The Antiquity of Man
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Title: The Antiquity of Man
Author: Sir Charles Lyell
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN ***
Produced by Sue Asscher, Robert Prince and David Widger
THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN
By Sir Charles Lyell, BT., F.R.S., Etc.
London: Published By J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
And In New York By E.P. Dutton & Co.
With Introduction And Notes By R.H. Rastall, M.A., F.G.S.
EVERYMAN
I WILL GO WITH THEE
& BE THY GUIDE
IN THY MOST NEED
TO GO BY THY SIDE.
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS.
SCIENCE.
HOC SOLUM SCIO QUOD NIHIL SCIO.
INTRODUCTION.
The "Antiquity of Man" was published in 1863, and ran into a third
edition in the course of that year. The cause of this is not far to
seek. Darwin's "Origin of Species" appeared in 1859, only four years
earlier, and rapidly had its effect in drawing attention to the great
problem of the origin of living beings. The theories of Darwin and
Wallace brought to a head and presented in a concrete shape the somewhat
vague speculations as to development and evolution which had long been
floating in the minds of naturalists. In the actual working out of
Darwin's great theory it is impossible to overestimate the influence of
Lyell. This is made abundantly clear in Darwin's letters, and it must
never be forgotten that Darwin himself was a geologist. His training
in this science enabled him to grasp the import of the facts so ably
marshalled by Lyell in the "Principles of Geology," a work which,
as Professor Judd has clearly shown,* contributed greatly to the
advancement of evolutionary theory in general. (* Judd "The Coming of
Evolution" ("Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature") Cambridge
1910 chapters 6 and 7.)
From a study of the evolution of plants and of the lower animals it was
an easy and obvious transition to man, and this step was soon taken.
Since in his physical structure man shows so close a resemblance to the
higher animals it was a natural conclusion that the laws governing
the development of the one should apply also to the other, in spite of
preconceived opinions derived from authority. Unfortunately the times
were then hardly ripe for a calm and logical treatment of this question:
prejudice in many cases took the place of argument, and the result was
too often an undignified squabble instead of a scientific discussion.
However, the dogmatism was not by any means all on one side. The
disciples as usual went farther than the master, and their teaching
when pushed to extremities resulted in a peculiarly dreary kind of
materialism, a mental attitude which still survives to a certain extent
among scientific and pseudo-scientific men of the old school. In more
Recent times this dogmatic agnosticism of the middle Victorian period
has been gradually replaced by speculations of a more positive type,
such as those of the Mendelian school in biology and the doctrines of
Bergson on the philosophical side. With these later developments we are
not here concerned.
In dealing with the evolution and history of man as with that of any
other animal, the first step is undoubtedly to collect the facts, and
this is precisely what Lyell set out to do in the "Antiquity of
Man." The first nineteen chapters of the book are purely an empirical
statement of the evidence then available as to the existence of man in
pre-historic times: the rest of the book is devoted to a consideration
of the connection between the facts previously stated and Darwin's
theory of the origin of species by variation and natural selection. The
keynote of Lyell's work, throughout his life, was observation. Lyell was
no cabinet geologist; he went to nature and studied phenomena at first
hand. Possessed of abundant leisure and ample means he travelled far and
wide, patiently collecting material and building up the modern science
of physical geology, whose foundations had been laid by Hutton and
Playfair. From the facts thus collected he drew his inferences, and if
later researches showed these inferences to be wrong, unlike some of his
contemporaries, he never hesitated to say so. Thus and thus only is true
progress in science attained.
Lyell is universally recognised as the leader of the Uniformitarian
school of geologists, and it will be well to consider briefly what is
implied in this term. The principles of Uniformitarianism may be
summed up thus: THE PRESENT IS THE KEY TO THE PAST. That is to say,
the processes which have gone on in the past were the same in general
character as those now seen in operation, though probably differing
in degree. This theory is in direct opposition to the ideas of the
CATASTROPHIC school, which were dominant at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. The catastrophists attributed all past changes to
sudden and violent convulsions of nature, by which all living beings
were destroyed, to be replaced by a fresh creation. At least such were
the tenets of the extremists. In opposition to these views the school of
Hutton and Lyell introduced the principle of continuity and development.
There is no discrepancy between Uniformitarianism and evolution. The
idea of Uniformitarianism does not imply that things have always been
the same; only that they were similar, and between these two terms there
is a wide distinction. Evolution of any kind whatever naturally implies
continuity, and this is the fundamental idea of Lyellian geology.
In spite, however, of this clear and definite conception of natural
and organic evolution, in all those parts of his works dealing with
earth-history, with the stratified rocks and with the organisms entombed
in them, Lyell adopted a plan which has now been universally abandoned.
He began with the most Recent formations and worked backwards from the
known to the unknown. To modern readers this is perhaps the greatest
drawback to his work, since it renders difficult the study of events in
their actual sequence. However, it must be admitted that, taking into
account the state of geological knowledge before his time, this course
was almost inevitable. The succession of the later rocks was fairly well
known, thanks to the labours of William Smith and others, but in the
lower part of the sequence of stratified rocks there were many gaps, and
more important still, there was no definite base. Although this want of
a starting point has been largely supplied by the labours of Sedgwick,
Murchison, De la Beche, Ramsay, and a host of followers, still
considerable doubt prevails as to which constitutes the oldest
truly stratified series, and the difficulty has only been partially
circumvented by the adoption of an arbitrary base-line, from which the
succession is worked out both upwards and downwards. So the problem
is only removed a stage further back. In the study of human origins a
similar difficulty is felt with special acuteness; the beginnings must
of necessity be vague and uncertain, and the farther back we go the
fainter will naturally be the traces of human handiwork and the more
primitive and doubtful those traces when discovered.
The reprinting of the "Antiquity of Man" is particularly appropriate at
the present time, owing to the increased attention drawn to the subject
by recent discoveries. Ever since the publication of the "Origin of
Species" and the discussions that resulted from that publication, the
popular imagination has been much exercised by the possible existence
of forms intermediate between the apes and man; the so-called "Missing
Link." Much has been written on this subject, some of it well-founded
and some very much the reverse. The discovery of the Neanderthal skull
is fully described in this volume, and this skull is certainly of a low
type, but it is more human than ape-like. The same remark applies
still more strongly to the Engis skull, the man of Spy, the recently
discovered Sussex skull, and other well-known examples of early human
remains. The Pithecanthropus of Java alone shows perhaps more affinity
to the apes. The whole subject has been most ably discussed by Professor
Sollas in his recent book entitled "Ancient Hunters."
The study of Palaeolithic flint implements has been raised to a fine
art. Both in England and France a regular succession of primitive types
has been established and correlated with the gravel terraces of existing
rivers, and even with the deposits of rivers no longer existing and
with certain glacial deposits. But with all of these the actual bodily
remains of man are comparatively scanty. From this it may be concluded
that primitive methods of burial were such as to be unfavourable to the
actual preservation of human remains. Attempts have also been made to
prove the existence of man in pre-glacial times, but hitherto none of
these have met with general acceptance, since in no case is the evidence
beyond doubt.
One of the most important results of recent research in the subject has
been the establishment of the existence of man in interglacial times.
When Lyell wrote, it was not fully recognised that the glaciation of
Europe was not one continuous process, but that it could be divided into
several episodes, glaciations, or advances of the ice, separated by
a warm interglacial period. The monumental researches of Penck and
Bruckner in the Alps have there established four glaciations with mild
interglacial periods, but all of these cannot be clearly traced in
Britain. One very important point also is the recognition of the
affinities of certain types of Palaeolithic man to the Eskimo, the
Australians, and the Bushmen of South Africa. However, it is impossible
to give here a review of the whole subject. Full details of recent
researches will be found in the works mentioned in the notes at the end
of the book.
Another point of great interest and importance, arising directly from
the study of early man is the nature of the events constituting the
glacial period in Britain and elsewhere. This has been for many years a
fertile subject of controversy, and is likely to continue such. Lyell,
in common with most of the geologists of his day, assumes that during
the glacial period the British Isles were submerged under the sea to a
depth of many hundreds of feet, at any rate as regards the region
north of a line drawn from London to Bristol. Later authors, however,
explained the observed phenomena on the hypothesis of a vast ice-sheet
of the Greenland type, descending from the mountains of Scotland
and Scandinavia, filling up the North Sea and spreading over eastern
England. This explanation is now accepted by the majority, but it must
be recognised that it involves enormous mechanical difficulties. It is
impossible to pursue the subject here; for a full discussion reference
may be made to Professor Bonney's presidential address to the British
Association at Sheffield in 1910.
It will be seen, therefore, that the "Antiquity of Man" opens up a wide
field of speculation into a variety of difficult and obscure though
interesting subjects. In the light of modern research it would be an
easy task to pile up a mountain of criticism on points of detail. But,
though easy, it would be a thankless task. It is scarcely too much to
say that the dominant impression of most readers after perusing this
book will be one of astonishment and admiration at the insight and
breadth of view displayed by the author. When it was written the subject
was a particularly thorny one to handle, and it undoubtedly required
much courage to tackle the origin and development of the human race from
a purely critical and scientific standpoint. It must be admitted on all
hands that the result was eminently successful, taking into account the
paucity of the available material, and the "Antiquity of Man" must ever
remain one of the classics of prehistoric archaeology.
This edition of the "Antiquity of Man" has been undertaken in order to
place before the public in an easily accessible form one of the best
known works of the great geologist Sir Charles Lyell; the book had an
immense influence in its own day, and it still remains one of the best
general accounts of an increasingly important branch of knowledge.
In order to avoid a multiplicity of notes and thus to save space, the
nomenclature has been to a certain extent modernised: a new general
table of strata has been inserted in the first chapter, in place of the
one originally there printed, which was cumbrous and included many minor
subdivisions of unnecessary minuteness.
The notes have been kept as short as possible, and they frequently
contain little more than references to recent literature elucidating the
points under discussion in the text.
R.H. RASTALL.
1914.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The passage of the Beresina (in verse), 1815.
Principles of Geology, being an attempt to explain the former
changes of the earth's surface, by reference to causes now in
operation, 1830-33
(third edition, 1834;
fourth, 1835;
fifth, 1837;
sixth, 1840;
seventh, 1847;
ninth, entirely revised edition, 1853;
tenth, entirely revised edition, 1867, 1868;
eleventh, entirely revised edition, 1872;
twelfth, edited by L. Lyell, 1875).
Elements of Geology, 1838
(second edition, 1841).
A Manual of Elementary Geology
(third and entirely revised edition of the former work, 1851;
fourth and entirely revised edition, 1852;
fifth, enlarged edition, 1855;
Supplement to the fifth edition, 1857;
second edition of the Supplement, revised, 1857).
Elements of Geology,
sixth edition, greatly enlarged, 1865.
Travels in North America, with geological observations
on the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia, 1845.
A Second Visit to the United States of North America, 1849.
The Students' Elements of Geology, 1871
(second edition, revised and corrected, 1874;
third, revised, with a table of British fossils
[by R. Etheridge], 1878;
fourth, revised by P.M. Duncan, with a table of British fossils
[by R. Etheridge], 1884).
The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man,
with remarks on theories of the origin of species
by variation, 1863;
(second edition, revised, 1863;
third edition, revised, 1863;
fourth edition, revised, 1873).
There has also been published The Student's Lyell: a Manual of
Elementary Geology, edited by J.W. Judd, 1896 (second edition
revised and enlarged, 1911).
LECTURES, ADDRESSES, AND ARTICLES:
On a Recent Formation of Freshwater Limestone in Forfarshire
("Transactions of the Geological Society" 2nd series, volume 2,
1826, part 1).
On a Dike of Serpentine in the County of Forfar ("Edinburgh Journal
of Science" 1825).
English Scientific Societies ("Quarterly Review" volume 34; three
papers with Sir Roderick and Mrs. Murchison; "Edinburgh
Philosophical Journal," 1829; abstract in "Proceedings of the
Geological Society" 1; "Annales des Sciences Naturelles" 1829;
abstract in "Proceedings of the Geological Society" 1).
Address delivered at the Geological Society of London, 1836.
Lectures on Geology--Eight Lectures on Geology, delivered at the
Broadway Tabernacle, New York ("New York Tribune" 1842).
A Paper on Madeira ("Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society"
10, 1853).
On the Structure of Lavas which have Consolidated on Steep Slopes
("Philosophical Transactions" 1858).
Address (to the British Association) 1864.
TRANSLATIONS:
Antiquity of Man, translated into French by M. Chaper, 1864; and
into German by L. Buchner, 1874.
Elements of Geology (sixth edition), translated into French by M.
J. Gineston, 1867.
Report, extracted from the "Aberdeen Free Press" and translated
into French, of Sir C. Lyell's address before the British
Association, 1859, under the title of Antiquities antediluviennes:
L'homme fossile.
LIFE:
Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, edited by his
sister-in-law, Mrs. Lyell, 1881.
See also:
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 1887.
Life and Letters of Sedgwick, by Clark and Hughes, 1890.
LIST OF CONTENTS.
CHAP. 1.
INTRODUCTORY.
Preliminary Remarks on the Subjects treated of in this Work.
Definition of the terms Recent and Pleistocene.
Tabular View of the entire Series of Fossiliferous Strata.
CHAP. 2.
RECENT PERIOD--DANISH PEAT AND SHELL MOUNDS--
SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS.
Works of Art in Danish Peat-Mosses.
Remains of three Periods of Vegetation in the Peat.
Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron.
Shell-Mounds or ancient Refuse-Heaps of the Danish Islands.
Change in geographical Distribution of Marine Mollusca
since their Origin.
Embedded Remains of Mammalia of Recent Species.
Human Skulls of the same Period.
Swiss Lake-Dwellings built on Piles.
Stone and Bronze Implements found in them.
Fossil Cereals and other Plants.
Remains of Mammalia, wild and domesticated.
No extinct Species.
Chronological Computations of the Date of the Bronze and Stone
Periods in Switzerland.
Lake-Dwellings, or artificial Islands called "Crannoges,"
in Ireland.
CHAP. 3.
FOSSIL HUMAN REMAINS AND WORKS OF ART OF
THE RECENT PERIOD--continued.
Delta and Alluvial Plain of the Nile.
Burnt Bricks in Egypt before the Roman Era.
Borings in 1851-54.
Ancient Mounds of the Valley of the Ohio.
Their Antiquity.
Sepulchral Mound at Santos in Brazil.
Delta of the Mississippi.
Ancient Human Remains in Coral Reefs of Florida.
Changes in Physical Geography in the Human Period.
Buried Canoes in Marine Strata near Glasgow.
Upheaval since the Roman Occupation of the Shores of the
Firth of Forth.
Fossil Whales near Stirling.
Upraised Marine Strata of Sweden on Shores of the Baltic
and the Ocean.
Attempts to compute their Age.
CHAP. 4.
PLEISTOCENE PERIOD--BONES OF MAN AND EXTINCT MAMMALIA
IN BELGIAN CAVERNS.
Earliest Discoveries in Caves of Languedoc of Human Remains
with Bones of extinct Mammalia.
Researches in 1833 of Dr. Schmerling in the Liege Caverns.
Scattered Portions of Human Skeletons associated with Bones
of Elephant and Rhinoceros.
Distribution and probable Mode of Introduction of the Bones.
Implements of Flint and Bone.
Schmerling's Conclusions as to the Antiquity of Man ignored.
Present State of the Belgian Caves.
Human Bones recently found in Cave of Engihoul.
Engulfed Rivers.
Stalagmitic Crust.
Antiquity of the Human Remains in Belgium how proved.
CHAP. 5.
PLEISTOCENE PERIOD--FOSSIL HUMAN SKULLS OF THE
NEANDERTHAL AND ENGIS CAVES.
Human Skeleton found in Cave near Dusseldorf.
Its geological Position and probable Age.
Its abnormal and ape-like Characters.
Fossil Human Skull of the Engis Cave near Liege.
Professor Huxley's Description of these Skulls.
Comparison of each, with extreme Varieties of the native
Australian Race.
Range of Capacity in the Human and Simian Brains.
Skull from Borreby in Denmark.
Conclusions of Professor Huxley.
Bearing of the peculiar Characters of the Neanderthal Skull
on the Hypothesis of Transmutation.
CHAP. 6.
PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM AND CAVE DEPOSITS WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS.
General Position of Drift with extinct Mammalia in Valleys.
Discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes at Abbeville.
Flint Implements found also at St. Acheul, near Amiens.
Curiosity awakened by the systematic Exploration of the
Brixham Cave.
Flint Knives in same, with Bones of extinct Mammalia.
Superposition of Deposits in the Cave.
Visits of English and French Geologists to Abbeville and Amiens.
CHAP. 7.
PEAT AND PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM OF THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME.
Geological Structure of the Valley of the Somme and of the
surrounding Country.
Position of Alluvium of different Ages.
Peat near Abbeville.
Its animal and vegetable Contents.
Works of Art in Peat.
Probable Antiquity of the Peat, and Changes of Level
since its Growth began.
Flint Implements of antique Type in older Alluvium.
Their various Forms and great Numbers.
CHAP. 8.
PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS OF THE VALLEY
OF THE SOMME--concluded.
Fluvio-marine Strata, with Flint Implements, near Abbeville.
Marine Shells in same.
Cyrena fluminalis.
Mammalia.
Entire Skeleton of Rhinoceros.
Flint Implements, why found low down in Fluviatile Deposits.
Rivers shifting their Channels.
Relative Ages of higher and lower-level Gravels.
Section of Alluvium of St. Acheul.
Two Species of Elephant and Hippopotamus coexisting with Man
in France.
Volume of Drift, proving Antiquity of Flint Implements.
Absence of Human Bones in tool-bearing Alluvium, how explained.
Value of certain Kinds of negative Evidence tested thereby.
Human Bones not found in drained Lake of Haarlem.
CHAP. 9.
WORKS OF ART IN PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND.
Flint Implements in ancient Alluvium of the Basin of the Seine.
Bones of Man and of extinct Mammalia in the Cave of Arcy.
Extinct Mammalia in the Valley of the Oise.
Flint Implement in Gravel of same Valley.
Works of Art in Pleistocene Drift in Valley of the Thames.
Musk Ox.
Meeting of northern and southern Fauna.
Migrations of Quadrupeds.
Mammals of Mongolia.
Chronological Relation of the older Alluvium of the Thames
to the Glacial Drift.
Flint Implements of Pleistocene Period in Surrey, Middlesex,
Kent, Bedfordshire, and Suffolk.
CHAP. 10.
CAVERN DEPOSITS, AND PLACES OF SEPULTURE OF THE PLEISTOCENE PERIOD.
Flint Implements in Cave containing Hyaena and other extinct
Mammalia in Somersetshire.
Caves of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales.
Rhinoceros hemitoechus.
Ossiferous Caves near Palermo.
Sicily once part of Africa.
Rise of Bed of the Mediterranean to the Height of three hundred
Feet in the Human Period in Sardinia.
Burial-place of Pleistocene Date of Aurignac in the South of France.
Rhinoceros tichorhinus eaten by Man.
M. Lartet on extinct Mammalia and Works of Art found in the
Aurignac Cave.
Relative Antiquity of the same considered.
CHAP. 11.
AGE OF HUMAN FOSSILS OF LE PUY IN CENTRAL FRANCE
AND OF NATCHEZ ON THE MISSISSIPPI DISCUSSED.
Question as to the Authenticity of the Fossil Man of Denise,
near Le Puy-en-Velay, considered.
Antiquity of the Human Race implied by that Fossil.
Successive Periods of Volcanic Action in Central France.
With what Changes in the Mammalian Fauna they correspond.
The Elephas meridionalis anterior in Time to the Implement-bearing
Gravel of St. Acheul.
Authenticity of the Human Fossil of Natchez on the Mississippi
discussed.
