buried under newer accumulations. Belgrand has shown that in the lowest gravels of this deposit the long-headed Canstadt man is alone found. Immediately above this occur remains of the Cro-magnon type, and these are associated with and overlain by beds holding large stones or erratic blocks, a monument perhaps of the physical disturbances closing the palanthropic age. Above these the next remains are those of a race of men of smaller stature and with less elongated heads, which we shall find belong to the neanthropic age. Here, as Quatrefages points out, we have a distinct stratigraphical succession, which accords with that in other localities.

If we now turn to England we may select from other examples the Cresswell caves, so carefully explored by Dawkins and Mello, and in which we have well-ascertained evidence from fossils as well as from superposition. Without going into the details as to the several chambers and passages in these caverns, we find as the result of the whole the following succession in ascending order:

1. White calcareous sand, a deposit from water, but with no animal remains.

2. Stiff red clay with blocks of limestone, and in places underlaid by a ferruginous sand. These beds, of which the red clay is the principal, contain bones of rhinoceros leptorhinus, hippopotamus, bison, bear, hyena and fox, but no human remains. Dawkins, however, shows that in other caves farther south some rude flint implements show that man had already appeared in England, though he may not have made his way as far north as Yorkshire.

3. Above this lies a stratum of red sandy cave earth, in which occur the bones of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, the horse, the bison, the bear, and the hyena, but the leptorhine rhinoceros is gone. The bones are gnawed by hyenas, and there are rude quartzite implements. Over this, and representing the later part of the palanthropic age, corresponding to some of the French, Belgian, and Lebanon caves, are an upper cave earth and breccia, rich in 'palæolithic' flint implements and bones of the animals of the mammoth age.

4. Above this, in the surface soil and disturbed portions of the underlying beds, are remains of the neanthropic period, including twelve species of modern animals, but with no trace of the great extinct quadrupeds. Connected with these were human skulls of the same type found in the ancient burial barrows of England, and belonging to races still extant. The Cresswell caves give no bones of palæocosmic men, but they very well show the succession of the early period of mild climate, the later severe climate, the extinction of the old animals contemporary with the earliest men, and the final succession of modern men and animals to the now insular Britain, which, in the times represented by the beds one, two, and three above mentioned, was a part of the mainland of Europe.

FLINT FLAKES OF TWO TYPES FROM PALANTHROPIC AND NEANTHROPIC CAVES IN THE LEBANON

But perhaps the most interesting views of the succession of early men and the gap between the palanthropic and neanthropic periods are presented by the Belgian caves explored by Schmerling and Dupont. The latter has excavated more than sixty caverns, and has carefully noted the mode of occurrence of their contents, collecting at the same time a vast number of bones and implements, now admirably arranged in the museum of Brussels. In Belgium the earlier anthropic period has been characterised as that of the mammoth. The beginning of the neanthropic is still a reindeer age, though that animal was apparently becoming rare. It existed, as we know, in Central Europe till the time of Cæsar.

RESTORATION OF THE SEPULCHRAL CAVE OF FRONTAL, BELGIUM (after Dupont)
1. and 2. Gravel and clay of mammoth age. 3. Surface of modern accumulation of angular stones and clay. (D) Slab closing the sepulchre. (S) Platform for funeral feasts. (F) Hearth. (R) Rock forming the walls of the cavern.

The caves of Furfooz, and especially that of Frontal, are among the most instructive. Dupont has found that in many caves the older remains of the mammoth age are contained in or covered by a diluvial or inundation mud, [28] which seems to be the closing deposit of this age. Now in the Frontal cave this mud remained undisturbed and extended out into a platform in front of the cave. The cave itself had been used as a place of burial, and as many as sixteen skeletons were found in it, with flint implements, perforated shells, flat pieces of sandstone with sketches of figures scratched on them, and an earthen vase. All these lay above the original palanthropic mud floor, and belonged to new tribes which probably knew nothing of their predecessors, whose bones were covered by the inundation mud below. On the platform in front of the cave was a hearth with the ashes of funeral feasts, and around this were found a multitude of bones of animals, of the modern species of the country. The people who used this cave as a sepulchre had evidently arrived in Belgium after the palæocosmic men and the mammoth were not only extinct, but their remains were buried in muddy deposits; though the reindeer and even the wild horse still existed, and the time was long before the dawn of any authentic history in that part of the world. These men have somewhat shorter heads than the old Cro-magnon race, and they are of smaller stature, and with finer and more delicate features. In these respects they resemble the men of the dolmens and long barrows of France and England, and the existing Auvergnats and Basques, and also the Lapps of the far north. Dupont observes that their materials for implements and ornaments came almost entirely from regions to the southward, and hence he infers commerce with tribes in that direction and the existence of enemies in the north. I should rather infer that the men of Frontal had immigrated into Belgium from the south, and that they were a small and poor outlying tribe of a greater people living south of them. Dupont also remarks on their evident care of the dead, a characteristic of the early neocosmic men, their belief in a future life, and the absence of warlike weapons, whence he infers that they were a mild and pacific race—a conclusion which makes against the idea entertained by some, that they may have displaced the formidable palæocosmic men by conquest.

[28] Sometimes with angular stones—argile à blocaux.

Similar illustrations are afforded by the caves and rock-shelters of France, Switzerland, and Syria, and have convinced many of the ablest archæologists of the existence of a decided break between the palanthropic and neanthropic ages. In such a case also it is to be observed that a few decided, positive facts are of more value than any number of examples in which, from local circumstances, the succession may be obscure or uncertain.

