for estimating the duration of geological ages, and the results which have been arrived at, with great probability of accuracy, in regard to some of the more recent, it now only remains to briefly state the facts from which the existence of man, during these latter periods, has been demonstrated. The literature of this subject already extends to volumes, and it is therefore obviously impossible, in the course of the few pages which the limits of this work admit, to give anything but the shortest abstract, or to assign the credit relatively due to the numerous progressive workers in this rich field of research. I therefore content myself with taking as my text-book Mr. James Geikie’s Prehistoric Europe, the latest and most exhaustive work upon the subject, and summarizing from it the statements essential to my purpose.
From it we learn that, long prior to the ages when men were acquainted with the uses of bronze and iron, there existed nations or tribes, ignorant of the means by which these metals are utilized, whose weapons and implements were formed of stone, horn, bone, and wood.
These, again, may be divided into an earlier and a later race, strongly characterized by the marked differences in the nature of the stone implements which they respectively manufactured, both in respect to the material employed and the amount of finish bestowed upon it. To the two periods in which these people lived the terms Palæolithic and Neolithic have been respectively applied, and a vast era is supposed to have intervened between the retiring from Europe of the one and the appearance there of the other.
Palæolithic man was contemporaneous with the mammoth (Elephas primigenius), the woolly rhinoceros (Rhinoceros primigenius), the Hippopotamus major, and a variety of other species, now quite extinct, as well as with many which, though still existing in other regions, are no longer found in Europe; whereas the animals contemporaneous with Neolithic man were essentially the same as those still occupying it.
Fig. 19. – Engraving by Palæolithic Man on Reindeer Antler.79
(The two sides of the same piece of antler are here represented.)
The stone implements of Palæolithic man had but little variety of form, were very rudely fashioned, being merely chipped into shape, and never ground or polished; they were worked nearly entirely out of flint and chert. Those of Neolithic man were made of many varieties of hard stone, often beautifully finished, frequently ground to a sharp point or edge, and polished all over.
Palæolithic men were unacquainted with pottery and the art of weaving, and apparently had no domesticated animals or system of cultivation; but the Neolithic lake dwellers of Switzerland had looms, pottery, cereals, and domesticated animals, such as swine, sheep, horses, dogs, &c.
Implements of horn, bone, and wood were in common use among both races, but those of the older are frequently distinguished by their being sculptured with great ability or ornamented with life-like engravings of the various animals living at the period; whereas there appears to have been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability on the part of Neolithic man.
Fig. 20. – Reindeer engraved on Antler by Palæolithic Man. (After Geikie.)
Again, it is noticeable that, while the passage from the Neolithic age into the succeeding bronze age was gradual, and, indeed, that the use of stone implements and, in some parts, weapons, was contemporaneous with that of bronze in other places, no evidence exists of a transition from Palæolithic into Neolithic times. On the contrary, the examination of bone deposits, such as those of Kent’s Cave and Victoria Cave in England, and numerous others in Belgium and France, attest “beyond doubt that a considerable period must have supervened after the departure of Palæolithic man and before the arrival of his Neolithic successor.” The discovery of remains of Palæolithic man and animals in river deposits in England and on the Continent, often at considerable elevations80 above the existing valley bottoms, and in Löss, and the identification of the Pleistocene or Quaternary period with Preglacial and Glacial times, offer a means of estimating what that lapse of time must have been.81
Skeletons or portions of the skeletons of human beings, of admitted Palæolithic age, have been found in caverns in the vicinity of Liege in Belgium, by Schmerling, and probably the same date may be assigned those from the Neanderthal Cave near Düsseldorf. A complete skeleton, of tall stature, of probable but not unquestioned Palæolithic age, has also been discovered in the Cave of Mentone on the Riviera.
These positive remains yield us further inferences than can be drawn from the mere discovery of implements or fragmentary bones associated with remains of extinct animals.