The Natchez Deposit, containing Bones of Mastodon and Megalonyx,
probably not older than the Flint Implements of St. Acheul.
CHAP. 12.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN RELATIVELY TO THE GLACIAL PERIOD
AND TO THE EXISTING FAUNA AND FLORA.
Chronological Relation of the Glacial Period, and the earliest
known Signs of Man's Appearance in Europe.
Series of Tertiary Deposits in Norfolk and Suffolk immediately
antecedent to the Glacial Period.
Gradual Refrigeration of Climate proved by the Marine Shells
of successive Groups.
Marine Newer Pliocene Shells of Northern Character near Woodbridge.
Section of the Norfolk Cliffs.
Norwich Crag.
Forest Bed and Fluvio-marine Strata.
Fossil Plants and Mammalia of the same.
Overlying Boulder Clay and Contorted Drift.
Newer freshwater Formation of Mundesley compared to that of Hoxne.
Great Oscillations of Level implied by the Series of Strata
in the Norfolk Cliffs.
Earliest known Date of Man long subsequent to the existing
Fauna and Flora.
CHAP. 13.
CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD
AND THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE.
Chronological Relations of the Close of the Glacial Period
and the earliest geological Signs of the Appearance of Man.
Effects of Glaciers and Icebergs in polishing and scoring Rocks.
Scandinavia once encrusted with Ice like Greenland.
Outward Movement of Continental Ice in Greenland.
Mild Climate of Greenland in the Miocene Period.
Erratics of Recent Period in Sweden.
Glacial State of Sweden in the Pleistocene Period.
Scotland formerly encrusted with Ice.
Its subsequent Submergence and Re-elevation.
Latest Changes produced by Glaciers in Scotland.
Remains of the Mammoth and Reindeer in Scotch Boulder Clay.
Parallel Roads of Glen Roy formed in Glacier Lakes.
Comparatively modern Date of these Shelves.
CHAP. 14.
CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD
AND THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE--continued.
Signs of extinct Glaciers in Wales.
Great Submergence of Wales during the Glacial Period
proved by Marine Shells.
Still greater Depression inferred from Stratified Drift.
Scarcity of Organic Remains in Glacial Formations.
Signs of extinct Glaciers in England.
Ice Action in Ireland.
Maps illustrating successive Revolutions in Physical Geography
during the Pleistocene Period.
Southernmost Extent of Erratics in England.
Successive Periods of Junction and Separation of England, Ireland,
and the Continent.
Time required for these Changes.
Probable Causes of the Upheaval and Subsidence of the Earth's Crust.
Antiquity of Man considered in relation to the Age of the existing
Fauna and Flora.
CHAP. 15.
EXTINCT GLACIERS OF THE ALPS AND THEIR CHRONOLOGICAL RELATION
TO THE HUMAN PERIOD.
Extinct Glaciers of Switzerland.
Alpine Erratic Blocks on the Jura.
Not transported by floating Ice.
Extinct Glaciers of the Italian Side of the Alps.
Theory of the Origin of Lake-Basins by the erosive Action
of Glaciers considered.
Successive phases in the Development of Glacial Action in the Alps.
Probable Relation of these to the earliest known Date of Man.
Correspondence of the same with successive Changes in the
Glacial Condition of the Scandinavian and British Mountains.
Cold Period in Sicily and Syria.
CHAP. 16.
HUMAN REMAINS IN THE LOESS, AND THEIR PROBABLE AGE.
Nature, Origin, and Age of the Loess of the Rhine and Danube.
Impalpable Mud produced by the Grinding Action of Glaciers.
Dispersion of this Mud at the Period of the Retreat of the
great Alpine Glaciers.
Continuity of the Loess from Switzerland to the Low Countries.
Characteristic Organic Remains not Lacustrine.
Alpine Gravel in the Valley of the Rhine covered by Loess.
Geographical Distribution of the Loess and its Height above the Sea.
Fossil Mammalia.
Loess of the Danube.
Oscillations in the Level of the Alps and lower Country required
to explain the Formation and Denudation of the Loess.
More rapid Movement of the Inland Country.
The same Depression and Upheaval might account for the
Advance and Retreat of the Alpine Glaciers.
Himalayan Mud of the Plains of the Ganges compared to
European Loess.
Human Remains in Loess near Maestricht, and their probable
Antiquity.
CHAP. 17.
POST-GLACIAL DISLOCATIONS AND FOLDINGS OF CRETACEOUS AND
DRIFT STRATA IN THE ISLAND OF MOEN, IN DENMARK.
Geological Structure of the Island of Moen.
Great Disturbances of the Chalk posterior in Date to the
Glacial Drift, with Recent Shells.
M. Puggaard's Sections of the Cliffs of Moen.
Flexures and Faults common to the Chalk and Glacial Drift.
Different Direction of the Lines of successive Movement,
Fracture, and Flexure.
Undisturbed Condition of the Rocks in the adjoining Danish Islands.
Unequal Movements of Upheaval in Finmark.
Earthquake of New Zealand in 1855.
Predominance in all Ages of uniform Continental Movements
over those by which the Rocks are locally convulsed.
CHAP. 18.
THE GLACIAL PERIOD IN NORTH AMERICA.
Post-glacial Strata containing Remains of Mastodon giganteus
in North America.
Scarcity of Marine Shells in Glacial Drift of Canada and the
United States.
Greater southern Extension of Ice-action in North America than
in Europe.
Trains of Erratic Blocks of vast Size in Berkshire, Massachusetts.
Description of their Linear Arrangement and Points of Departure.
Their Transportation referred to Floating and Coast Ice.
General Remarks on the Causes of former Changes of Climate
at successive geological Epochs.
Supposed Effects of the Diversion of the Gulf Stream in a
Northerly instead of North-Easterly Direction.
Development of extreme Cold on the opposite Sides of the Atlantic
in the Glacial period not strictly simultaneous.
Effect of Marine Currents on Climate.
Pleistocene Submergence of the Sahara.
CHAP. 19.
RECAPITULATION OF GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY.
Recapitulation of Results arrived at in the earlier Chapters.
Ages of Stone and Bronze.
Danish Peat and Kitchen-Middens.
Swiss Lake-Dwellings.
Local Changes in Vegetation and in the wild and domesticated
Animals and in Physical Geography coeval with the Age of
Bronze and the later Stone Period.
Estimates of the positive Date of some Deposits of the later
Stone Period.
Ancient Division of the Age of Stone of St. Acheul and Aurignac.
Migrations of Man in that Period from the Continent to England
in Post-Glacial Times.
Slow Rate of Progress in barbarous Ages.
Doctrine of the superior Intelligence and Endowments of the
original Stock of Mankind considered.
Opinions of the Greeks and Romans, and their Coincidence with
those of the Modern Progressionist.
CHAP. 20.
THEORIES OF PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION.
Antiquity and Persistence in Character of the existing Races
of Mankind.
Theory of their Unity of Origin considered.
Bearing of the Diversity of Races on the Doctrine of Transmutation.
Difficulty of defining the Terms "Species" and "Race."
Lamarck's Introduction of the Element of Time into the Definition
of a Species.
His Theory of Variation and Progression.
Objections to his Theory, how far answered.
Arguments of modern Writers in favour of Progression in the
Animal and Vegetable World.
The old Landmarks supposed to indicate the first Appearance of Man,
and of different Classes of Animals, found to be erroneous.
Yet the Theory of an advancing Series of Organic Beings not
inconsistent with Facts.
Earliest known Fossil Mammalia of low Grade.
No Vertebrata as yet discovered in the oldest Fossiliferous Rocks.
Objections to the Theory of Progression considered.
Causes of the Popularity of the Doctrine of Progression as
compared to that of Transmutation.
CHAP. 21.
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY VARIATION AND NATURAL SELECTION.
Mr. Darwin's Theory of the Origin of Species by Natural Selection.
Memoir by Mr. Wallace.
Manner in which favoured Races prevail in the Struggle for
Existence.
Formation of new Races by breeding.
Hypotheses of definite and indefinite Modifiability equally
arbitrary.
Competition and Extinction of Races.
Progression not a necessary Accompaniment of Variation.
Distinct Classes of Phenomena which Natural Selection explains.
Unity of Type, Rudimentary Organs, Geographical Distribution,
Relation of the extinct to the living Fauna and Flora,
and mutual Relations of successive Groups of Fossil Forms.
Light thrown on Embryological Development by Natural Selection.
Why large Genera have more variable Species than small ones.
Dr. Hooker on the Evidence afforded by the Vegetable Kingdom
in favour of Creation by Variation.
Steenstrup on alternation of Generations.
How far the Doctrine of Independent Creation is opposed to the
Laws now governing the Migration of Species.
CHAP. 22.
OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION CONSIDERED.
Statement of Objections to the Hypothesis of Transmutation
founded on the Absence of Intermediate Forms.
Genera of which the Species are closely allied.
Occasional Discovery of the missing Links in a Fossil State.
Davidson's Monograph on the Brachiopoda.
Why the Gradational Forms, when found, are not accepted as
Evidence of Transmutation.
Gaps caused by Extinction of Races and Species.
Vast Tertiary Periods during which this Extinction has been going
on in the Fauna and Flora now existing.
Genealogical Bond between Miocene and Recent Plants and Insects.
Fossils of Oeningen.
Species of Insects in Britain and North America represented by
distinct Varieties.
Falconer's Monograph on living and fossil Elephants.
Fossil Species and Genera of the Horse Tribe in North and
South America.
Relation of the Pliocene Mammalia of North America, Asia,
and Europe.
Species of Mammalia, though less persistent than the Mollusca,
change slowly.
Arguments for and against Transmutation derived from the
Absence of Mammalia in Islands.
Imperfection of the Geological Record.
Intercalation of newly discovered Formation of intermediate Age
in the chronological Series.
Reference of the St. Cassian Beds to the Triassic Periods.
Discovery of new organic Types.
Feathered Archaeopteryx of the Oolite.
CHAP. 23.
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGES AND SPECIES COMPARED.
Aryan Hypothesis and Controversy.
The Races of Mankind change more slowly than their Languages.
Theory of the gradual Origin of Languages.
Difficulty of defining what is meant by a Language as distinct
from a Dialect.
Great Number of extinct and living Tongues.
No European Language a Thousand Years old.
Gaps between Languages, how caused.
Imperfection of the Record.
Changes always in Progress.
Struggle for Existence between rival Terms and Dialects.
Causes of Selection.
Each Language formed slowly in a single Geographical Area.
May die out gradually or suddenly.
Once lost can never be revived.
Mode of Origin of Languages and Species a Mystery.
Speculations as to the Number of original Languages or
Species unprofitable.
CHAP. 24.
BEARING OF THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMUTATION ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN,
AND HIS PLACE IN THE CREATION.
Whether Man can be regarded as an Exception to the Rule if the
Doctrine of Transmutation be embraced for the rest of the
Animal Kingdom.
Zoological Relations of Man to other Mammalia.
Systems of Classification.
Term Quadrumanous, why deceptive.
Whether the Structure of the Human Brain entitles Man to form
a distinct Sub-class of the Mammalia.
Intelligence of the lower Animals compared to the Intellect and
Reason of Man.
Grounds on which Man has been referred to a distinct Kingdom
of Nature.
Immaterial Principle common to Man and Animals.
Non-discovery of intermediate Links among Fossil Anthropomorphous
Species.
Hallam on the compound Nature of Man, and his Place in the Creation.
Great Inequality of mental Endowment in different Human Races and
Individuals developed by Variation and ordinary Generation.
How far a corresponding Divergence in physical Structure may
result from the Working of the same Causes.
Concluding remarks.
NOTES.
PLATES AND FIGURES.
PLATE 1. A VILLAGE BUILT ON PILES IN A SWISS LAKE.
FIGURE 1. SECTION OF THE NEANDERTHAL CAVE.
FIGURE 2. SIDE VIEW OF THE CAST OF PART OF A HUMAN SKULL FOUND BY DR.
SCHMERLING EMBEDDED AMONGST THE REMAINS OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN THE CAVE
OF ENGIS.
FIGURE 3. SIDE VIEW OF THE CAST OF A PART OF A HUMAN SKULL FROM A CAVE
IN THE NEANDERTHAL.
FIGURE 4. OUTLINE OF THE SKULL OF AN ADULT CHIMPANZEE, OF THAT FROM THE
NEANDERTHAL, AND OF THAT OF A EUROPEAN.
FIGURE 5. SKULL ASSOCIATED WITH GROUND FLINT IMPLEMENTS.
FIGURE 6. OUTLINES OF THE SKULL FROM THE NEANDERTHAL, OF AN AUSTRALIAN
SKULL FROM PORT ADELAIDE, AND OF THE SKULL FROM THE CAVE OF ENGIS.
FIGURE 7. SECTION ACROSS THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME IN PICARDY.
FIGURE 8. FLINT IMPLEMENT FROM ST. ACHEUL, NEAR AMIENS, OF THE
SPEAR-HEAD SHAPE.
FIGURE 9. OVAL-SHAPED FLINT HATCHET FROM MAUTORT.
FIGURE 10. FLINT TOOL FROM ST. ACHEUL.
FIGURES 11, 12 AND 13. DENDRITES ON SURFACES OF FLINT HATCHETS IN THE
DRIFT OF ST. ACHEUL.
FIGURE 14. FLINT KNIFE OR FLAKE FROM BELOW THE SAND CONTAINING Cyrena
fluminalis.
FIGURE 15. FOSSILS OF THE WHITE CHALK.
FIGURE 16. SECTION OF FLUVIO-MARINE STRATA, CONTAINING FLINT IMPLEMENTS
AND BONES OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA.
FIGURE 17. Cyrena fluminalis, O.F. Muller, sp.
FIGURE 18. Elephas primigenius.
FIGURE 19. Elephas antiquus, Falconer.
FIGURE 20. Elephas meridionalis, Nesti.
FIGURE 21. SECTION OF GRAVEL PIT CONTAINING FLINT IMPLEMENTS AT ST.
ACHEUL.
FIGURE 22. CONTORTED FLUVIATILE STRATA AT ST. ACHEUL.
FIGURE 23. SECTION ACROSS THE VALLEY OF THE OUSE.
FIGURE 24. SECTION SHOWING THE POSITION OF THE FLINT WEAPONS AT HOXNE.
FIGURE 25. SECTION OF PART OF THE HILL OF FAJOLES.
FIGURE 26. SECTION THROUGH THE ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
FIGURE 27. DIAGRAM TO ILLUSTRATE THE GENERAL SUCCESSION OF THE STRATA IN
THE NORFOLK CLIFFS.
FIGURE 28. Cyclas (Pisidium) amnica var.(?)
FIGURE 29. CLIFF 50 FEET HIGH BETWEEN BACTON GAP AND MUNDESLEY.
FIGURE 30. FOLDING OF THE STRATA BETWEEN EAST AND WEST RUNTON.
FIGURE 31. SECTION OF CONCENTRIC BEDS WEST OF CROMER.
FIGURE 32. INCLUDED PINNACLE OF CHALK AT OLD HYTHE POINT.
FIGURE 33. SECTION OF THE NEWER FRESH-WATER FORMATION IN THE CLIFFS AT
MUNDESLEY.
FIGURE 34. Paludina marginata, Michaud (P. minuta, Strickland). Hydrobia
marginata.
FIGURE 35. OVAL AND FLATTISH PEBBLES.
PLATE 2. VIEW OF THE MOUTHS OF GLEN ROY AND GLEN SPEAN.
FIGURE 36. MAP OF THE PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY.
FIGURE 37. SECTION THROUGH SIDE OF LOCH.
FIGURE 38. DOME-SHAPED ROCKS, OR "ROCHES MOUTONEES."
FIGURE 39. MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES AND PART OF THE NORTH-WEST OF
EUROPE, SHOWING THE GREAT AMOUNT OF SUPPOSED SUBMERGENCE
OF LAND BENEATH THE SEA DURING PART OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD.
FIGURE 40. MAP SHOWING WHAT PARTS OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS WOULD REMAIN
ABOVE WATER AFTER A SUBSIDENCE OF THE AREA TO THE EXTENT
OF 600 FEET.
FIGURE 41. MAP OF PART OF THE NORTH-WEST OF EUROPE, INCLUDING THE
BRITISH ISLES, SHOWING THE EXTENT OF SEA WHICH WOULD BECOME
LAND IF THERE WERE A GENERAL RISE OF THE AREA TO THE EXTENT OF
600 FEET.
FIGURE 42. MAP SHOWING THE SUPPOSED COURSE OF THE ANCIENT AND NOW
EXTINCT GLACIER OF THE RHONE.
FIGURE 43. MAP OF THE MORAINES OF EXTINCT GLACIERS EXTENDING FROM THE
ALPS INTO THE PLAINS OF THE PO NEAR TURIN.
FIGURE 44. Succinea oblonga.
FIGURE 45. Pupa muscorum.
FIGURE 46. Helix hispida, Lin.; H. plebeia, Drap.
FIGURE 47. SOUTHERN EXTREMITY OF MOENS KLINT.
FIGURE 48. SECTION OF MOENS KLINT.
FIGURE 49. POST-GLACIAL DISTURBANCES OF VERTICAL, FOLDED, AND SHIFTED
STRATA OF CHALK AND DRIFT, IN THE DRONNINGESTOL.
FIGURE 50. MAP SHOWING THE RELATIVE POSITION AND DIRECTION OF SEVEN
TRAINS OF ERRATIC BLOCKS IN BERKSHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS,
AND IN PART OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
FIGURE 51. ERRATIC DOME-SHAPED BLOCK OF COMPACT CHLORITIC ROCK.
FIGURE 52. SECTION SHOWING THE POSITION OF THE BLOCK IN FIGURE 51.
FIGURE 53. SECTION THROUGH CANAAN AND RICHMOND VALLEYS AT A TIME WHEN
THEY WERE MARINE CHANNELS.
FIGURE 54. UPPER SURFACE OF BRAIN OF CHIMPANZEE, DISTORTED.
FIGURE 55. SIDE VIEW OF BRAIN OF CHIMPANZEE, DISTORTED.
FIGURE 56. CORRECT SIDE VIEW OF CHIMPANZEE'S BRAIN.
FIGURE 57. CORRECT VIEW OF UPPER SURFACE OF CHIMPANZEE'S BRAIN.
FIGURE 58. SIDE VIEW OF HUMAN BRAIN.)
GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
CHAPTER 1. -- INTRODUCTORY.
Preliminary Remarks on the Subjects treated of in this Work.
Definition of the Terms Recent and Pleistocene.
Tabular View of the entire Series of Fossiliferous Strata.
No subject has lately excited more curiosity and general interest among
geologists and the public than the question of the Antiquity of the
Human Race--whether or no we have sufficient evidence in caves, or in
the superficial deposits commonly called drift or "diluvium," to prove
the former co-existence of man with certain extinct mammalia. For the
last half-century the occasional occurrence in various parts of Europe
of the bones of Man or the works of his hands in cave-breccias and
stalagmites, associated with the remains of the extinct hyaena, bear,
elephant, or rhinoceros, has given rise to a suspicion that the date of
Man must be carried farther back than we had heretofore imagined. On
the other hand extreme reluctance was naturally felt on the part of
scientific reasoners to admit the validity of such evidence, seeing that
so many caves have been inhabited by a succession of tenants and have
been selected by Man as a place not only of domicile, but of sepulture,
while some caves have also served as the channels through which the
waters of occasional land-floods or engulfed rivers have flowed, so that
the remains of living beings which have peopled the district at more
than one era may have subsequently been mingled in such caverns and
confounded together in one and the same deposit. But the facts brought
to light in 1858, during the systematic investigation of the Brixham
cave, near Torquay in Devonshire, which will be described in the sequel,
excited anew the curiosity of the British public and prepared the way
for a general admission that scepticism in regard to the bearing of cave
evidence in favour of the antiquity of Man had previously been pushed to
an extreme.