The above examples relate to the men of the older neanthropic age, the men of the so-called neolithic or polished stone age of archæologists. These men can be shown to be identical with the oldest populations of postdiluvian Europe, peoples whose descendants exist to-day in many parts of Western Europe, though they have been more or less displaced or mixed with later intrusive races. These people have gone on without any physical cataclysm, or change of fauna, or geographical or climatal changes of any magnitude, into the ages of bronze and iron and of the modern civilisation. Thus, while the palæocosmic men passed away abruptly and have left no certain successors, those who succeeded them pass on without a break into the existing populations of the world.

We must, however, here guard ourselves from a misconception which has apparently unconsciously deceived many writers on this subject. It by no means follows from the facts insisted on above that there are no direct links of connection between palæocosmic and neocosmic men. The ancestors of the latter must have existed through the palanthropic period, and wherever they were living they may have had the same characters which distinguish them at a later time, and which persist to this day. There would therefore be nothing contradictory to our general view in finding that the small, fine-featured men who succeeded the giants of the olden time were in some more genial parts of the world extant from the first. Nay, it may even appear that they were similar to the Truchère race, and that still more primitive people whose bones are yet unknown, and who inhabited Europe in the early mild period preceding the mammoth age. Neither is there anything anomalous in the occasional reappearance of characters similar to those even of the Canstadt race at the present time, not because any modern men are direct descendants of this race, but because under certain conditions these characters tend to be reproduced. Let us put the case conjecturally as follows:

The original men who peopled the northern continents after the first glacial period were of small stature, agile, and well formed, with mild and pleasing countenance and heads of the medium (mesitocephalic) type. They were dwellers in a warm climate and subsisted on fruits. As population increased and men became hunters and fishermen, and wandered widely over the world, a large-boned, coarse-featured, and savage type of man arose, such as we find in the older caves and gravels, and weapons of kinds not needed in primitive times were invented. In this state of affairs, when the coarser and stronger races had made themselves masters of the world, and had perhaps partially intermixed with the older and more peaceful peoples, a great diluvial catastrophe occurred, which swept away the greater part of men. The survivors were of the old and unmodified stock, and it was they who repeopled the new world, finding possibly here and there some survivors of the former population, or themselves locally relapsing into a similar state. In this case all the seeming paradoxes and contradictions which have perplexed archæologists would be easily explained. We might even find occasional captives of the primitive small race among the interments of the old giants, and we might find new races of superior physical power arising in the new world and again intruding on the feebler race.

In closing our notice of this period we may proceed to connect it with actual history in the British Islands. When the Romans invaded Britain they found in it two races of men physically very distinct, one of them the aborigines, who had made their way to the island as its first population after the close of the mammoth age, the others apparently a later intrusion. They are known to English antiquaries from their modes of burial as the men of the long and the round barrows or funeral mounds. The first of these are beyond doubt the kinsmen of our little men of the Trou de Frontal, in Belgium. They are thus described by Greenwell and Taylor [29]:

[29] Greenwell, British Barrows; Taylor, Origin of the Aryans.

They were of feeble build, short stature, dark complexion, and somewhat long skull. They buried their dead in long barrows or mounds with interior chambers and passages; some of these are as much as 400 feet in length, and resemble artificial caves; and there can be no doubt that, as in Belgium, they buried their dead in caves when these were accessible; and the laborious construction of the long barrows when caves failed is an indication of the great importance they attached to the secure and decent sepulture of the dead. No trace of metal is found in their barrows, and but little pottery, but it is believed that they had at a very early time domesticated sheep and cattle and practised agriculture. These people are now identified with the people of the south and west of England, called by the Romans Silures. They were the builders of the cromlechs, dolmens, and other megalithic structures so common in various parts of the old continent. Their type survives to this day in the small dark people of parts of Wales and the south and west of Ireland, and in parts of the Hebrides. Their physical characters connect them with the primitive populations of the hills of Central France, with the Basques of the Pyrenees, the Corsicans, the Berbers of Africa, and the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the term Iberian has been applied to the whole group. Their language was originally not Aryan, but Turanian. They represent not merely a new race still surviving, but a distinct advance in practical civilisation over that of the peoples of the palanthropic age, in Europe at least.

At the time of the Roman conquest this primitive race had been replaced in the east of England and south of Scotland by a wholly different people, supposed to be identical with the Celtæ of the Romans. They were tall, muscular, with broader and shorter heads, fair complexion, and light-coloured hair. They buried their dead in round barrows or mounds, and seem at a very early period to have possessed bronze, and so to have introduced what has been termed the bronze age into Britain. At the time of the Roman invasion, however, they already possessed iron weapons. These people were Aryan in speech, allied to the Gauls and Belgæ, and the ancestors of the so-called Celtic populations of the British Islands.

CROMLECH AT FONTANACCIA, CORSICA (after De Mortillet)

CHAPTER VIII

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY

The time was when the earlier books of the Hebrew Scriptures stood almost alone in their notices of the creation and antediluvian times, and when critics could quietly take for granted that they were altogether mythical. This state of things has now passed away from the minds of the better informed, and it may be profitable before proceeding farther to glance for a moment at some of the recent corroborations, if they may be so called, of the Bible history from altogether unexpected quarters.

In the first place, there can now be no doubt that the order of creation, as revealed to the author of the first chapter of Genesis, corresponds with the results of astronomical and geological research in a manner which cannot be accidental. [30] This old document thus stands in the position of a prophecy which has been fulfilled in its details. Besides this, the discovery of the similar though not identical Chaldean creation tablets throws a remarkable and interesting side-light on the whole question. The Chaldean tablets are unquestionably very ancient, and borrowed from still older documents from which they are alleged to have been copied. But they and the Genesis narrative are independent of each other. Neither can have been copied from the other. Thus there must have been a still more ancient common source of the narrative, and, as I have elsewhere urged, [31] the greater simplicity and monotheistic character of the Hebrew document entitle it to the palm of the higher antiquity.