The Mentone man, according to M. Rivière, had a rather long but large head, a high and well-made forehead, and the very large facial angle of 85°. In the Liege man the cranium was high and short, and of good Caucasian type; “a fair average human skull,” according to Huxley.
Other remains, such as the jaw-bone from the cave of the Naulette in Belgium, and the Neanderthal skeleton, show marks of inferiority; but even in the latter, which was the lowest in grade, the cranial capacity is seventy-five cubic inches or “nearly on a level with the mean between the two human extremes.”
We may, therefore, sum up by saying that evidences have been accumulated of the existence of man, and intelligent man, from a period which even the most conservative among geologists are unable to place at less than thirty thousand years; while most of them are convinced both of his existence from at least later Pliocene times, and of the long duration of ages which has necessarily elapsed since his appearance – a duration to be numbered, not by tens, but by hundreds of thousands of years.
Fig. 21. – Engraving by Palæolithic Man on Reindeer Antler.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DELUGE NOT A MYTH
If we assume that the antiquity of man is as great, or even approximately as great, as Sir Charles Lyell and his followers affirm, the question naturally arises, what has he been doing during those countless ages, prior to historic times? what evidences has he afforded of the possession of an intelligence superior to that of the brute creation by which he has been surrounded? what great monuments of his fancy and skill remain? or has the sea of time engulphed any that he erected, in abysses so deep that not even the bleached masts project from the surface, to testify to the existence of the good craft buried below?
These questions have been only partially asked, and but slightly answered. They will, however, assume greater proportions as the science of archæology extends itself, and perhaps receive more definite replies when fresh fields for investigation are thrown open in those portions of the old world which Asiatic reserve has hitherto maintained inviolable against scientific prospectors.
If man has existed for fifty thousand years, as some demand, or for two hundred thousand, as others imagine, has his intelligence gone on increasing thoughout the period? and if so, in what ratio? Are the terms of the series which involve the unknown quantity stated with sufficient precision to enable us to determine whether his development has been slow, gradual, and more or less uniform, as in arithmetical, or gaining at a rapidly increasing rate, as in geometric progression. Or, to pursue the simile, could it be more accurately expressed by the equation to a curve which traces an ascending and descending path, and, though controlled in reality by an absolute law, appears to exhibit an unaccountable and capricious variety of positive and negative phases, of points d’arrêt, nodes, and cusps.
These questions cannot yet be definitely answered; they may be proposed and argued on, but for a time the
Figs. 19 and 21 are taken, by permission of Edmund Christy, Esq., from
In some cases as much as 150 feet.
“Starting from the opinion generally accepted among geologists, that man was on the earth at the close of the Glacial epoch, Professor B. F. Mudge adduces evidence to prove that the antiquity of man cannot be less than 200,000 years.
“His argument, as given in the Kansas City Review of Science, is about as follows: —
“After the Glacial epoch, geologists fix three distinct epochs, the Champlain, the Terrace, and the Delta, all supposed to be of nearly equal lengths.
“Now we have in the delta of the Mississippi a means of measuring the duration of the third of these epochs.
“For a distance of about two hundred miles of this delta are seen forest growths of large trees, one after the other, with interspaces of sand. There are ten of these distinct forest growths, which have begun and ended one after the other. The trees are the bald cypress (
“Ten such periods give 100,000 years, to say nothing of the time covered by the interval between the ending of one forest and the beginning of another, an interval which in most cases was considerable.
“‘Such evidence,’ writes Professor Mudge, ‘would be received in any court of law as sound and satisfactory. We do not see how such proof is to be discarded when applied to the antiquity of our race.
“‘There is satisfactory evidence that man lived in the Champlain epoch. But the Terrace epoch, or the greater part of it, intervenes between the Champlain and the Delta epochs, thus adding to my 100,000 years.
“‘If only as much time is given to both those epochs as to the Delta period, 200,000 years is the total result.’” —