Since that period many of the facts formerly adduced in favour of the
co-existence in ancient times of Man with certain species of mammalia
long since extinct have been re-examined in England and on the
Continent, and new cases bearing on the same question, whether relating
to caves or to alluvial strata in valleys, have been brought to light.
To qualify myself for the appreciation and discussion of these cases,
I have visited in the course of the last three years many parts of
England, France, and Belgium, and have communicated personally or by
letter with not a few of the geologists, English and foreign, who have
taken part in these researches. Besides explaining in the present volume
the results of this inquiry, I shall give a description of the glacial
formations of Europe and North America, that I may allude to the
theories entertained respecting their origin, and consider their
probable relations in a chronological point of view to the human epoch,
and why throughout a great part of the northern hemisphere they so often
interpose an abrupt barrier to all attempts to trace farther back into
the past the signs of the existence of Man upon the earth.
In the concluding chapters I shall offer a few remarks on the recent
modifications of the Lamarckian theory of progressive development and
transmutation, which are suggested by Mr. Darwin's work on the "Origin
of Species by Variation and Natural Selection," and the bearing of this
hypothesis on the different races of mankind and their connection with
other parts of the animal kingdom.
NOMENCLATURE.
Some preliminary explanation of the nomenclature adopted in the
following pages will be indispensable, that the meaning attached to
the terms Recent, Pleistocene, and Post-Tertiary may be correctly
understood. [1]
Previously to the year 1833, when I published the third volume of the
"Principles of Geology," the strata called Tertiary had been divided
by geologists into Lower, Middle, and Upper; the Lower comprising the
oldest formations of the environs of Paris and London, with others of
like age; the Middle, those of Bordeaux and Touraine; and the Upper, all
that lay above or were newer than the last-mentioned group.
When engaged in 1828 in preparing for the press the treatise on geology
above alluded to, I conceived the idea of classing the whole of this
series of strata according to the different degrees of affinity
which their fossil testacea bore to the living fauna. Having obtained
information on this subject during my travels on the Continent, I learnt
that M. Deshayes of Paris, already celebrated as a conchologist, had
been led independently by the study of a large collection of Recent
and fossil shells to very similar views respecting the possibility of
arranging the Tertiary formations in chronological order, according to
the proportional number of species of shells identical with living ones,
which characterised each of the successive groups above mentioned. After
comparing 3000 fossil species with 5000 living ones, the result arrived
at was, that in the lower Tertiary strata there were about 3 1/2 per
cent identical with Recent; in the middle Tertiary (the faluns of the
Loire and Gironde), about 17 per cent; and in the upper tertiary, from
35 to 50, and sometimes in the most modern beds as much as 90 to 95 per
cent.
For the sake of clearness and brevity, I proposed to give short
technical names to these sets of strata, or the periods to which they
respectively belonged. I called the first or oldest of them Eocene, the
second Miocene, and the third Pliocene. The first of the above terms,
Eocene, is derived from Greek eos, dawn, and Greek kainos, recent;
because an extremely small proportion of the fossil shells of this
period could be referred to living species, so that this era seemed to
indicate the dawn of the present testaceous fauna, no living species of
shells having been detected in the antecedent or Secondary rocks.
Some conchologists are now unwilling to allow that any Eocene species of
shell has really survived to our times so unaltered as to allow of its
specific identification with a living species. I cannot enter in this
place into this wide controversy. It is enough at present to remark
that the character of the Eocene fauna, as contrasted with that of the
antecedent Secondary formations, wears a very modern aspect, and that
some able living conchologists still maintain that there are Eocene
shells not specifically distinguishable from those now extant; though
they may be fewer in number than was supposed in 1833.
The term Miocene (from Greek meion, less; and Greek kainos, recent) is
intended to express a minor proportion of Recent species (of testacea);
the term Pliocene (from Greek pleion, more; and Greek kainos, recent), a
comparative plurality of the same.
It has sometimes been objected to this nomenclature that certain species
of infusoria found in the chalk are still existing, and, on the other
hand, the Miocene and Older Pliocene deposits often contain the remains
of mammalia, reptiles, and fish, exclusively of extinct species. But the
reader must bear in mind that the terms Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene
were originally invented with reference purely to conchological data,
and in that sense have always been and are still used by me.
Since the first introduction of the terms above defined, the number of
new living species of shells obtained from different parts of the globe
has been exceedingly great, supplying fresh data for comparison, and
enabling the palaeontologist to correct many erroneous identifications
of fossil and Recent forms. New species also have been collected in
abundance from Tertiary formations of every age, while newly discovered
groups of strata have filled up gaps in the previously known
series. Hence modifications and reforms have been called for in the
classifications first proposed. The Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene
periods have been made to comprehend certain sets of strata of which the
fossils do not always conform strictly in the proportion of Recent to
extinct species with the definitions first given by me, or which are
implied in the etymology of those terms. These innovations have been
treated of in my "Elements or Manual of Elementary Geology," and in the
Supplement to the fifth edition of the same, published in 1859,
where some modifications of my classification, as first proposed, are
introduced; but I need not dwell on these on the present occasion, as
the only formations with which we shall be concerned in the present
volume are those of the most modern date, or the Post-Tertiary. It
will be convenient to divide these into two groups, the Recent and the
Pleistocene. In the Recent we may comprehend those deposits in which not
only all the shells but all the fossil mammalia are of living species;
in the Pleistocene those strata in which, the shells being Recent,
a portion, and often a considerable one, of the accompanying fossil
quadrupeds belongs to extinct species.
Cases will occur where it may be scarcely possible to draw the line of
demarcation between the Newer Pliocene and Pleistocene, or between the
latter and the recent deposits; and we must expect these difficulties to
increase rather than diminish with every advance in our knowledge, and
in proportion as gaps are filled up in the series of geological records.
The annexed tabular view (Table 1/1) of the whole series of
fossiliferous strata will enable the reader to see at a glance the
chronological relation of the Recent and Pleistocene to the antecedent
periods. [2]
TABLE 1/1. STRATIFIED ROCKS.
KAINOZOIC OR TERTIARY: Pleistocene and Recent. Pliocene.
Miocene.
Oligocene.
Eocene.
MESOZOIC OR SECONDARY: Cretaceous. Jurassic.
Triassic.
PALAEOZOIC OR PRIMARY: Permian. Carboniferous.
Devonian or old Red Sandstone.
Silurian.
Ordovician.
Cambrian.
PRECAMBRIAN OR ARCHAEAN.
CHAPTER 2. -- RECENT PERIOD--DANISH PEAT AND SHELL MOUNDS--SWISS
LAKE-DWELLINGS.
[Illustration: PLATE 1. A VILLAGE BUILT ON PILES IN A SWISS LAKE]
(Restored by Dr. F. Keller, partly from Dumont D'Urville's
Sketch of similar habitations in New Guinea.)
Works of Art in Danish Peat-Mosses.
Remains of three Periods of Vegetation in the Peat.
Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron.
Shell-Mounds or ancient Refuse-Heaps of the Danish Islands.
Change in geographical Distribution of Marine Mollusca
since their Origin.
Embedded Remains of Mammalia of Recent Species.
Human Skulls of the same Period.
Swiss Lake-Dwellings built on Piles.
Stone and Bronze Implements found in them.
Fossil Cereals and other Plants.
Remains of Mammalia, wild and domesticated.
No extinct Species.
Chronological Computations of the Date of the Bronze and
Stone Periods in Switzerland.
Lake-Dwellings, or artificial Islands called "Crannoges,"
in Ireland.
WORKS OF ART IN DANISH PEAT.
When treating in the "Principles of Geology" of the changes of the earth
which have taken place in comparatively modern times, I have spoken of
the embedding of organic bodies and human remains in peat, and explained
under what conditions the growth of that vegetable substance is going on
in northern and humid climates. Of late years, since I first alluded
to the subject, more extensive investigations have been made into the
history of the Danish peat-mosses. Of the results of these inquiries
I shall give a brief abstract in the present chapter, that we may
afterwards compare them with deposits of older date, which throw light
on the antiquity of the human race.
The deposits of peat in Denmark,* varying in depth from 10 to 30 feet,
have been formed in hollows or depressions in the northern drift or
boulder formation hereafter to be described. (* An excellent account of
these researches of Danish naturalists and antiquaries has been drawn
up by an able Swiss geologist, M.A. Morlot, and will be found in the
"Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci. Nat." tome 6 Lausanne 1860.)
The lowest stratum, 2 to 3 feet thick, consists of swamp-peat composed
chiefly of moss or sphagnum, above which lies another growth of peat,
not made up exclusively of aquatic or swamp plants. Around the borders
of the bogs, and at various depths in them, lie trunks of trees,
especially of the Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris), often 3 feet in
diameter, which must have grown on the margin of the peat-mosses, and
have frequently fallen into them. This tree is not now, nor has ever
been in historical times, a native of the Danish Islands, and when
introduced there has not thriven; yet it was evidently indigenous in the
human period, for Steenstrup has taken out with his own hands a flint
instrument from below a buried trunk of one of these pines. It appears
clear that the same Scotch fir was afterwards supplanted by the sessile
variety of the common oak, of which many prostrate trunks occur in the
peat at higher levels than the pines; and still higher the pedunculated
variety of the same oak (Quercus robur, L.) occurs with the alder, birch
(Betula verrucosa, Ehrh.), and hazel. The oak has now in its turn been
almost superseded in Denmark by the common beech. Other trees, such as
the white birch (Betula alba), characterise the lower part of the
bogs, and disappear from the higher; while others again, like the aspen
(Populus tremula), occur at all levels, and still flourish in Denmark.
All the land and freshwater shells, and all the mammalia as well as the
plants, whose remains occur buried in the Danish peat, are of Recent
species. [3]
It has been stated, that a stone implement was found under a buried
Scotch fir at a great depth in the peat. By collecting and studying a
vast variety of such implements, and other articles of human workmanship
preserved in peat and in sand-dunes on the coast, as also in certain
shell-mounds of the aborigines presently to be described, the Danish
and Swedish antiquaries and naturalists, MM. Nilsson, Steenstrup,
Forchhammer, Thomsen, Worsaae, and others, have succeeded in
establishing a chronological succession of periods, which they have
called the ages of stone, of bronze, and of iron, named from the
materials which have each in their turn served for the fabrication of
implements.
The age of stone in Denmark coincided with the period of the first
vegetation, or that of the Scotch fir, and in part at least with the
second vegetation, or that of the oak. But a considerable portion of the
oak epoch coincided with "the age of bronze," for swords and shields of
that metal, now in the Museum of Copenhagen, have been taken out of peat
in which oaks abound. The age of iron corresponded more nearly with that
of the beech tree.*
(* Morlot "Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci. Nat."
tome 6 page 292.) [4]
M. Morlot, to whom we are indebted for a masterly sketch of the recent
progress of this new line of research, followed up with so much success
in Scandinavia and Switzerland, observes that the introduction of the
first tools made of bronze among a people previously ignorant of the use
of metals, implies a great advance in the arts, for bronze is an alloy
of about nine parts of copper and one of tin; and although the former
metal, copper, is by no means rare, and is occasionally found pure or
in a native state, tin is not only scarce but never occurs native. To
detect the existence of this metal in its ore, then to disengage it
from the matrix, and finally, after blending it in due proportion with
copper, to cast the fused mixture in a mould, allowing time for it to
acquire hardness by slow cooling, all this bespeaks no small sagacity
and skilful manipulation. Accordingly, the pottery found associated with
weapons of bronze is of a more ornamental and tasteful style than any
which belongs to the age of stone. Some of the moulds in which the
bronze instruments were cast, and "tags," as they are called, of bronze,
which are formed in the hole through which the fused metal was poured,
have been found. The number and variety of objects belonging to the age
of bronze indicates its long duration, as does the progress in the arts
implied by the rudeness of the earlier tools, often mere repetitions
of those of the stone age, as contrasted with the more skilfully worked
weapons of a later stage of the same period.
It has been suggested that an age of copper must always have intervened
between that of stone and bronze; but if so, the interval seems to have
been short in Europe, owing apparently to the territory occupied by the
aboriginal inhabitants having been invaded and conquered by a people
coming from the East, to whom the use of swords, spears, and other
weapons of bronze was familiar. Hatchets, however, of copper have been
found in the Danish peat.
The next stage of improvement, or that manifested by the substitution of
iron for bronze, indicates another stride in the progress of the arts.
Iron never presents itself, except in meteorites, in a native state,
so that to recognise its ores, and then to separate the metal from its
matrix, demands no inconsiderable exercise of the powers of observation
and invention. To fuse the ore requires an intense heat, not to be
obtained without artificial appliances, such as pipes inflated by the
human breath, or bellows, or some other suitable machinery.
DANISH SHELL-MOUNDS, OR KJOKKENMODDING.*
(* Mr. John Lubbock published, after these sheets were
written, an able paper on the Danish "Shell-mounds" in the
October number of the "Natural History Review" 1861 page
489, in which he has described the results of a recent visit
to Denmark, made by him in company with Mr. Busk.)
In addition to the peat-mosses, another class of memorials found in
Denmark has thrown light on the pre-historical age. At certain points
along the shores of nearly all the Danish islands, mounds may be seen,
consisting chiefly of thousands of cast-away shells of the oyster,
cockle, and other molluscs of the same species as those which are now
eaten by Man. These shells are plentifully mixed up with the bones of
various quadrupeds, birds, and fish, which served as the food of the
rude hunters and fishers by whom the mounds were accumulated. I have
seen similar large heaps of oysters, and other marine shells with
interspersed stone implements, near the seashore, both in Massachusetts
and in Georgia, U.S.A., left by the native North American Indians at
points near to which they were in the habit of pitching their wigwams
for centuries before the white man arrived.
Such accumulations are called by the Danes, Kjokkenmodding, or
"kitchen-middens." Scattered all through them are flint knives,
hatchets, and other instruments of stone, horn, wood, and bone, with
fragments of coarse pottery, mixed with charcoal and cinders, but never
any implements of bronze, still less of iron. The stone hatchets and
knives had been sharpened by rubbing, and in this respect are one degree
less rude than those of an older date, associated in France with the
bones of extinct mammalia, of which more in the sequel. The mounds vary
in height from 3 to 10 feet, and in area are some of them 1000 feet
long, and from 150 to 200 wide. They are rarely placed more than 10
feet above the level of the sea, and are confined to its immediate
neighbourhood, or if not (and there are cases where they are several
miles from the shore), the distance is ascribable to the entrance of a
small stream, which has deposited sediment, or to the growth of a peaty
swamp, by which the land has been made to advance on the Baltic, as it
is still doing in many places, aided, according to Puggaard, by a very
slow upheaval of the whole country at the rate of 2 or 3 inches in a
century.
There is also another geographical fact equally in favour of the
antiquity of the mounds, namely, that they are wanting on those parts of
the coast which border the Western Ocean, or exactly where the waves are
now slowly eating away the land. There is every reason to presume that
originally there were stations along the coast of the North Sea as well
as that of the Baltic, but by the gradual undermining of the cliffs they
have all been swept away.
Another striking proof, perhaps the most conclusive of all, that the
"kitchen-middens" are very old, is derived from the character of their
embedded shells. These consist entirely of living species; but, in the
first place, the common eatable oyster is among them, attaining its
full size, whereas the same Ostrea edulis cannot live at present in the
brackish waters of the Baltic except near its entrance, where, whenever
a north-westerly gale prevails, a current setting in from the ocean
pours in a great body of salt water. Yet it seems that during the whole
time of the accumulation of the "kitchen-middens" the oyster flourished
in places from which it is now excluded. In like manner the eatable
cockle, mussel, and periwinkle (Cardium edule, Mytilus edulis, and
Littorina littorea), which are met with in great numbers in the
"middens," are of the ordinary dimensions which they acquire in the
ocean, whereas the same species now living in the adjoining parts of
the Baltic only attain a third of their natural size, being stunted and
dwarfed in their growth by the quantity of fresh water poured by rivers
into that inland sea.*
(* See "Principles of Geology" chapter 30.)
Hence we may confidently infer that in the days of the aboriginal
hunters and fishers, the ocean had freer access than now to the Baltic,
communicating probably through the peninsula of Jutland, Jutland having
been at no remote period an archipelago. Even in the course of the
nineteenth century, the salt waters have made one irruption into the
Baltic by the Lymfiord, although they have been now again excluded. It
is also affirmed that other channels were open in historical times which
are now silted up.*
(* See Morlot "Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci.
Nat." tome 6.)
If we next turn to the remains of vertebrata preserved in the mounds,
we find that here also, as in the Danish peat-mosses, all the quadrupeds
belong to species known to have inhabited Europe within the memory of
Man. No remains of the mammoth, or rhinoceros, or of any extinct
species appear, except those of the wild bull (Bos urus, Linn., or Bos
primigenius, Bojanus), which are in such numbers as to prove that the
species was a favourite food of the ancient people. But as this animal
was seen by Julius Caesar, and survived long after his time, its
presence alone would not go far to prove the mounds to be of high
antiquity. The Lithuanian aurochs or bison (Bos bison, L., Bos priscus,
Boj.), which has escaped extirpation only because protected by the
Russian Czars, surviving in one forest in Lithuania) has not yet been
met with, but will no doubt be detected hereafter, as it has been
already found in the Danish peat. The beaver, long since destroyed in
Denmark, occurs frequently, as does the seal (Phoca Gryppus, Fab.), now
very rare on the Danish coast. With these are mingled bones of the red
deer and roe, but the reindeer has not yet been found. There are also
the bones of many carnivora, such as the lynx, fox, and wolf, but no
signs of any domesticated animals except the dog. The long bones of the
larger mammalia have been all broken as if by some instrument, in such
a manner as to allow of the extraction of the marrow, and the gristly
parts have been gnawed off, as if by dogs, to whose agency is also
attributed the almost entire absence of the bones of young birds and of
the smaller bones and softer parts of the skeletons of birds in general,
even of those of large size. In reference to the latter, it has been
proved experimentally by Professor Steenstrup, that if the same species
of birds are now given to dogs, they will devour those parts of the
skeleton which are missing, and leave just those which are preserved in
the old "kitchen-middens."
The dogs of the mounds, the only domesticated animals, are of a smaller
race than those of the bronze period, as shown by the peat-mosses, and
the dogs of the bronze age are inferior in size and strength to those
of the iron age. The domestic ox, horse, and sheep, which are wanting
in the mounds, are confined to that part of the Danish peat which was
formed in the ages of bronze and iron.
Among the bones of birds, scarcely any are more frequent in the mounds
than those of the auk (Alca impennis), now extinct. The Capercailzie
(Tetrao urogallus) is also met with, and may, it is suggested, have fed
on the buds of the Scotch fir in times when that tree flourished around
the peat-bogs. The different stages of growth of the roedeer's horns,
and the presence of the wild swan, now only a winter visitor, have
been appealed to as proving that the aborigines resided in the same
settlements all the year round. That they also ventured out to sea in
canoes such as are now found in the peat-mosses, hollowed out of the
trunk of a single tree, to catch fish far from land, is testified by the
bony relics of several deep-sea species, such as the herring, cod, and
flounder. The ancient people were not cannibals, for no human bones
are mingled with the spoils of the chase. Skulls, however, have been
obtained not only from peat, but from tumuli of the stone period
believed to be contemporaneous with the mounds. These skulls are small
and round, and have a prominent ridge over the orbits of the eyes,
showing that the ancient race was of small stature, with round heads and
overhanging eyebrows--in short, they bore a considerable resemblance to
the modern Laplanders. The human skulls of the bronze age found in the
Danish peat, and those of the iron period, are of an elongated form and
larger size. There appear to be very few well-authenticated examples
of crania referable to the bronze period--a circumstance no doubt
attributable to the custom prevalent among the people of that era of
burning their dead and collecting their bones in funeral urns.
No traces of grain of any sort have hitherto been discovered, nor
any other indication that the ancient people had any knowledge of
agriculture. The only vegetable remains in the mounds are burnt pieces
of wood and some charred substance referred by Dr. Forchhammer to the
Zostera marina, a sea plant which was perhaps used in the production of
salt.
What may be the antiquity of the earliest human remains preserved in
the Danish peat cannot be estimated in centuries with any approach
to accuracy. In the first place, in going back to the bronze age, we
already find ourselves beyond the reach of history or even of tradition.
In the time of the Romans the Danish Isles were covered, as now, with
magnificent beech forests. Nowhere in the world does this tree flourish
more luxuriantly than in Denmark, and eighteen centuries seem to have
done little or nothing towards modifying the character of the forest
vegetation. Yet in the antecedent bronze period there were no beech
trees, or at most but a few stragglers, the country being then covered
with oak. In the age of stone again, the Scotch fir prevailed, and
already there were human inhabitants in those old pine forests. How many
generations of each species of tree flourished in succession before the
pine was supplanted by the oak, and the oak by the beech, can be but
vaguely conjectured, but the minimum of time required for the formation
of so much peat must, according to the estimate of Steenstrup and other
good authorities, have amounted to at least 4000 years; and there
is nothing in the observed rate of the growth of peat opposed to the
conclusion that the number of centuries may not have been four times as
great, even though the signs of Man's existence have not yet been traced
down to the lowest or amorphous stratum. As to the "kitchen-middens,"
they correspond in date to the older portion of the peaty record, or to
the earliest part of the age of stone as known in Denmark.
ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS, BUILT ON PILES.
[Illustration: Plate 1. Swiss Lake-Dwellings]
In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is a depth of no
more than from 5 to 15 feet of water, ancient wooden piles are observed
at the bottom sometimes worn down to the surface of the mud, sometimes
projecting slightly above it. These have evidently once supported
villages, nearly all of them of unknown date, but the most ancient of
which certainly belonged to the age of stone, for hundreds of implements
resembling those of the Danish shell-mounds and peat-mosses have been
dredged up from the mud into which the piles were driven.
The earliest historical account of such habitations is that given by
Herodotus of a Thracian tribe, who dwelt, in the year 520 B.C., in
Prasias, a small mountain-lake of Paeonia, now part of modern Roumelia.*
(* Herodotus lib. 5 cap. 16. Rediscovered by M. de Ville
"Natural History Review" volume 2 1862 page 486.)
Their habitations were constructed on platforms raised above the lake,
and resting on piles. They were connected with the shore by a narrow
causeway of similar formation. Such platforms must have been of
considerable extent, for the Paeonians lived there with their families
and horses. Their food consisted largely of the fish which the lake
produced in abundance.
In rude and unsettled times, such insular sites afforded safe retreats,
all communication with the mainland being cut off, except by boats, or
by such wooden bridges as could be easily removed.
The Swiss lake-dwellings seem first to have attracted attention during
the dry winter of 1853-54, when the lakes and rivers sank lower than had
ever been previously known, and when the inhabitants of Meilen, on the
Lake of Zurich, resolved to raise the level of some ground and turn it
into land, by throwing mud upon it obtained by dredging in the adjoining
shallow water. During these dredging operations they discovered a number
of wooden piles deeply driven into the bed of the lake, and among them
a great many hammers, axes, celts, and other instruments. All these
belonged to the stone period with two exceptions, namely, an armlet of
thin brass wire, and a small bronze hatchet.
Fragments of rude pottery fashioned by the hand were abundant, also
masses of charred wood, supposed to have formed parts of the platform
on which the wooden cabins were built. Of this burnt timber, on this and
other sites, subsequently explored, there was such an abundance as to
lead to the conclusion that many of the settlements must have perished
by fire. Herodotus has recorded that the Paeonians, above alluded to,
preserved their independence during the Persian invasion, and defied the
attacks of Darius by aid of the peculiar position of their dwellings.
"But their safety," observes Mr. Wylie,* "was probably owing to their
living in the middle of the lake, (Greek) en mese te limne, whereas the
ancient Swiss settlers were compelled by the rapidly increasing depth of
the water near the margins of their lakes to construct their habitations
at a short distance from the shore, within easy bowshot of the land, and
therefore not out of reach of fiery projectiles, against which thatched
roofs and wooden walls could present but a poor defence."
(* W.M. Wylie "Archaeologia" volume 38 1859, a valuable
paper on the Swiss and Irish lake-habitations.)
To these circumstances and to accidental fires we are probably indebted
for the frequent preservation, in the mud around the site of the old
settlements, of the most precious tools and works of art, such as would
never have been thrown into the Danish "kitchen-middens," which have
been aptly compared to a modern dusthole.
Dr. Ferdinand Keller of Zurich has drawn up a series of most instructive
memoirs, illustrated with well-executed plates, of the treasures
in stone, bronze, and bone brought to light in these subaqueous
repositories, and has given an ideal restoration of part of one of the
old villages (see Plate 1 above),* such as he conceives may have existed
on the lakes of Zurich and Bienne.
(*Keller "Pfahlbauten, Antiquarische Gesellschaft in Zurich"
Bd. 12 and 13 1858-1861. In the fifth number of the "Natural
History Review" January 9, 1862, Mr. Lubbock has published
an excellent account of the works of the Swiss writers on
their lake-habitations.)
In this view, however, he has not simply trusted to his imagination,
but has availed himself of a sketch published by M. Dumont d'Urville, of
similar habitations of the Papuans in New Guinea in the Bay of Dorei. It
is also stated by Dr. Keller, that on the River Limmat, near Zurich, so
late as the last century, there were several fishing-huts constructed on
this same plan.*
(* Keller "Pfahlbauten, Antiquarische Gesellschaft in
Zurich" Bd. 9 page 81 note.)
It will be remarked that one of the cabins is represented as circular.
That such was the form of many in Switzerland is inferred from the
shape of pieces of clay which lined the interior, and which owe their
preservation apparently to their having been hardened by fire when the
village was burnt. In the sketch (Plate 1), some fishing-nets are seen
spread out to dry on the wooden platform. The Swiss archaeologist has
found abundant evidence of fishing-gear, consisting of pieces of cord,
hooks, and stones used as weights. A canoe also is introduced, such as
are occasionally met with. One of these, made of the trunk of a single
tree, fifty feet long and three and a half feet wide, was found capsized
at the bottom of the Lake of Bienne. It appears to have been laden
with stones, such as were used to raise the foundation of some of the
artificial islands.
It is believed that as many as 300 wooden huts were sometimes comprised
in one settlement, and that they may have contained about 1000
inhabitants. At Wangen, M. Lohle has calculated that 40,000 piles were
used, probably not all planted at one time nor by one generation. Among
the works of great merit devoted specially to a description of the Swiss
lake-habitations is that of M. Troyon, published in 1860.*
(* "Sur les Habitations lacustres.")
The number of sites which he and other authors have already enumerated
in Switzerland is truly wonderful. They occur on the large lakes of
Constance, Zurich, Geneva, and Neufchatel, and on most of the smaller
ones. Some are exclusively of the stone age, others of the bronze
period. Of these last more than twenty are spoken of on the Lake of
Geneva alone, more than forty on that of Neufchatel, and twenty on the
small Lake of Bienne.
One of the sites first studied by the Swiss antiquaries was the small
lake of Moosseedorf, near Berne, where implements of stone, horn, and
bone, but none of metal, were obtained. Although the flint here employed
must have come from a distance (probably from the south of France), the
chippings of the material are in such profusion as to imply that there
was a manufactory of implements on the spot. Here also, as in several
other settlements, hatchets and wedges of jade have been observed of a
kind said not to occur in Switzerland or the adjoining parts of Europe,
and which some mineralogists would fain derive from the East; amber
also, which, it is supposed, was imported from the shores of the Baltic.
At Wangen near Stein, on the Lake of Constance, another of the most
ancient of the lake-dwellings, hatchets of serpentine and greenstone,
and arrow-heads of quartz have been met with. Here also remains of a
kind of cloth, supposed to be of flax, not woven but plaited, have
been detected. Professor Heer has recognised lumps of carbonised wheat,
Triticum vulgare, and grains of another kind, T. dicoccum, and barley,
Hordeum distichum, and flat round cakes of bread; and at Robbenhausen
and elsewhere Hordeum hexastichum in fine ears, the same kind of barley
which is found associated with Egyptian mummies, showing clearly that in
the stone period the lake-dwellers cultivated all these cereals, besides
having domesticated the dog, the ox, the sheep, and the goat.
Carbonised apples and pears of small size, such as still grow in the
Swiss forests, stones of the wild plum, seeds of the raspberry and
blackberry, and beech-nuts, also occur in the mud, and hazel-nuts in
great plenty.
Near Morges, on the Lake of Geneva, a settlement of the bronze period,
no less than forty hatchets of that metal have been dredged up, and in
many other localities the number and variety of weapons and utensils
discovered, in a fine state of preservation, is truly astonishing.
It is remarkable that as yet all the settlements of the bronze period
are confined to Western and Central Switzerland. In the more eastern
lakes those of the stone period alone have as yet been discovered.
The tools, ornaments, and pottery of the bronze period in Switzerland
bear a close resemblance to those of corresponding age in Denmark,
attesting the wide spread of a uniform civilisation over Central Europe
at that era. In some few of the Swiss aquatic stations a mixture of
bronze and iron implements has been observed, but no coins. At Tiefenau,
near Berne, in ground supposed to have been a battle-field, coins
and medals of bronze and silver, struck at Marseilles, and of Greek
manufacture, and iron swords, have been found, all belonging to the
first and pre-Roman division of the age of iron.
In the settlements of the bronze era the wooden piles are not so much
decayed as those of the stone period; the latter having wasted down
quite to the level of the mud, whereas the piles of the bronze age (as
in the Lake of Bienne, for example) still project above it.
Professor Rutimeyer of Basle, well-known to palaeontologists as the
author of several important memoirs on fossil vertebrata, has recently
published a scientific description of great interest of the animal
remains dredged up at various stations where they had been embedded for
ages in the mud into which the piles were driven.*
(* "Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz" Basel 1861.)
These bones bear the same relation to the primitive inhabitants of
Switzerland and some of their immediate successors as do the contents of
the Danish "kitchen-middens" to the ancient fishing and hunting tribes
who lived on the shores of the Baltic.
The list of wild mammalia enumerated in this excellent treatise contains
no less than twenty-four species, exclusive of several domesticated
ones: besides which there are eighteen species of birds, the wild swan,
goose, and two species of ducks being among them; also three reptiles,
including the eatable frog and freshwater tortoise; and lastly, nine
species of freshwater fish. All these (amounting to fifty-four species)
are with one exception still living in Europe. The exception is the wild
bull (Bos primigenius), which, as before stated, survived in historical
times. The following are the mammalia alluded to:--The bear (Ursus
arctos), the badger, the common marten, the polecat, the ermine, the
weasel, the otter, wolf, fox, wild cat, hedgehog, squirrel, field-mouse
(Mus sylvaticus), hare, beaver, hog (comprising two races, namely, the
wild boar and swamp-hog), the stag (Cervus elaphus), the roe-deer,
the fallow-deer, the elk, the steinbock (Capra ibex), the chamois, the
Lithuanian bison, and the wild bull. The domesticated species comprise
the dog, horse, ass, pig, goat, sheep, and several bovine races.
The greater number, if not all, of these animals served for food, and
all the bones which contained marrow have been split open in the same
way as the corresponding ones found in the shell-mounds of Denmark
before mentioned. The bones both of the wild bull and the bison are
invariably split in this manner. As a rule, the lower jaws with teeth
occur in greater abundance than any other parts of the skeleton--a
circumstance which, geologists know, holds good in regard to fossil
mammalia of all periods. As yet the reindeer is missing in the Swiss
lake-settlements as in the Danish "kitchen-middens," although this
animal in more ancient times ranged over France, together with the
mammoth, as far south as the Pyrenees.
A careful comparison of the bones from different sites has shown that
in settlements such as Wangen and Moosseedorf, belonging to the earliest
age of stone, when the habits of the hunter state predominated over
those of the pastoral, venison, or the flesh of the stag and roe, was
more eaten than the flesh of the domestic cattle and sheep. This was
afterwards reversed in the later stone period and in the age of bronze.
At that later period also the tame pig, which is wanting in some of the
oldest stations, had replaced the wild boar as a common article of
food. In the beginning of the age of stone, in Switzerland, the goats
outnumbered the sheep, but towards the close of the same period the
sheep were more abundant than the goats.
The fox in the first era was very common, but it nearly disappears in
the bronze age, during which period a large hunting-dog, supposed to
have been imported into Switzerland from some foreign country, becomes
the chief representative of the canine genus.
A single fragment of the bone of a hare (Lepus timidus) has been found
at Moosseedorf. The almost universal absence of this quadruped is
supposed to imply that the Swiss lake-dwellers were prevented from
eating that animal by the same superstition which now prevails among
the Laplanders, and which Julius Caesar found in full force amongst the
ancient Britons.*
(* "Commentaries" lib 5 chapter 12.)
That the lake-dwellers should have fed so largely on the fox, while
they abstained from touching the hare, establishes, says Rutimeyer, a
singular contrast between their tastes and ours.
Even in the earliest settlements, as already hinted, several
domesticated animals occur, namely, the ox, sheep, goat, and dog. Of the
three last, each was represented by one race only; but there were two
races of cattle, the most common being of small size, and called by
Rutimeyer Bos brachyceros (Bos longifrons, Owen), or the marsh cow,
the other derived from the wild bull; though, as no skull has yet been
discovered, this identification is not so certain as could be wished.
It is, however, beyond question that at a later era, namely, towards the
close of the stone and beginning of the bronze period, the lake-dwellers
had succeeded in taming that formidable brute the Bos primigenius, the
Urus of Caesar, which he described as very fierce, swift, and strong,
and scarcely inferior to the elephant in size. In a tame state its
bones were somewhat less massive and heavy, and its horns were somewhat
smaller than in wild individuals. Still in its domesticated form, it
rivalled in dimensions the largest living cattle, those of Friesland,
in North Holland, for example. When most abundant, as at Concise on
the Lake of Neufchatel, it had nearly superseded the smaller race,
Bos brachyceros, and was accompanied there for a short time by a third
bovine variety, called Bos trochoceros, an Italian race, supposed
to have been imported from the southern side of the Alps. (Caesar
"Commentaries" lib 5 chapter 12.) This last-mentioned race, however,
seems only to have lasted for a short time in Switzerland.
The wild bull (Bos primigenius) is supposed to have flourished for a
while in a wild and tame state, just as now in Europe the domestic
pig co-exists with the wild boar; and Rutimeyer agrees with Cuvier and
Bell,* in considering our larger domestic cattle of northern Europe as
the descendants of this wild bull, an opinion which Owen disputes.**
(* "British Quadrupeds" page 415.)
(** "British Fossil Mammal." page 500.)
In the later division of the stone period, there were two tame races of
the pig, according to Rutimeyer; one large, and derived from the
wild boar, the other smaller, called the "marsh-hog," or Sus scrofa
palustris. It may be asked how the osteologist can distinguish the tame
from the wild races of the same species by their skeletons alone.
Among other characters, the diminished thickness of the bones and the
comparative smallness of the ridges, which afford attachment to the
muscles, are relied on; also the smaller dimensions of the tusks in
the boar, and of the whole jaw and skull; and, in like manner, the
diminished size of the horns of the bull and other modifications, which
are the effects of a regular supply of food, and the absence of all
necessity of exerting their activity and strength to obtain subsistence
and defend themselves against their enemies.
A middle-sized race of dogs continued unaltered throughout the whole of
the stone period; but the people of the bronze age possessed a larger
hunting-dog, and with it a small horse, of which genus very few traces
have been detected in the earlier settlements--a single tooth, for
example, at Wangen, and only one or two bones at two or three other
places.
In passing from the oldest to the most modern sites, the extirpation of
the elk and beaver, and the gradual reduction in numbers of the bear,
stag, roe, and freshwater tortoise are distinctly perceptible. The
aurochs, or Lithuanian bison, appears to have died out in Switzerland
about the time when weapons of bronze came into use. It is only in a few
of the most modern lake-dwellings, such as Noville and Chavannes in the
Canton de Vaud (which the antiquaries refer to the sixth century), that
some traces are observable of the domestic cat, as well as of a sheep
with crooked horns and with them bones of the domestic fowl.
After the sixth century, no extinction of any wild quadruped nor
introduction of any tame one appears to have taken place, but the fauna
was still modified by the wild species continuing to diminish in number
and the tame ones to become more diversified by breeding and crossing,
especially in the case of the dog, horse, and sheep. On the whole,
however, the divergence of the domestic races from their aboriginal wild
types, as exemplified at Wangen and Moosseedorf, is confined, according
to Professor Rutimeyer, within narrow limits. As to the goat, it has
remained nearly constant and true to its pristine form, and the small
race of goat-horned sheep still lingers in some alpine valleys in the
Upper Rhine; and in the same region a race of pigs, corresponding to the
domesticated variety of Sus scrofa palustris, may still be seen.
Amidst all this profusion of animal remains extremely few bones of Man
have been discovered; and only one skull, dredged up from Meilen, on
the Lake of Zurich, of the early stone period, seems as yet to have been
carefully examined. Respecting this specimen, Professor His observes
that it exhibits, instead of the small and rounded form proper to
the Danish peat-mosses, a type much more like that now prevailing
in Switzerland, which is intermediate between the long-headed and
short-headed form. (Rutimeyer "Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz"
page 181.)
So far, therefore, as we can draw safe conclusions from a single
specimen, there has been no marked change of race in the human
population of Switzerland during the periods above considered.
It is still a question whether any of these subaqueous repositories
of ancient relics in Switzerland go back so far in time as the
kitchen-middens of Denmark, for in these last there are no domesticated
animals except the dog, and no signs of the cultivation of wheat or
barley; whereas we have seen that, in one of the oldest of the
Swiss settlements, at Wangen, no less than three cereals make their
appearance, with four kinds of domestic animals. Yet there is no small
risk of error in speculating on the relative claims to antiquity of such
ancient tribes, for some of them may have remained isolated for ages and
stationary in their habits, while others advanced and improved.
We know that nations, both before and after the introduction of metals,
may continue in very different stages of civilisation, even after
commercial intercourse has been established between them, and where they
are separated by a less distance than that which divides the Alps from
the Baltic.
The attempts of the Swiss geologists and archaeologists to estimate
definitely in years the antiquity of the bronze and stone periods,
although as yet confessedly imperfect, deserve notice, and appear to me
to be full of promise. The most elaborate calculation is that made by M.
Morlot, respecting the delta of the Tiniere, a torrent which flows
into the Lake of Geneva near Villeneuve. This small delta, to which the
stream is annually making additions, is composed of gravel and sand.
Its shape is that of a flattened cone, and its internal structure has of
late been laid open to view in a railway cutting 1000 feet long and 32
feet deep. The regularity of its structure throughout implies that it
has been formed very gradually, and by the uniform action of the same
causes. Three layers of vegetable soil, each of which must at one time
have formed the surface of the cone, have been cut through at different
depths. The first of these was traced over a surface of 15,000 square
feet, having an average thickness of 5 inches, and being about 4 feet
below the present surface of the cone. This upper layer belonged to the
Roman period, and contained Roman tiles and a coin. The second layer,
followed over a surface of 25,000 square feet, was 6 inches thick, and
lay at a depth of 10 feet. In it were found fragments of unvarnished
pottery and a pair of tweezers in bronze, indicating the bronze epoch.
The third layer, followed for 35,000 square feet, was 6 or 7 inches
thick and 19 feet deep. In it were fragments of rude pottery, pieces of
charcoal, broken bones, and a human skeleton having a small, round and
very thick skull. M. Morlot, assuming the Roman period to represent an
antiquity of from sixteen to eighteen centuries, assigns to the bronze
age a date of between 3000 and 4000 years, and to the oldest layer, that
of the stone period, an age of from 5000 to 7000 years.
Another calculation has been made by M. Troyon to obtain the approximate
date of the remains of an ancient settlement built on piles and
preserved in a peat-bog at Chamblon, near Yverdun, on the Lake of
Neufchatel. The site of the ancient Roman town of Eburodunum (Yverdun),
once on the borders of the lake, and between which and the shore there
now intervenes a zone of newly-gained dry land, 2500 feet in breadth,
shows the rate at which the bed of the lake has been filled up with
river sediment in fifteen centuries. Assuming the lake to have retreated
at the same rate before the Roman period, the pile-works of Chamblon,
which are of the bronze period, must be at the least 3300 years old.
For the third calculation, communicated to me by M. Morlot, we are
indebted to M. Victor Gillieron, of Neuveville, on the Lake of Bienne.
It relates to the age of a pile-dwelling, the mammalian bones of which
are considered by M. Rutimeyer to indicate the earliest portion of
the stone period of Switzerland, and to correspond in age with the
settlement of Moosseedorf.
The piles in question occur at the Pont de Thiele, between the lakes of
Bienne and Neufchatel. The old convent of St. Jean, founded 750 years
ago, and built originally on the margin of the Lake of Bienne, is now
at a considerable distance from the shore, and affords a measure of the
rate of the gain of land in seven centuries and a half. Assuming that
a similar rate of the conversion of water into marshy land prevailed
antecedently, we should require an addition of sixty centuries for the
growth of the morass intervening between the convent and the aquatic
dwelling of Pont de Thiele, in all 6750 years. M. Morlot, after
examining the ground, thinks it highly probable that the shape of the
bottom on which the morass rests is uniform; but this important point
has not yet been tested by boring. The result, if confirmed, would agree
exceedingly well with the chronological computation before mentioned
of the age of the stone period of Tiniere. As I have not myself visited
Switzerland since these chronological speculations were first hazarded,
I am unable to enter critically into a discussion of the objections
which have been raised to the two first of them, or to decide on the
merits of the explanations offered in reply.
IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS OR CRANNOGES.
The lake-dwellings of the British isles, although not explored as yet
with scientific zeal, as those of Switzerland have been in the last ten
years, are yet known to be very numerous, and when carefully examined
will not fail to throw great light on the history of the bronze and
stone periods.
In the lakes of Ireland alone, no less than forty-six examples of
artificial islands, called crannoges, have been discovered. They occur
in Leitrim, Roscommon, Cavan, Down, Monaghan, Limerick, Meath, King's
County, and Tyrone.*
(* W.M. Wylie "Archaeologia" volume 38 1859 page 8.)
One class of these "stockaded islands," as they have been sometimes
called, was formed, according to Mr. Digby Wyatt, by placing horizontal
oak beams at the bottom of the lake, into which oak posts, from 6 to
8 feet high, were mortised, and held together by cross beams, till a
circular enclosure was obtained.
A space of 520 feet diameter, thus enclosed at Lagore, was divided into
sundry timbered compartments, which were found filled up with mud or
earth, from which were taken "vast quantities of the bones of oxen,
swine, deer, goats, sheep, dogs, foxes, horses, and asses." All these
were discovered beneath 16 feet of bog, and were used for manure; but
specimens of them are said to be preserved in the museum of the Royal
Irish Academy. From the same spot were obtained a great collection of
antiquities, which, according to Lord Talbot de Malahide and Mr. Wylie,
were referable to the ages of stone, bronze, and iron.*
(* W.M. Wylie "Archaeologia" volume 38 1859 page 8, who
cites "Archaeological Journal" volume 6 page 101.)
In Ardekillin Lake, in Roscommon, an islet of an oval form was observed,
made of a layer of stones resting on logs of timber. Round this
artificial islet or crannoge thus formed was a stone wall raised on oak
piles. A careful description has been put on record by Captain Mudge,
R.N., of a curious log-cabin discovered by him in 1833 in Drumkellin
bog, in Donegal, at a depth of 14 feet from the surface. It was 12 feet
square and 9 feet high, being divided into two stories each 4 feet high.
The planking was of oak split with wedges of stone, one of which was
found in the building. The roof was flat. A staked enclosure had been
raised round the cabin, and remains of other similar huts adjoining were
seen but not explored. A stone celt, found in the interior of the hut,
and a piece of leather sandal, also an arrow-head of flint, and in the
bog close at hand a wooden sword, give evidence of the remote antiquity
of this building, which may be taken as a type of the early dwellings on
the Crannoge islands.
"The whole structure," says Captain Mudge, "was wrought with the
rudest kind of implements, and the labour bestowed on it must have been
immense. The wood of the mortises was more bruised than cut, as if by a
blunt stone chisel."*
(* Mudge "Archaeologia" volume 26.)
Such a chisel lay on the floor of the hut, and by comparing it with
the marks of the tool used in forming the mortises, they were found "to
correspond exactly, even to the slight curved exterior of the chisel;
but the logs had been hewn by a larger instrument, in the shape of an
axe. On the floor of the dwelling lay a slab of freestone, 3 feet
long and 14 inches thick, in the centre of which was a small pit three
quarters of an inch deep, which had been chiselled out. This is presumed
to have been used for holding nuts to be cracked by means of one of the
round shingle stones, also found there, which had served as a hammer.
Some entire hazel-nuts and a great quantity of broken shells were
strewed about the floor."
The foundations of the house were made of fine sand, such as is found
with shingle on the seashore about 2 miles distant. Below the layer of
sand the bog or peat was ascertained, on probing it with an instrument,
to be at least 15 feet thick. Although the interior of the building when
discovered was full of "bog" or peaty matter, it seems when inhabited to
have been surrounded by growing trees, some of the trunks and roots
of which are still preserved in their natural position. The depth of
overlying peat affords no safe criterion for calculating the age of the
cabin or village, for I have shown in the "Principles of Geology" that
both in England and Ireland, within historical times, bogs have burst
and sent forth great volumes of black mud, which has been known to
creep over the country at a slow pace, flowing somewhat at the rate of
ordinary lava-currents, and sometimes overwhelming woods and cottages,
and leaving a deposit upon them of bog-earth 15 feet thick.
None of these Irish lake-dwellings were built, like those of Helvetia,
on platforms supported by piles deeply driven into the mud. "The
Crannoge system of Ireland seems," says Mr. Wylie, "well nigh without a
parallel in Swiss waters."
CHAPTER 3. -- FOSSIL HUMAN REMAINS AND WORKS OF ART OF THE RECENT
PERIOD--CONTINUED.
Delta and Alluvial Plain of the Nile.
Burnt Bricks in Egypt before the Roman Era.
Borings in 1851-54.
Ancient Mounds of the Valley of the Ohio.
Their Antiquity.
Sepulchral Mound at Santos in Brazil.
Delta of the Mississippi.
Ancient Human Remains in Coral Reefs of Florida.
Changes in Physical Geography in the Human Period.
Buried Canoes in Marine Strata near Glasgow.
Upheaval since the Roman Occupation of the Shores of the Firth of Forth.
Fossil Whales near Stirling.
Upraised Marine Strata of Sweden on Shores of the Baltic and the Ocean.
Attempts to compute their Age.
DELTA AND ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE NILE.
Some new facts of high interest illustrating the geology of the alluvial
land of Egypt were brought to light between the years 1851 and 1854,
in consequence of investigations suggested to the Royal Society by Mr.
Leonard Horner, and which were partly carried out at the expense of
the Society. The practical part of the undertaking was entrusted by Mr.
Horner to an Armenian officer of engineers, Hekekyan Bey, who had for
many years pursued his scientific studies in England, and was in every
way highly qualified for the task.
It was soon found that to obtain the required information respecting
the nature, depth, and contents of the Nile mud in various parts of
the valley, a larger outlay was called for than had been originally
contemplated. This expense the late viceroy, Abbas Pasha, munificently
undertook to defray out of his treasury, and his successor, after his
death, continued the operations with the same princely liberality.
Several engineers and a body of sixty workmen were employed under the
superintendence of Hekekyan Bey, men inured to the climate and able to
carry on the sinking of shafts and borings during the hot months, after
the waters of the Nile had subsided, and in a season which would have
been fatal to Europeans.
The results of chief importance arising out of this inquiry were
obtained from two sets of shafts and borings sunk at intervals in lines
crossing the great valley from east to west. One of these consisted of
no fewer than fifty-one pits and artesian borings, made where the
valley is 16 miles wide from side to side between the Arabian and Libyan
deserts, in the latitude of Heliopolis, about 8 miles above the apex of
the delta. The other line of borings and pits, twenty-seven in number,
was in the parallel of Memphis, where the valley is only five miles
broad.
Everywhere in these sections the sediment passed through was similar in
composition to the ordinary Nile mud of the present day, except near the
margin of the valley, where thin layers of quartzose sand, such as is
sometimes blown from the adjacent desert by violent winds, were observed
to alternate with the loam.
A remarkable absence of lamination and stratification was observed
almost universally in the sediment brought up from all points except
where the sandy layers above alluded to occurred. Mr. Horner attributes
this want of all indication of successive deposition to the extreme
thinness of the film of matter which is thrown down annually on the
great alluvial plain during the season of inundation. The tenuity of
this layer must indeed be extreme, if the French engineers are tolerably
correct in their estimate of the amount of sediment formed in a century,
which they suppose not to exceed on the average 5 inches. When the
waters subside, this thin layer of new soil, exposed to a hot sun, dries
rapidly, and clouds of dust are raised by the winds. The superficial
deposit, moreover, is disturbed almost everywhere by agricultural
labours, and even were this not the case, the action of worms, insects,
and the roots of plants would suffice to confound together the deposits
of two successive years.
All the remains of organic bodies, such as land-shells, and the bones
of quadrupeds, found during the excavations belonged to living species.
Bones of the ox, hog, dog, dromedary and ass were not uncommon, but no
vestiges of extinct mammalia. No marine shells were anywhere detected;
but this was to be expected, as the borings, though they sometimes
reached as low as the level of the Mediterranean, were never carried
down below it--a circumstance much to be regretted, since where artesian
borings have been made in deltas, as in those of the Po and Ganges, to
the depth of several hundred feet below the sea level it has been
found, contrary to expectation, that the deposits passed through were
fluviatile throughout, implying, probably, that a general subsidence of
those deltas and alluvial formations has taken place. Whether there has
been in like manner a sinking of the land in Egypt, we have as yet no
means of proving; but Sir Gardner Wilkinson infers it from the position
in the delta on the shore near Alexandria of the tombs commonly called
Cleopatra's Baths, which cannot, he says, have been originally built so
as to be exposed to the sea which now fills them, but must have stood on
land above the level of the Mediterranean. The same author adduces, as
additional signs of subsidence, some ruined towns, now half under water,
in the Lake Menzaleh, and channels of ancient arms of the Nile submerged
with their banks beneath the waters of that same lagoon.
In some instances, the excavations made under the superintendence of
Hekekyan Bey were on a large scale for the first 16 or 24 feet, in which
cases jars, vases, pots and a small human figure in burnt clay, a copper
knife, and other entire articles were dug up; but when water soaking
through from the Nile was reached the boring instrument used was too
small to allow of more than fragments of works of art being brought up.
Pieces of burnt brick and pottery were extracted almost everywhere, and
from all depths, even where they sank 60 feet below the surface towards
the central parts of the valley. In none of these cases did they get
to the bottom of the alluvial soil. It has been objected, among other
criticisms, that the Arabs can always find whatever their employers
desire to obtain. Even those who are too well acquainted with the
sagacity and energy of Hekekyan Bey to suspect him of having been
deceived, have suggested that the artificial objects might have fallen
into old wells which had been filled up. This notion is inadmissible
for many reasons. Of the ninety-five shafts and borings, seventy or more
were made far from the sites of towns or villages; and allowing that
every field may once have had its well, there would be but small chance
of the borings striking upon the site even of a small number of them in
seventy experiments.
Others have suggested that the Nile may have wandered over the whole
valley, undermining its banks on one side and filling up old channels
on the other. It has also been asked whether the delta with the numerous
shifting arms of the river may not once have been at every point where
the auger pierced.*
(* For a detailed account of these sections, see Mr.
Horner's paper in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1855
to 1858.)
To all these objections there are two obvious answers:--First, in
historical times the Nile has on the whole been very stationary, and
has not shifted its position in the valley; secondly, if the mud pierced
through had been thrown down by the river in ancient channels, it would
have been stratified, and would not have corresponded so closely with
inundation mud, we learn from Captain Newbold that he observed in some
excavations in the great plain alternations of sand and clay, such as
are seen in the modern banks of the Nile; but in the borings made by
Hekekyan Bey, such stratification seems scarcely in any case to have
been detected.
The great aim of the criticisms above enumerated has been to get rid of
the supposed anomaly of finding burnt brick and pottery at depths and
places which would give them claim to an antiquity far exceeding that of
the Roman domination in Egypt. For until the time of the Romans, it is
said, no clay was burnt into bricks in the valley of the Nile. But a
distinguished antiquary, Mr. S. Birch, assures me that this notion is
altogether erroneous, and that he has under his charge in the British
Museum, first, a small rectangular baked brick, which came from a Theban
tomb which bears the name of Thothmes, a superintendent of the granaries
of the god Amen Ra, the style of art, inscription, and name, showing
that it is as old as the 18th dynasty (about 1450 B.C.); secondly, a
brick bearing an inscription, partly obliterated, but ending with the
words "of the temple of Amen Ra." This brick, decidedly long anterior to
the Roman dominion, is referred conjecturally, by Mr. Birch, to the 19th
dynasty, or 1300 B.C. Sir Gardner Wilkinson has also in his possession
pieces of mortar, which he took from each of the three great pyramids,
in which bits of broken pottery and of burnt clay or brick are embedded.
M. Girard, of the French expedition to Egypt, supposed the average rate
of the increase of Nile mud on the plain between Assouan and Cairo to
be five English inches in a century. This conclusion, according to Mr.
Horner, is very vague, and founded on insufficient data; the amount of
matter thrown down by the waters in different parts of the plain varying
so much that to strike an average with any approach to accuracy must
be most difficult. Were we to assume six inches in a century, the burnt
brick met with at a depth of 60 feet would be 12,000 years old.
Another fragment of red brick was found by Linant Bey, in a boring 72
feet deep, being 2 or 3 feet below the level of the Mediterranean,
in the parallel of the apex of the delta, 200 metres distant from the
river, on the Libyan side of the Rosetta branch.*
(* Horner "Philosophical Transactions" 1858.)
M. Rosiere, in the great French work on Egypt, has estimated the mean
rate of deposit of sediment in the delta at 2 1/4 inches in a century;*
were we to take 2 1/2 inches, a work of art 72 feet deep must have been
buried more than 30,000 years ago.
(* Description de l'Egypte "Histoire Naturelle" tome 2 page
494.)
But if the boring of Linant Bey was made where an arm of the river had
been silted up at a time when the apex of the delta was somewhat farther
south, or more distant from the sea than now, the brick in question
might be comparatively very modern.
The experiments instituted by Mr. Horner at the pedestal of the fallen
statue of King Rameses at Memphis, in the hope of obtaining an accurate
chronometric scale for testing the age of a given thickness of
Nile sediment, are held by some experienced Egyptologists not to be
satisfactory, on the ground of the uncertainty of the rate of deposit
accumulated at that locality. The point sought to be determined was the
exact amount of Nile mud which had accumulated there since the time when
that statue is supposed by some antiquaries to have been erected. Could
we have obtained possession of such a measure, the rate of deposition
might be judged of, approximately at least, whenever similar mud
was observed in other places, or below the foundations of those same
monuments. But the ancient Egyptians are known to have been in the habit
of enclosing with embankments the areas on which they erected temples,
statues, and obelisks, so as to exclude the waters of the Nile; and the
point of time to be ascertained, in every case where we find a monument
buried to a certain depth in mud, as at Memphis and Heliopolis, is the
era when the city fell into such decay that the ancient embankments were
neglected, and the river allowed to inundate the site of the temple,
obelisk, or statue.
Even if we knew the date of the abandonment of such embankments,
the enclosed areas would not afford a favourable opportunity for
ascertaining the average rate of deposit in the alluvial plain; for
Herodotus tells us that in his time those spots from which the Nile
waters had been shut out for centuries appeared sunk, and could be
looked down into from the surrounding grounds, which had been raised by
the gradual accumulation over them of sediment annually thrown down. If
the waters at length should break into such depressions, they must at
first carry with them into the enclosure much mud washed from the steep
surrounding banks, so that a greater quantity would be deposited in a
few years than perhaps in as many centuries on the great plain outside
the depressed area, where no such disturbing causes intervened.
ANCIENT MOUNDS OF THE VALLEY OF THE OHIO.
As I have already given several European examples of monuments of
prehistoric date belonging to the Recent period, I will now turn to
the American continent. Before the scientific investigation by Messrs.
Squier and Davis of the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley",*
no one suspected that the plains of that river had been occupied, for
ages before the French and British colonists settled there, by a nation
of older date and more advanced in the arts than the Red Indians whom
the Europeans found there.
(* "Smithsonian Contributions" volume 1 1847.)
There are hundreds of large mounds in the basin of the Mississippi, and
especially in the valleys of the Ohio and its tributaries, which have
served, some of them for temples, others for outlook or defence, and
others for sepulture. The unknown people by whom they were constructed,
judging by the form of several skulls dug out of the burial-places, were
of the Mexican or Toltec race. Some of the earthworks are on so grand a
scale as to embrace areas of 50 or 100 acres within a simple enclosure,
and the solid contents of one mould are estimated at 20 million of cubic
feet, so that four of them would be more than equal in bulk to the Great
Pyramid of Egypt, which comprises 75 million. From several of these
repositories pottery and ornamental sculpture have been taken, and
various articles in silver and copper, also stone weapons, some composed
of hornstone unpolished, and much resembling in shape some ancient flint
implements found near Amiens and other places in Europe, to be alluded
to in the sequel.
It is clear that the Ohio mound-builders had commercial intercourse with
the natives of distant regions, for among the buried articles some are
made of native copper from Lake Superior, and there are also found mica
from the Alleghenies, sea-shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian
from the Mexican mountains.
The extraordinary number of the mounds implies a long period, during
which a settled agricultural population had made considerable progress
in civilisation, so as to require large temples for their religious
rites, and extensive fortifications to protect them from their enemies.
The mounds were almost all confined to fertile valleys or alluvial
plains, and some at least are so ancient that rivers have had time since
their construction to encroach on the lower terraces which support them,
and again to recede for the distance of nearly a mile, after having
undermined and destroyed a part of the works. When the first European
settlers entered the valley of the Ohio, they found the whole region
covered with an uninterrupted forest, and tenanted by the Red Indian
hunter, who roamed over it without any fixed abode, or any traditionary
connection with his more civilised predecessors. The only positive data
as yet obtained for calculating the minimum of time which must have
elapsed since the mounds were abandoned, have been derived from the age
and nature of the trees found growing on some of these earthworks. When
I visited Marietta in 1842, Dr. Hildreth took me to one of the mounds,
and showed me where he had seen a tree growing on it, the trunk of which
when cut down displayed eight hundred rings of annual growth.*
(* Lyell's "Travels in North America" volume 2 page 29.)
But the late General Harrison, President in 1841 of the United States,
who was well skilled in woodcraft, has remarked, in a memoir on this
subject, that several generations of trees must have lived and died
before the mounds could have been overspread with that variety of
species which they supported when the white man first beheld them, for
the number and kinds of trees were precisely the same as those which
distinguished the surrounding forest. "We may be sure," observed
Harrison, "that no trees were allowed to grow so long as the earthworks
were in use; and when they were forsaken, the ground, like all newly
cleared land in Ohio, would for a time be monopolised by one or two
species of tree, such as the yellow locust and the black or white
walnut. When the individuals which were the first to get possession of
the ground had died out one after the other, they would in many cases,
instead of being replaced by the same species, be succeeded (by virtue
of the law which makes a rotation of crops profitable in agriculture)
by other kinds, till at last, after a great number of centuries
(several thousand years, perhaps), that remarkable diversity of species
characteristic of North America, and far exceeding what is seen in
European forests, would be established."
MOUNDS OF SANTOS IN BRAZIL.
I will next say a few words respecting certain human bones embedded in
a solid rock at Santos in Brazil, to which I called attention in my
"Travels in North America" in 1842.*
(* Volume 1 page 200.)
I then imagined the deposit containing them to be of submarine
origin--an opinion which I have long ceased to entertain. We learn
from a memoir of Dr. Meigs that the River Santos has undermined a large
mound, 14 feet in height, and about 3 acres in area, covered with trees,
near the town of St. Paul, and has exposed to view many skeletons,
all inclined at angles between 20 and 25 degrees, and all placed in a
similar east and west position.*
(* Meigs "Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society" 1828 page 285.)
Seeing, in the Museum of Philadelphia, fragments of the calcareous stone
or tufa from this spot, containing a human skull with teeth, and in the
same matrix, oysters with serpulae attached, I at first concluded that
the whole deposit had been formed beneath the waters of the sea, or at
least, that it had been submerged after its origin, and again upheaved;
also, that there had been time since its emergence for the growth on it
of a forest of large trees. But after reading again, with more care, the
original memoir of Dr. Meigs, I cannot doubt that the shells, like
those of eatable kinds, so often accumulated in the mounds of the North
American Indians not far from the sea, may have been brought to the
place and heaped up with other materials at the time when the bodies
were buried. Subsequently, the whole artificial earthwork, with its
shells and skeletons, may have been bound together into a solid stone by
the infiltration of carbonate of lime, and the mound may therefore be
of no higher antiquity than some of those above alluded to on the Ohio,
which, as we have seen, have in like manner been exposed in the course
of ages to the encroachments and undermining action of rivers.
DELTA OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
I have shown in my "Travels in North America" that the deposits forming
the delta and alluvial plain of the Mississippi consist of sedimentary
matter, extending over an area of 30,000 square miles, and known in
some parts to be several hundred feet deep. Although we cannot estimate
correctly how many years it may have required for the river to bring
down from the upper country so large a quantity of earthy matter--the
data for such a computation being as yet incomplete--we may still
approximate to a minimum of the time which such an operation must have
taken, by ascertaining experimentally the annual discharge of water by
the Mississippi, and the mean annual amount of solid matter contained
in its waters. The lowest estimate of the time required would lead us
to assign a high antiquity, amounting to many tens of thousands of years
(probably more than 100,000) to the existing delta.
Whether all or how much of this formation may belong to the recent
period, as above defined, I cannot pretend to decide, but in one part of
the modern delta near New Orleans, a large excavation has been made
for gas-works, where a succession of beds, almost wholly made up of
vegetable matter, has been passed through, such as we now see forming
in the cypress swamps of the neighbourhood, where the deciduous cypress
(Taxodium distichum), with its strong and spreading roots, plays a
conspicuous part. In this excavation, at the depth of sixteen feet
from the surface, beneath four buried forests superimposed one upon
the other, the workmen are stated by Dr. B. Dowler to have found some
charcoal and a human skeleton, the cranium of which is said to belong to
the aboriginal type of the Red Indian race. As the discovery in question
had not been made when I saw the excavation in progress at the gas-works
in 1846, I cannot form an opinion as to the value of the chronological
calculations which have led Dr. Dowler to ascribe to this skeleton an
antiquity of 50,000 years. In several sections, both natural in the
banks of the Mississippi and its numerous arms, and where artificial
canals had been cut, I observed erect stumps of trees, with their roots
attached, buried in strata at different heights, one over the other. I
also remarked, that many cypresses which had been cut through, exhibited
many hundreds of rings of annual growth, and it then struck me that
nowhere in the world could the geologist enjoy a more favourable
opportunity for estimating in years the duration of certain portions of
the Recent epoch.*
(* Dowler cited by Dr. W. Usher in Nott and Gliddon's "Types
of Mankind" page 352.)
CORAL REEFS OF FLORIDA.
Professor Agassiz has described a low portion of the peninsula of
Florida as consisting of numerous reefs of coral, which have grown in
succession so as to give rise to a continual annexation of land, gained
gradually from the sea in a southerly direction. This growth is still
in full activity, and assuming the rate of advance of the land to be one
foot in a century, the reefs being built up from a depth of 75 feet, and
that each reef has in its turn added ten miles to the coast, Professor
Agassiz calculates that it has taken 135,000 years to form the southern
half of this peninsula. Yet the whole is of Post-Tertiary origin, the
fossil zoophytes and shells being all of the same species as those now
inhabiting the neighbouring sea.*
(* Agassiz in Nott and Gliddon ibid. page 352.)
In a calcareous conglomerate forming part of the above-mentioned series
of reefs, and supposed by Agassiz, in accordance with his mode of
estimating the rate of growth of those reefs, to be about 10,000 years
old, some fossil human remains were found by Count Pourtales. They
consisted of jaws and teeth, with some bones of the foot.
RECENT DEPOSITS OF SEAS AND LAKES.
I have shown, in the "Principles of Geology," where the recent changes
of the earth illustrative of geology are described at length, that the
deposits accumulated at the bottom of lakes and seas within the last
4000 or 5000 years can neither be insignificant in volume or extent.
They lie hidden, for the most part, from our sight; but we have
opportunities of examining them at certain points where newly-gained
land in the deltas of rivers has been cut through during floods, or
where coral reefs are growing rapidly, or where the bed of a sea or lake
has been heaved up by subterranean movements and laid dry.
As examples of such changes of level by which marine deposits of the
Recent period have become accessible to human observation, I have
adduced the strata near Naples in which the Temple of Serapis at
Pozzuoli was entombed.*
(* "Principles of Geology" Index "Serapis.")
These upraised strata, the highest of which are about 25 feet above the
level of the sea, form a terrace skirting the eastern shore of the Bay
of Baiae. They consist partly of clay, partly of volcanic matter, and
contain fragments of sculpture, pottery, and the remains of buildings,
together with great numbers of shells, retaining in part their colour,
and of the same species as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea.
Their emergence can be proved to have taken place since the beginning of
the sixteenth century. [5]
In the same work, as an example of a freshwater deposit of the Recent
period, I have described certain strata in Cashmere, a country where
violent earthquakes, attended by alterations in the level of the ground,
are frequent, in which freshwater shells of species now inhabiting the
lakes and rivers of that region are embedded, together with the remains
of pottery, often at the depth of fifty feet, and in which a splendid
Hindoo temple has lately been discovered, and laid open to view by the
removal of the lacustrine silt which had enveloped it for four or five
centuries.
In the same treatise it is stated that the west coast of South America,
between the Andes and the Pacific, is a great theatre of earthquake
movements, and that permanent upheavals of the land of several feet at
a time have been experienced since the discovery of America. In various
parts of the littoral region of Chile and Peru, strata have been
observed enclosing shells in abundance, all agreeing specifically with
those now swarming in the Pacific. In one bed of this kind, in the
island of San Lorenzo, near Lima, Mr. Darwin found, at the altitude of
85 feet above the sea, pieces of cotton-thread, plaited rush, and the
head of a stalk of Indian corn, the whole of which had evidently been
embedded with the shells. At the same height, on the neighbouring
mainland, he found other signs corroborating the opinion that the
ancient bed of the sea had there also been uplifted 85 feet since the
region was first peopled by the Peruvian race. But similar shelly masses
are also met with at much higher elevations, at innumerable points
between the Chilean and Peruvian Andes and the sea-coast, in which
no human remains have as yet been observed. The preservation for an
indefinite period of such perishable substances as thread is explained
by the entire absence of rain in Peru. The same articles, had they been
enclosed in the permeable sands of an European raised beach, or in
any country where rain falls even for a small part of the year, would
probably have disappeared entirely [6]
In the literature of the eighteenth century, we find frequent allusion
to the "era of existing continents," a period supposed to have coincided
in date with the first appearance of Man upon the earth, since which
event it was imagined that the relative level of the sea and land had
remained stationary, no important geographical changes having occurred,
except some slight additions to the deltas of rivers, or the loss of
narrow strips of land where the sea had encroached upon its shores. But
modern observations have tended continually to dispel this delusion, and
the geologist is now convinced that at no given era of the past have the
boundaries of land and sea, or the height of the one and depth of the
other, or the geographical range of the species inhabiting them, whether
of animals or plants, become fixed and unchangeable. Of the extent to
which fluctuations have been going on since the globe had already become
the dwelling-place of Man, some idea may be formed from the examples
which I shall give in this and the next nine chapters.
UPHEAVAL SINCE THE HUMAN PERIOD OF THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF SCOTLAND.
[7] It has long been a fact familiar to geologists, that, both
on the east and west coasts of the central part of Scotland, there are
lines of raised beaches, containing marine shells of the same species as
those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea.*
(* R. Chambers "Sea Margins" 1848 and papers by Mr. Smith of
Jordan Hill "Memoirs of the Wernerian Society" volume 8 and
by Mr. C. Maclaren. )
The two most marked of these littoral deposits occur at heights of about
50 and 25 feet above high-water mark, that of 50 feet being considered
as the more ancient, and owing its superior elevation to a continuance
of the upheaving movement. They are seen in some places to rest on the
boulder clay of the glacial period, which will be described in future
chapters.
In those districts where large rivers, such as the Clyde, Forth, and
Tay, enter the sea, the lower of the two deposits, or that of 25 feet,
expands into a terrace fringing the estuaries, and varying in breadth
from a few yards to several miles. Of this nature are the flat lands
which occur along the margin of the Clyde at Glasgow, which consist
of finely laminated sand, silt, and clay. Mr. John Buchanan, a zealous
antiquary, writing in 1855, informs us that in the course of the eighty
years preceding that date, no less than seventeen canoes had been dug
out of this estuarine silt, and that he had personally inspected a large
number of them before they were exhumed. Five of them lay buried in silt
under the streets of Glasgow, one in a vertical position with the prow
uppermost as if it had sunk in a storm. In the inside of it were a
number of marine shells. Twelve other canoes were found about 100 yards
back from the river, at the average depth of about 19 feet from the
surface of the soil, or 7 feet above high-water mark; but a few of them
were only 4 or 5 feet deep, and consequently more than 20 feet above
the sea-level. One was sticking in the sand at an angle of 45 degrees,
another had been capsized and lay bottom uppermost; all the rest were in
a horizontal position, as if they had sunk in smooth water.*
(* J. Buchanan "Report of the British Association" 1855 page
80; also "Glasgow, Past and Present" 1856.)
Almost every one of these ancient boats was formed out of a single
oak-stem, hollowed out by blunt tools, probably stone axes, aided by
the action of fire; a few were cut beautifully smooth, evidently with
metallic tools. Hence a gradation could be traced from a pattern of
extreme rudeness to one showing great mechanical ingenuity. Two of them
were built of planks, one of the two, dug up on the property of Bankton
in 1853, being 18 feet in length, and very elaborately constructed. Its
prow was not unlike the beak of an antique galley; its stern, formed of
a triangular-shaped piece of oak, fitted in exactly like those of our
day. The planks were fastened to the ribs, partly by singularly shaped
oaken pins, and partly by what must have been square nails of some kind
of metal; these had entirely disappeared, but some of the oaken pins
remained. This boat had been upset, and was lying keel uppermost,
with the prow pointing straight up the river. In one of the canoes, a
beautifully polished celt or axe of greenstone was found, in the bottom
of another a plug of cork, which, as Mr. Geikie remarks, "could only
have come from the latitudes of Spain, Southern France, or Italy."*
(* Geikie, "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society"
volume 18 1862 page 224.)
There can be no doubt that some of these buried vessels are of far more
ancient date than others. Those most roughly hewn, may be relics of
the stone period; those more smoothly cut, of the bronze age; and the
regularly built boat of Bankton may perhaps come within the age of
iron. The occurrence of all of them in one and the same upraised marine
formation by no means implies that they belong to the same era, for
in the beds of all great rivers and estuaries, there are changes
continually in progress brought about by the deposition, removal, and
redeposition of gravel, sand, and fine sediment, and by the shifting of
the channel of the main currents from year to year, and from century
to century. All these it behoves the geologist and antiquary to bear in
mind, so as to be always on their guard, when they are endeavouring
to settle the relative date, whether of objects of art or of organic
remains embedded in any set of alluvial strata. Some judicious
observations on this head occur in Mr. Geikie's memoir above cited,
which are so much in point that I shall give them in full, and in his
own words.
"The relative position in the silt, from which the canoes were exhumed,
could help us little in any attempt to ascertain their relative ages,
unless they had been found vertically above each other. The varying
depths of an estuary, its banks of silt and sand, the set of its
currents, and the influence of its tides in scouring out alluvium
from some parts of its bottom and redepositing it in others, are
circumstances which require to be taken into account in all such
calculations. Mere coincidence of depth from the present surface of the
ground, which is tolerably uniform in level, by no means necessarily
proves contemporaneous deposition. Nor would such an inference follow
even from the occurrence of the remains in distant parts of the very
same stratum. A canoe might be capsized and sent to the bottom just
beneath low-water mark; another might experience a similar fate on
the following day, but in the middle of the channel. Both would become
silted up on the floor of the estuary; but as that floor would be
perhaps 20 feet deeper in the centre than towards the margin of the
river, the one canoe might actually be twenty feet deeper in the
alluvium than the other; and on the upheaval of the alluvial deposits,
if we were to argue merely from the depth at which the remains were
embedded, we should pronounce the canoe found at the one locality to be
immensely older than the other, seeing that the fine mud of the estuary
is deposited very slowly and that it must therefore have taken a long
period to form so great a thickness as 20 feet. Again, the tides and
currents of the estuary, by changing their direction, might sweep away a
considerable mass of alluvium from the bottom, laying bare a canoe that
may have foundered many centuries before. After the lapse of so long an
interval, another vessel might go to the bottom in the same locality and
be there covered up with the older one on the same general plane.
These two vessels, found in such a position, would naturally be classed
together as of the same age, and yet it is demonstrable that a very
long period may have elapsed between the date of the one and that of
the other. Such an association of these canoes, therefore, cannot be
regarded as proving synchronous deposition; nor, on the other hand, can
we affirm any difference of age from mere relative position, unless we
see one canoe actually buried beneath another."*
(* Geikie, "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society"
volume 18 1862, page 222.)
At the time when the ancient vessels, above described, were navigating
the waters where the city of Glasgow now stands, the whole of the low
lands which bordered the present estuary of the Clyde formed the bed of
a shallow sea. The emergence appears to have taken place gradually and
by intermittent movements, for Mr. Buchanan describes several narrow
terraces one above the other on the site of the city itself, with steep
intervening slopes composed of the laminated estuary formation. Each
terrace and steep slope probably mark pauses in the process of upheaval,
during which low cliffs were formed, with beaches at their base. Five
of the canoes were found within the precincts of the city at different
heights on or near such terraces.
As to the date of the upheaval, the greater part of it cannot be
assigned to the stone period, but must have taken place after tools of
metal had come into use.
Until lately, when attempts were made to estimate the probable antiquity
of such changes of level, it was confidently assumed, as a safe
starting-point, that no alteration had occurred in the relative level
of land and sea, in the central district of Scotland, since the
construction of the Roman or Pictish wall (the "Wall of Antonine"),
which reached from the Firth of Forth to that of the Clyde. The two
extremities, it was said, of this ancient structure, bear such a
relation to the present level of the two estuaries, that neither
subsidence nor elevation of the land could have occurred for seventeen
centuries at least.
But Mr. Geikie has lately shown that a depression of 25 feet on the
Forth would not lay the eastern extremity of the Roman wall at Carriden
under water, and he was therefore desirous of knowing whether the
western end of the same would be submerged by a similar amount of
subsidence. It has always been acknowledged that the wall terminated
upon an eminence called the Chapel Hill, near the village of West
Kilpatrick, on the Clyde. The foot of this hill, Mr. Geikie estimates to
be about 25 or 27 feet above high-water mark, so that a subsidence of 25
feet could not lay it under water. Antiquaries have sometimes wondered
that the Romans did not carry the wall farther west than this Chapel
Hill; but Mr. Geikie now suggests, in explanation, that all the low land
at present intervening between that point and the mouth of the Clyde,
was sixteen or seventeen centuries ago, washed by the tides at high
water.
The wall of Antonine, therefore, yields no evidence in favour of the
land having remained stationary since the time of the Romans, but on
the contrary, appears to indicate that since its erection the land has
actually risen. Recent explorations by Mr. Geikie and Dr. Young, of the
sites of the old Roman harbours along the southern margin of the Firth
of Forth, lead to similar inferences. In the first place, it has long
been known that there is a raised beach containing marine shells of
living littoral species, at a height of about 25 feet, at Leith, as well
as at other places along the coast above and below Edinburgh. Inveresk,
a few miles below that city, is the site of an ancient Roman port,
and if we suppose the sea at high water to have washed the foot of the
heights on which the town stood, the tide would have ascended far up the
valley of the Esk, and would have made the mouth of that river a safe
and commodious harbour; whereas, had it been a shoaling estuary, as at
present, it is difficult to see how the Romans should have made choice
of it as a port.
At Cramond, at the mouth of the river Almond, above Edinburgh, was
Alaterva, the chief Roman harbour on the southern coast of the Forth,
where numerous coins, urns, sculptured stones and the remnant of a
harbour have been detected. The old Roman quays built along what must
then have been the sea margin, have been found on what is now dry land,
and although some silt carried down in suspension by the waters of the
Forth may account for a part of the gain of low land, we yet require
an upward movement of about 20 feet to explain the growth of the dreary
expanse of mud now stretching along the shore and extending outwards,
where it attains its greatest breadth, well-nigh two miles, across which
vessels, even of light burden, can now only venture at full tide. Had
these shoals existed eighteen centuries ago, they would have prevented
the Romans from selecting this as their chief port; whereas, if the
land were now to sink 20 feet, Cramond would unquestionably be the best
natural harbour along the whole of the south side of the Forth.*
(* Geikie, "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal" for July
1861.)
Corresponding in level with the raised beach at Leith, above mentioned
(or about 25 feet above high-water mark), is the Carse of Stirling, a
low tract of land consisting of loamy and peaty beds, in which several
skeletons of whales of large size have been found. One of these was dug
up at Airthrie,* near Stirling, about a mile from the river, and 7 miles
from the sea.
(* Bald, "Edinburgh Philosophical Journal" 1 page 393 and
"Memoirs of the Wernerian Society" 3 page 327.)
Mr. Bald mentions that near it were found two pieces of stag's horn,
artificially cut, through one of which a hole, about an inch in
diameter, had been perforated. Another whale, 85 feet long, was found at
Dunmore, a few miles below Stirling,* which, like that of Airthrie, lay
about 20 feet above high-water mark.
(* "Edinburgh Philosophical Journal" 11 pages 220, 415.)
Three other skeletons of whales were found at Blair Drummond, between
the years 1819 and 1824, 7 miles up the estuary above Stirling,* also at
an elevation of between 20 and 30 feet above the sea. Near two of these
whales, pointed instruments of deer's horn were found, one of which
retained part of a wooden handle, probably preserved by having been
enclosed in peat. This weapon is now in the museum at Edinburgh.
(* "Memoirs of the Wernerian Society" volume 5 page 440.)
The position of these fossil whales and bone implements, and still more
of an iron anchor found in the Carse of Falkirk, below Stirling, shows
that the upheaval by which the raised beach of Leith was laid dry
extended far westward probably as far as the Clyde, where, as we have
seen, marine strata containing buried canoes rise to a similar height
above the sea.
The same upward movement which reached simultaneously east and west from
sea to sea was also felt as far north as the estuary of the Tay. This
may be inferred from the Celtic name of Inch being attached to many
hillocks, which rise above the general level of the alluvial plains,
implying that these eminences were once surrounded by water or marshy
ground. At various localities also in the silt of the Carse of Gowrie
iron implements have been found.
The raised beach, also containing a great number of marine shells of
recent species, traced up to a height of 14 feet above the sea by Mr.
W.J. Hamilton at Elie, on the southern coast of Fife, is doubtless
another effect of the same extensive upheaval.*
(* "Proceedings of the Geological Society" volume 2 1833
page 280.)
A similar movement would also account for some changes which antiquaries
have recorded much farther south, on the borders of the Solway Firth;
though in this case, as in that of the estuary of the Forth, the
conversion of sea into land has always been referred to the silting
up of estuaries, and not to upheaval. Thus Horsley insists on the
difficulty of explaining the position of certain Roman stations, on the
Solway, the Forth, and the Clyde, without assuming that the sea has been
excluded from certain areas which it formerly occupied.*
(* "Britannia" page 157 1860.)
On a review of the whole evidence, geological and archaeological,
afforded by the Scottish coast-line, we may conclude that the last
upheaval of 25 feet took place not only since the first human population
settled in the island; but long after metallic implements had come into
use, and there seems even a strong presumption in favour of the opinion
that the date of the elevation may have been subsequent to the Roman
occupation.
But the 25 feet rise is only the last stage of a long antecedent process
of elevation, for examples of Recent marine shells have been observed 40
feet and upwards above the sea in Ayrshire. At one of these localities,
Mr. Smith of Jordanhill informs me that a rude ornament made of cannel
coal has been found on the coast in the parish of Dundonald, lying 50
feet above the sea-level, on the surface of the boulder-clay or till,
and covered with gravel containing marine shells. If we suppose the
upward movement to have been uniform in central Scotland before and
after the Roman era, and assume that as 25 feet indicate seventeen
centuries, so 50 feet imply a lapse of twice that number, or 3400
years, we should then carry back the date of the ornament in question
to fifteen centuries before our era, or to the days of Pharaoh, and the
period usually assigned to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. [8]
But all such estimates must be considered, in the present state of
science, as tentative and conjectural, since the rate of movement of the
land may not have been uniform, and its direction not always upwards,
and there may have been long stationary periods, one of which of more
than usual duration seems indicated by the 50-foot raised beach, which
has been traced for vast distances along the western coast of Scotland.
COAST OF CORNWALL.
Sir H. De la Beche has adduced several proofs of changes of level,
in the course of the human period, in his "Report on the Geology of
Cornwall and Devon," 1839. He mentions (page 406) that several human
skulls and works of art, buried in an estuary deposit, were found in
mining gravel for tin at Pentuan, near St. Austell, the skulls lying at
the depth of 40 feet from the surface, and others at Carnon at the depth
of 53 feet. The overlying strata were marine, containing sea-shells
of living species, and bones of whales, besides the remains of several
living species of mammalia.
Other examples of works of art, such as stone hatchets, canoes,
and ships, buried in ancient river-beds in England, and in peat and
shell-marl, I have mentioned in my work before cited.
SWEDEN AND NORWAY.
In the same work I have shown that near Stockholm, in Sweden, there
occur, at slight elevations above the sea-level, horizontal beds
of sand, loam, and marl, containing the same peculiar assemblage of
testacea which now live in the brackish waters of the Baltic. Mingled
with these, at different depths, have been detected various works of art
implying a rude state of civilization, and some vessels built before the
introduction of iron, and even the remains of an ancient hut, the
marine strata containing it, which had been formed during a previous
depression, having been upraised, so that the upper beds are now 60 feet
higher than the surface of the Baltic. In the neighbourhood of these
recent strata, both to the north-west and south of Stockholm, other
deposits similar in mineral composition occur, which ascend to greater
heights, in which precisely the same assemblage of fossil shells is met
with, but without any intermixture, so far as is yet known, of human
bones or fabricated articles.
On the opposite or western coast of Sweden, at Uddevalla, Post-Tertiary
strata, containing recent shells, not of that brackish water character
peculiar to the Baltic, but such as now live in the Northern Ocean,
ascend to the height of 200 feet; and beds of clay and sand of the same
age attain elevations of 300 and even 600 feet in Norway, where they
have been usually described as "raised beaches." They are, however,
thick deposits of submarine origin, spreading far and wide, and filling
valleys in the granite and gneiss, just as the Tertiary formations, in
different parts of Europe, cover or fill depressions in the older rocks.
Although the fossil fauna characterising these upraised sands and clays
consists exclusively of existing northern species of testacea, it is
more than probable that they may not all belong to that division of the
Pleistocene strata which we are now considering. If the contemporary
mammalia were known, they would, in all likelihood, be found to be
referable, at least in part, to extinct species; for, according to Loven
(an able living naturalist of Norway), the species do not constitute
such an assemblage as now inhabits corresponding latitudes in the North
Sea. On the contrary, they decidedly represent a more arctic fauna. In
order to find the same species flourishing in equal abundance, or
in many cases to find them at all, we must go northwards to higher
latitudes than Uddevalla in Sweden, or even nearer the pole than Central
Norway.
Judging by the uniformity of climate now prevailing from century to
century, and the insensible rate of variation in the geographical
distribution of organic beings in our own times, we may presume that
an extremely lengthened period was required even for so slight a
modification in the range of the molluscous fauna, as that of which
the evidence is here brought to light. There are also other independent
reasons for suspecting that the antiquity of these deposits may be
indefinitely great as compared to the historical period. I allude to
their present elevation above the sea, some of them rising, in Norway,
to the height of 600 feet or more. The upward movement now in progress
in parts of Norway and Sweden extends, as I have elsewhere shown,*
throughout an area about 1000 miles north and south, and for an unknown
distance east and west, the amount of elevation always increasing as we
proceed towards the North Cape, where it is said to equal 5 feet in a
century.
(* "Principles" 9th edition chapter 30.)
If we could assume that there had been an average of 2 1/2 feet in each
hundred years for the last fifty centuries, this would give an elevation
of 125 feet in that period. In other words, it would follow that the
shores, and a considerable area of the former bed of the North Sea, had
been uplifted vertically to that amount, and converted into land in
the course of the last 5000 years. A mean rate of continuous vertical
elevation of 2 1/2 feet in a century would, I conceive, be a high
average; yet, even if this be assumed, it would require 24,000 years for
parts of the sea-coast of Norway, where the Pleistocene marine strata
occur, to attain the height of 600 feet. [9]
CHAPTER 4. -- PLEISTOCENE PERIOD--BONES OF MAN AND EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN
BELGIAN CAVERNS.
Earliest Discoveries in Caves of Languedoc of Human Remains with
Bones of extinct Mammalia.
Researches in 1833 of Dr. Schmerling in the Liege Caverns.
Scattered Portions of Human Skeletons associated with Bones
of Elephant and Rhinoceros.
Distribution and probable Mode of Introduction of the Bones.
Implements of Flint and Bone.
Schmerling's Conclusions as to the Antiquity of Man ignored.
Present State of the Belgian Caves.
Human Bones recently found in Cave of Engihoul.
Engulfed Rivers.
Stalagmitic Crust.
Antiquity of the Human Remains in Belgium how proved.
Having hitherto considered those formations in which both the fossil
shells and the mammalia are of living species, we may now turn our
attention to those of older date, in which the shells being all recent,
some of the accompanying mammalia are extinct, or belong to species not
known to have lived within the times of history or tradition.
DISCOVERIES OF MM. TOURNAL AND CHRISTOL IN 1828 IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE.
In the "Principles of Geology," when treating of the fossil remains
found in alluvium and the mud of caverns, I gave an account in 1832
of the investigations made by MM. Tournal and Christol in the South of
France.*
(* 1st edition volume 2 chapter 14 1832, and 9th edition
page 738, 1853.)
M. Tournal stated in his memoir that in the cavern of Bize, in the
department of the Aude, he had found human bones and teeth, together
with fragments of rude pottery, in the same mud and breccia cemented by
stalagmite in which land-shells of living species were embedded, and the
bones of mammalia, some of extinct, others of recent species. The human
bones were declared by his fellow-labourer, M. Marcel de Serres, to be
in the same chemical condition as those of the accompanying quadrupeds.*
(* "Annales des Sciences Naturelles" tome 15 1828 page 348.)
Speaking of these fossils of the Bize cavern five years later, M.
Tournal observed that they could not be referred, as some suggested,
to a "diluvial catastrophe," for they evidently had not been washed in
suddenly by a transient flood, but must have been introduced gradually,
together with the enveloping mud and pebbles, at successive periods.*
(* "Annales de Chimie et de Physique" 1833 page 161.)
M. Christol, who was engaged at the same time in similar researches in
another part of Languedoc, published an account of them a year later,
in which he described some human bones, as occurring in the cavern of
Pondres, near Nimes, in the same mud with the bones of an extinct hyaena
and rhinoceros.*
(* Christol, "Notice sur les Ossements humains des Cavernes
du Gard" Montpellier 1829.)
The cavern was in this instance filled up to the roof with mud and
gravel, in which fragments of two kinds of pottery were detected, the
lowest and rudest near the bottom of the cave, below the level of the
extinct mammalia.
It has never been questioned that the hyaena and rhinoceros found by M.
Christol were of extinct species; but whether the animals enumerated
by M. Tournal might not all of them be referred to quadrupeds which
are known to have been living in Europe in the historical period seems
doubtful. They were said to consist of a stag, an antelope, and a
goat, all named by M. Marcel de Serres as new; but the majority of
palaeontologists do not agree with this opinion. Still it is true, as
M. Lartet remarks, that the fauna of the cavern of Bize must be of very
high antiquity, as shown by the presence, not only of the Lithuanian
aurochs (Bison europaeus), but also of the reindeer, which has not been
an inhabitant of the South of France in historical times, and which,
in that country, is almost everywhere associated, whether in ancient
alluvium or in the mud of caverns, with the mammoth.
In my work before cited,* I stated that M. Desnoyers, an observer
equally well versed in geology and archaeology, had disputed the
conclusion arrived at by MM. Tournal and Christol, that the fossil
rhinoceros, hyaena, bear, and other lost species had once been
inhabitants of France contemporaneously with Man.
(* "Principles" 9th edition page 739.)
"The flint hatchets and arrow-heads," he said, "and the pointed bones
and coarse pottery of many French and English caves, agree precisely in
character with those found in the tumuli, and under the dolmens (rude
altars of unhewn stone) of the primitive inhabitants of Gaul, Britain,
and Germany. The human bones, therefore, in the caves which are
associated with such fabricated objects, must belong not to antediluvian
periods, but to a people in the same stage of civilization as those who
constructed the tumuli and altars."
"In the Gaulish monuments," he added, "we find, together with the
objects of industry above mentioned, the bones of wild and domestic
animals of species now inhabiting Europe, particularly of deer, sheep,
wild boars, dogs, horses, and oxen. This fact has been ascertained in
Quercy and other provinces; and it is supposed by antiquaries that the
animals in question were placed beneath the Celtic altars in memory of
sacrifices offered to the Gaulish divinity Hesus, and in the tombs to
commemorate funeral repasts, and also from a superstition prevalent
among savage nations, which induces them to lay up provisions for
the manes of the dead in a future life. But in none of these ancient
monuments have any bones been found of the elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena,
tiger, and other quadrupeds, such as are found in caves, which might
certainly have been expected had these species continued to flourish at
the time that this part of Gaul was inhabited by Man."*
(* Desnoyers, "Bulletin de la Societe Geologique de France"
tome 2 page 252; and article on Caverns, "Dictionnaire
Universelle d'Histoire Naturelle" Paris 1845.)
After giving no small weight to the arguments of M. Desnoyers, and
the writings of Dr. Buckland on the same subject, and myself visiting
several caves in Germany, I came to the opinion that the human bones
mixed with those of extinct animals, in osseous breccias and cavern
mud, in different parts of Europe, were probably not coeval. The caverns
having been at one period the dens of wild beasts, and having served
at other times as places of human habitation, worship, sepulture,
concealment, or defence, one might easily conceive that the bones of Man
and those of animals, which were strewed over the floors of subterranean
cavities, or which had fallen into tortuous rents connecting them
with the surface, might, when swept away by floods, be mingled in one
promiscuous heap in the same ossiferous mud or breccia.*
(* "Principles" 9th edition page 740.)
That such intermixtures have really taken place in some caverns, and
that geologists have occasionally been deceived, and have assigned to
one and the same period fossils which had really been introduced at
successive times, will readily be conceded. But of late years we have
obtained convincing proofs, as we shall see in the sequel, that the
mammoth, and many other extinct mammalian species very common in caves,
occur also in undisturbed alluvium, embedded in such a manner with
works of art, as to leave no room for doubt that Man and the mammoth
coexisted; Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to
reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward
in proof of the high antiquity of Man. With a view of re-examining this
evidence, I have lately explored several caverns in Belgium and other
countries, and re-read the principal memoirs and treatises treating of
the fossil remains preserved in them, the results of which inquiries I
shall now proceed to lay before the reader.
RESEARCHES, IN 1833-1834, OF DR. SCHMERLING IN THE CAVERNS NEAR LIEGE.
The late Dr. Schmerling of Liege, a skilful anatomist and
palaeontologist, after devoting several years to the exploring of the
numerous ossiferous caverns which border the valleys of the Meuse and
its tributaries, published two volumes descriptive of the contents of
more than forty caverns. One of these volumes consisted of an atlas of
plates, illustrative of the fossil bones.*
(* "Recherches sur les Ossements fossiles decouverts dans
les Cavernes de la Province de Liege", Liege 1833-1834.)
Many of the caverns had never before been entered by scientific
observers, and their floors were encrusted with unbroken stalagmite. At
a very early stage of his investigations, Dr. Schmerling found the bones
of Man so rolled and scattered as to preclude all idea of their having
been intentionally buried on the spot. He also remarked that they were
of the same colour, and in the same condition as to the amount of animal
matter contained in them, as those of the accompanying animals, some
of which, like the cave-bear, hyaena, elephant, and rhinoceros, were
extinct; others, like the wild cat, beaver, wild boar, roe-deer, wolf,
and hedgehog, still extant. The fossils were lighter than fresh bones,
except such as had their pores filled with carbonate of lime, in which
case they were often much heavier. The human remains of most frequent
occurrence were teeth detached from the jaw, and the carpal, metacarpal,
tarsal, metatarsal, and phalangeal bones separated from the rest of the
skeleton. The corresponding bones of the cave-bear, the most abundant
of the accompanying mammalia, were also found in the Liege caverns
more commonly than any others, and in the same scattered condition.
Occasionally, some of the long bones of mammalia were observed to
have been first broken across, and then reunited or cemented again by
stalagmite, as they lay on the floor of the cave.
No gnawed bones nor any coprolites were found by Schmerling. He
therefore inferred that the caverns of the province of Liege had not
been the dens of wild beasts, but that their organic and inorganic
contents had been swept into them by streams communicating with the
surface of the country. The bones, he suggested, may often have been
rolled in the beds of such streams before they reached their underground
destination. To the same agency the introduction of many land-shells
dispersed through the cave-mud was ascribed, such as Helix nemoralis,
H. lapicida, H. pomatia, and others of living species. Mingled with such
shells, in some rare instances, the bones of freshwater fish, and of a
snake (Coluber), as well as of several birds, were detected.
The occurrence here and there of bones in a very perfect state, or of
several bones belonging to the same skeleton in natural juxtaposition,
and having all their most delicate apophyses uninjured, while many
accompanying bones in the same breccia were rolled, broken, or decayed,
was accounted for by supposing that portions of carcasses were sometimes
floated in during floods while still clothed with their flesh. No
example was discovered of an entire skeleton, not even of one of the
smaller mammalia, the bones of which are usually the least injured.
The incompleteness of each skeleton was especially ascertained in regard
to the human subjects, Dr. Schmerling being careful, whenever a fragment
of such presented itself, to explore the cavern himself, and see whether
any other bones of the same skeleton could be found. In the Engis
cavern, distant about eight miles to the south-west of Liege, on the
left bank of the Meuse, the remains of at least three human individuals
were disinterred. The skull of one of these, that of a young person, was
embedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. It was entire but so fragile,
that nearly all of it fell to pieces during its extraction. Another
skull, that of an adult individual, and the only one preserved by Dr.
Schmerling in a sufficient state of integrity to enable the anatomist to
speculate on the race to which it belonged, was buried 5 feet deep in a
breccia, in which the tooth of a rhinoceros, several bones of a horse,
and some of the reindeer, together with some ruminants, occurred. This
skull, now in the museum of the University of Liege, is figured in
Chapter 5 (Figure 2), where further observations will be offered on
its anatomical character, after a fuller account of the contents of the
Liege caverns has been laid before the reader.
On the right bank of the Meuse, on the opposite side of the river to
Engis, is the cavern of Engihoul. Bones of extinct animals mingled with
those of Man were observed to abound in both caverns; but with this
difference, that whereas in the Engis cave there were several human
crania and very few other bones, in Engihoul there occurred numerous
bones of the extremities belonging to at least three human individuals,
and only two small fragments of a cranium. The like capricious
distribution held good in other caverns, especially with reference to
the cave-bear, the most frequent of the extinct mammalia. Thus, for
example in the cave of Chokier, skulls of the bear were few, and other
parts of the skeleton abundant, whereas in several other caverns these
proportions were exactly reversed, while at Goffontaine skulls of
the bear and other parts of the skeleton were found in their natural
numerical proportions. Speaking generally, it may be said that human
bones, where any were met with, occurred at all depths in the cave-mud
and gravel, sometimes above and sometimes below those of the bear,
elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena, etc.
Some rude flint implements of the kind commonly called flint knives or
flakes, of a triangular form in the cross section (as in Figure 14),
were found by Schmerling dispersed generally through the cave-mud, but
he was too much engrossed with his osteological inquiries to collect
them diligently. He preserved some few of them, however, which I have
seen in the museum at Liege. He also discovered in the cave of Chokier,
2 1/2 miles south-west from Liege, a polished and jointed needle-shaped
bone, with a hole pierced obliquely through it at the base; such a
cavity, he observed, as had never given passage to an artery. This
instrument was embedded in the same matrix with the remains of a
rhinoceros.*
(* Schmerling part 2 page 177.)
Another cut bone and several artificially-shaped flints were found in
the Engis cave, near the human skulls before alluded to. Schmerling
observed, and we shall have to refer to the fact in the sequel (Chapter
8), that although in some forty fossiliferous caves explored by
him human bones were the exception, yet these flint implements were
universal, and he added that "none of them could have been subsequently
introduced, being precisely in the same position as the remains of
the accompanying animals." "I therefore," he continues, "attach great
importance to their presence; for even if I had not found the human
bones under conditions entirely favourable to their being considered
as belonging to the antediluvian epoch, proofs of Man's existence would
still have been supplied by the cut bones and worked flints."*
(* Schmerling, part 2 page 179.)
Dr. Schmerling, therefore, had no hesitation in concluding from the
various facts ascertained by him, that Man once lived in the Liege
district contemporaneously with the cave-bear and several other extinct
species of quadrupeds. But he was much at a loss when he attempted to
invent a theory to explain the former state of the fauna of the region
now drained by the Meuse; for he shared the notion, then very prevalent
among naturalists, that the mammoth and the hyaena* were beasts of a
warmer climate than that now proper to Western Europe.
(* Ibid. part 2 pages 70 and 96.)
In order to account for the presence of such "tropical species," he was
half-inclined to imagine that they had been transported by a flood from
some distant region; then again he raised the question whether they
might not have been washed out of an older alluvium, which may have
pre-existed in the neighbourhood. This last hypothesis was directly at
variance with his own statements, that the remains of the mammoth and
hyaena were identical in appearance, colour, and chemical condition with
those of the bear and other associated fossil animals, none of which
exhibited signs of having been previously enveloped in any dissimilar
matrix. Another enigma which led Schmerling astray in some of his
geological speculations was the supposed presence of the agouti, a
South American rodent, "proper to the torrid zone." My friend M. Lartet,
guided by Schmerling's figures of the teeth of this species, suggests,
and I have little doubt with good reason, that they appertain to the
porcupine, a genus found fossil in Pleistocene deposits of certain
caverns in the south of France.
In the year 1833, I passed through Liege, on my way to the Rhine, and
conversed with Dr. Schmerling, who showed me his splendid collection,
and when I expressed some incredulity respecting the alleged antiquity
of the fossil human bones, he pointedly remarked that if I doubted their
having been contemporaneous with the bear or rhinoceros, on the ground
of Man being a species of more modern date, I ought equally to doubt the
co-existence of all the other living species, such as the red deer, roe,
wild cat, wild boar, wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog,
mole, dormouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones
of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately through the
same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The year after this conversation
I cited Schmerling's opinions, and the facts bearing on the antiquity of
Man, in the 3rd edition of my "Principles of Geology" (page 161, 1834),
and in succeeding editions, without pretending to call in question their
trustworthiness, but at the same time without giving them the weight
which I now consider they were entitled to. He had accumulated ample
evidence to prove that Man had been introduced into the earth at an
earlier period than geologists were then willing to believe.
One positive fact, it will be said, attested by so competent a witness,
ought to have outweighed any amount of negative testimony, previously
accumulated, respecting the non-occurrence elsewhere of human remains
in formations of the like antiquity. In reply, I can only plead that
a discovery which seems to contradict the general tenor of previous
investigations is naturally received with much hesitation. To have
undertaken in 1832, with a view of testing its truth, to follow the
Belgian philosopher through every stage of his observations and proofs,
would have been no easy task even for one well-skilled in geology and
osteology. To be let down, as Schmerling was, day after day, by a rope
tied to a tree, so as to slide to the foot of the first opening of the
Engis cave,* where the best-preserved human skulls were found; and,
after thus gaining access to the first subterranean gallery, to creep on
all fours through a contracted passage leading to larger chambers, there
to superintend by torchlight, week after week and year after year,
the workmen who were breaking through the stalagmitic crust as hard as
marble, in order to remove piece by piece the underlying bone-breccia
nearly as hard; to stand for hours with one's feet in the mud, and
with water dripping from the roof on one's head, in order to mark the
position and guard against the loss of each single bone of a skeleton;
and at length, after finding leisure, strength, and courage for all
these operations, to look forward, as the fruits of one's labour, to the
publication of unwelcome intelligence, opposed to the prepossessions
of the scientific as well as of the unscientific public--when these
circumstances are taken into account, we need scarcely wonder, not only
that a passing traveller failed to stop and scrutinise the evidence,
but that a quarter of a century should have elapsed before even the
neighbouring professors of the University of Liege came forth to
vindicate the truthfulness of their indefatigable and clear-sighted
countryman.
(* Schmerling part 1 page 30.)
In 1860, when I revisited Liege, twenty-six years after my interview
with Schmerling, I found that several of the caverns described by him
had in the interval been annihilated. Not a vestige, for example, of the
caves of Engis, Chokier, and Goffontaine remained. The calcareous stone,
in the heart of which the cavities once existed, had been quarried away,
and removed bodily for building and lime-making. Fortunately, a great
part of the Engihoul cavern, situated on the right bank of the Meuse,
was still in the same state as when Schmerling delved into it in 1831,
and drew from it the bones of three human skeletons. I determined,
therefore, to examine it, and was so fortunate as to obtain the
assistance of a zealous naturalist of Liege, Professor Malaise, who
accompanied me to the cavern, where we engaged some workmen to break
through the crust of stalagmite, so that we could search for bones in
the undisturbed earth beneath. Bones and teeth of the cave-bear were
soon found, and several other extinct quadrupeds which Schmerling has
enumerated. My companion, continuing the work perseveringly for weeks
after my departure, succeeded at length in extracting from the same
deposit, at the depth of 2 feet below the crust of stalagmite, three
fragments of a human skull, and two perfect lower jaws with teeth, all
associated in such a manner with the bones of bears, large pachyderms,
and ruminants, and so precisely resembling these in colour and state of
preservation, as to leave no doubt in his mind that Man was contemporary
with the extinct animals. Professor Malaise has given figures of the
human remains in the "Bulletin" of the Royal Academy of Belgium for
1860.*
(* Volume 10 page 546.)
The rock in which the Liege caverns occur belongs generally to the
Carboniferous or Mountain Limestone, in some few cases only to the older
Devonian formation. Whenever the work of destruction has not gone too
far, magnificent sections, sometimes 200 and 300 feet in height, are
exposed to view. They confirm Schmerling's doctrine, that most of the
materials, organic and inorganic, now filling the caverns, have been
washed into them through narrow vertical or oblique fissures, the upper
extremities of which are choked up with soil and gravel, and would
scarcely ever be discoverable at the surface, especially in so wooded
a country. Among the sections obtained by quarrying, one of the
finest which I saw was in the beautiful valley of Fond du Foret, above
Chaudefontaine, not far from the village of Magnee, where one of the
rents communicating with the surface has been filled up to the brim with
rounded and half-rounded stones, angular pieces of limestone and shale,
besides sand and mud, together with bones, chiefly of the cave-bear.
Connected with this main duct, which is from 1 to 2 feet in width, are
several minor ones, each from 1 to 3 inches wide, also extending to the
upper country or table-land, and choked up with similar materials. They
are inclined at angles of 30 and 40 degrees, their walls being generally
coated with stalactite, pieces of which have here and there been broken
off and mingled with the contents of the rents, thus helping to explain
why we so often meet with detached pieces of that substance in the mud
and breccia of the Belgian caves. It is not easy to conceive that a
solid horizontal floor of hard stalagmite should, after its formation,
be broken up by running water; but when the walls of steep and tortuous
rents, serving as feeders to the principal fissures and to inferior
vaults and galleries are encrusted with stalagmite, some of the
incrustation may readily be torn up when heavy fragments of rock are
hurried by a flood through passages inclined at angles of 30 or 40
degrees.
The decay and decomposition of the fossil bones seem to have been
arrested in most of the caves by a constant supply of water charged with
carbonate of lime, which dripped from the roofs while the caves were
becoming gradually filled up. By similar agency the mud, sand, and
pebbles were usually consolidated.
The following explanation of this phenomenon has been suggested by the
eminent chemist Liebig. On the surface of Franconia, where the limestone
abounds in caverns, is a fertile soil in which vegetable matter is
continually decaying. This mould or humus, being acted on by moisture
and air, evolves carbonic acid, which is dissolved by rain. The rain
water, thus impregnated, permeates the porous limestone, dissolves
a portion of it, and afterwards, when the excess of carbonic acid
evaporates in the caverns, parts with the calcareous matter and forms
stalactite. So long as water flows, even occasionally, through a suite
of caverns, no layer of pure stalagmite can be produced; hence the
formation of such a layer is generally an event posterior in date to the
cessation of the old system of drainage, an event which might be brought
about by an earthquake causing new fissures, or by the river wearing its
way down to a lower level, and thenceforth running in a new channel.
In all the subterranean cavities, more than forty in number, explored
by Schmerling, he only observed one cave, namely that of Chokier, where
there were two regular layers of stalagmite, divided by fossiliferous
cave-mud. In this instance, we may suppose that the stream, after
flowing for a long period at one level, cut its way down to an inferior
suite of caverns, and, flowing through them for centuries, choked them
up with debris; after which it rose once more to its original higher
level: just as in the Mountain Limestone district of Yorkshire some
rivers, habitually absorbed by a "swallow hole," are occasionally unable
to discharge all their water through it; in which case they rise and
rush through a higher subterranean passage, which was at some former
period in the regular line of drainage, as is often attested by the
fluviatile gravel still contained in it.
There are now in the basin of the Meuse, not far from Liege, several
examples of engulfed brooks and rivers: some of them, like that of St.
Hadelin, east of Chaudefontaine, which reappears after an underground
course of a mile or two; others, like the Vesdre, which is lost near
Goffontaine, and after a time re-emerges; some, again, like the torrent
near Magnee, which, after entering a cave, never again comes to the day.
In the season of floods such streams are turbid at their entrance, but
clear as a mountain-spring where they issue again; so that they must
be slowly filling up cavities in the interior with mud, sand, pebbles,
snail-shells, and the bones of animals which may be carried away during
floods.
The manner in which some of the large thigh and shank bones of the
rhinoceros and other pachyderms are rounded, while some of the smaller
bones of the same creatures, and of the hyaena, bear, and horse, are
reduced to pebbles, shows that they were often transported for some
distance in the channels of torrents, before they found a resting-place.
When we desire to reason or speculate on the probable antiquity of human
bones found fossil in such situations as the caverns near Liege, there
are two classes of evidence to which we may appeal for our guidance.
First, considerations of the time required to allow of many species
of carnivorous and herbivorous animals, which flourished in the cave
period, becoming first scarce, and then so entirely extinct as we have
seen that they had become before the era of the Danish peat and Swiss
lake dwellings; secondly, the great number of centuries necessary for
the conversion of the physical geography of the Liege district from its
ancient to its present configuration; so many old underground channels,
through which brooks and rivers flowed in the cave period, being now
laid dry and choked up.
The great alterations which have taken place in the shape of the valley
of the Meuse and some of its tributaries are often demonstrated by the
abrupt manner in which the mouths of fossiliferous caverns open in the
face of perpendicular precipices 200 feet or more in height above
the present streams. There appears also, in many cases, to be such a
correspondence in the openings of caverns on opposite sides of some of
the valleys, both large and small, as to incline one to suspect that
they originally belonged to a series of tunnels and galleries which
were continuous before the present system of drainage came into play, or
before the existing valleys were scooped out. Other signs of subsequent
fluctuations are afforded by gravel containing elephant's bones at
slight elevations above the Meuse and several of its tributaries. It may
be objected that, according to the present rate of change, no lapse of
ages would suffice to bring about such revolutions in physical geography
as we are here contemplating. This may be true. It is more than probable
that the rate of change was once far more active than it is now in the
basin of the Meuse. Some of the nearest volcanoes, namely, those of
the Lower Eifel about 60 miles to the eastward, seem to have been in
eruption in Pleistocene times, and may perhaps have been connected
and coeval with repeated risings or sinkings of the land in the Liege
district. It might be said, with equal truth, that according to the
present course of events, no series of ages would suffice to reproduce
such an assemblage of cones and craters as those of the Eifel (near
Andernach, for example); and yet some of them may be of sufficiently
modern date to belong to the era when Man was contemporary with the
mammoth and rhinoceros in the basin of the Meuse.
But, although we may be unable to estimate the minimum of time required
for the changes in physical geography above alluded to, we cannot
fail to perceive that the duration of the period must have been very
protracted, and that other ages of comparative inaction may have
followed, separating the Pleistocene from the historical periods, and
constituting an interval no less indefinite in its duration.
CHAPTER 5. -- PLEISTOCENE PERIOD--FOSSIL HUMAN SKULLS OF THE NEANDERTHAL
AND ENGIS CAVES.
Human Skeleton found in Cave near Dusseldorf.
Its geological Position and probable Age.
Its abnormal and ape-like Characters.
Fossil Human Skull of the Engis Cave near Liege.
Professor Huxley's Description of these Skulls.
Comparison of each, with extreme Varieties of the native
Australian Race.
Range of Capacity in the Human and Simian Brains.
Skull from Borreby in Denmark.
Conclusions of Professor Huxley.
Bearing of the peculiar Characters of the Neanderthal Skull
on the Hypothesis of Transmutation.
FOSSIL HUMAN SKELETON OF THE NEANDERTHAL CAVE NEAR DUSSELDORF.
Before I speak more particularly of the opinions which anatomists have
expressed respecting the osteological characters of the human skull from
Engis, near Liege, mentioned in the last chapter and described by Dr.
Schmerling, it will be desirable to say something of the geological
position of another skull, or rather skeleton, which, on account of its
peculiar conformation, has excited no small sensation in the last few
years. I allude to the skull found in 1857 in a cave situated in that
part of the valley of the Dussel, near Dusseldorf, which is called the
Neanderthal. The spot is a deep and narrow ravine about 70 English miles
north-east of the region of the Liege caverns treated of in the last
chapter, and close to the village and railway station of Hochdal between
Dusseldorf and Elberfeld. The cave occurs in the precipitous southern or
left side of the winding ravine, about sixty feet above the stream,
and a hundred feet below the top of the cliff. The accompanying section
(Figure 1.) will give the reader an idea of its position.
[Illustration: Figure 1]
When Dr. Fuhlrott of Elberfeld first examined the cave, he found it to
be high enough to allow a man to enter. The width was 7 or 8 feet, and
the length or depth 15. I visited the spot in 1860, in company with Dr.
Fuhlrott, who had the kindness to come expressly from Elberfeld to be my
guide, and who brought with him the original fossil skull, and a cast
of the same, which he presented to me. In the interval of three years,
between 1857 and 1860, the ledge of rock, f, on which the cave opened,
and which was originally 20 feet wide, had been almost entirely quarried
away, and, at the rate at which the work of dilapidation was proceeding,
its complete destruction seemed near at hand.
(FIGURE 1. SECTION OF THE NEANDERTHAL CAVE NEAR DUSSELDORF.
a. Cavern 60 feet above the Dussel, and 100 feet below the
surface of the country at c.
b. Loam covering the floor of the cave near the bottom of which
the human skeleton was found.
b, c. Rent connecting the cave with the upper surface of the
country.
d. Superficial sandy loam.
e. Devonian limestone.
f. Terrace, or ledge of rock.)
In the limestone are many fissures, one of which, still partially filled
with mud and stones, is represented in the section at a c as continuous
from the cave to the upper surface of the country. Through this passage
the loam, and possibly the human body to which the bones belonged, may
have been washed into the cave below. The loam, which covered the uneven
bottom of the cave, was sparingly mixed with rounded fragments of chert,
and was very similar in composition to that covering the general surface
of that region.
There was no crust of stalagmite overlying the mud in which the human
skeleton was found, and no bones of other animals in the mud with the
skeleton; but just before our visit in 1860 the tusk of a bear had
been met with in some mud in a lateral embranchment of the cave, in a
situation precisely similar to b, Figure 1, and on a level corresponding
with that of the human skeleton. This tusk, shown us by the proprietor
of the cave, was 2 1/2 inches long and quite perfect; but whether it was
referable to a recent or extinct species of bear, I could not determine.
From a printed letter of Dr. Fuhlrott we learn that on removing the
loam, which was five feet thick, from the cave, the human skull was
first noticed near the entrance, and, further in, the other bones lying
in the same horizontal plane. It is supposed that the skeleton was
complete, but the workmen, ignorant of its value, scattered and lost
most of the bones, preserving only the larger ones.*
(* Fuhlrott, Letter to Professor Schaaffhausen, cited
"Natural History Review" Number 2 page 156. See also
"Naturhistorischer Verein" Bonn 1859.)
The cranium, which Dr. Fuhlrott showed me, was covered both on its outer
and inner surface, and especially on the latter, with a profusion of
dendritical crystallisations, and some other bones of the skeleton were
ornamented in the same way. These markings, as Dr. Hermann von Meyer
observes, afford no sure criterion of antiquity, for they have been
observed on Roman bones. Nevertheless, they are more common in bones
that have been long embedded in the earth. The skull and bones,
moreover, of the Neanderthal skeleton had lost so much of their animal
matter as to adhere strongly to the tongue, agreeing in this respect
with the ordinary condition of fossil remains of the Pleistocene period.
On the whole, I think it probable that this fossil may be of about the
same age as those found by Schmerling in the Liege caverns; but, as no
other animal remains were found with it, there is no proof that it
may not be newer. Its position lends no countenance whatever to the
supposition of its being more ancient.
When the skull and other parts of the skeleton were first exhibited at
a German scientific meeting at Bonn, in 1857, some doubts were
expressed by several naturalists, whether it was truly human. Professor
Schaaffhausen, who, with the other experienced zoologists, did not share
these doubts, observed that the cranium, which included the frontal
bone, both parietals, part of the squamous, and the upper third of the
occipital, was of unusual size and thickness, the forehead narrow and
very low, and the projection of the supra-orbital ridges enormously
great. He also stated that the absolute and relative length of the thigh
bone, humerus, radius, and ulna, agreed well with the dimensions of a
European individual of like stature at the present day; but that the
thickness of the bones was very extraordinary, and the elevations and
depressions for the attachment of muscles were developed in an unusual
degree. Some of the ribs, also, were of a singularly rounded shape and
abrupt curvature, which was supposed to indicate great power in the
thoracic muscles.*
(* Professor Schaaffhausen's "Memoir" translated "Natural
History Review" April 1861.)
In the same memoir, the Prussian anatomist remarks that the depression
of the forehead (See Figure 3.), is not due to any artificial
flattening, such as is practised in various modes by barbarous nations
in the Old and New World, the skull being quite symmetrical, and showing
no indication of counter-pressure at the occiput; whereas, according
to Morton, in the Flat-heads of the Columbia, the frontal and parietal
bones are always unsymmetrical.*
(* "Natural History Review" Number 2 page 160.)
On the whole, Professor Schaaffhausen concluded that the individual
to whom the Neanderthal skull belonged must have been distinguished by
small cerebral development, and uncommon strength of corporeal frame.
When on my return to England I showed the cast of the cranium to
Professor Huxley, he remarked at once that it was the most ape-like
skull he had ever beheld. Mr. Busk, after giving a translation of
Professor Schaaffhausen's memoir in the "Natural History Review," added
some valuable comments of his own on the characters in which this skull
approached that of the gorilla and chimpanzee.
Professor Huxley afterwards studied the cast with the object of
assisting me to give illustrations of it in this work, and in doing so
discovered what had not previously been observed, that it was quite
as abnormal in the shape of its occipital as in that of its frontal
or superciliary region. Before citing his words on the subject, I will
offer a few remarks on the Engis skull which the same anatomist has
compared with that of the Neanderthal. [10]
FOSSIL SKULL OF THE ENGIS CAVE NEAR LIEGE.
Among six or seven human skeletons, portions of which were collected by
Dr. Schmerling from three or four caverns near Liege, embedded in the
same matrix with the remains of the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyaena,
and other extinct quadrupeds, the most perfect skull, as I have before
stated, was that of an adult individual found in the cavern of Engis.
This skull, Dr. Schmerling figured in his work, observing that it was
too imperfect to enable the anatomist to determine the facial angle, but
that one might infer, from the narrowness of the frontal portion, that
it belonged to an individual of small intellectual development. He
speculated on its Ethiopian affinities, but not confidently, observing
truly that it would require many more specimens to enable an anatomist
to arrive at sound conclusions on such a point. M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire
and other osteologists, who examined the specimen, denied that it
resembled a negro's skull. When I saw the original in the museum at
Liege, I invited Dr. Spring, one of the professors of the university, to
whom we are indebted for a valuable memoir on the human bones found in
the cavern of Chauvaux, near Namur, to have a cast made of this Engis
skull. He not only had the kindness to comply with my request, but
rendered a service to the scientific world by adding to the original
cranium several detached fragments which Dr. Schmerling had obtained
from Engis, and which were found to fit in exactly, so that the cast
represented at Figure 2 is more complete than that given in the first
plate of Schmerling's work. It exhibits on the right side the position
of the auditory foramen (see Figure 6), which was not included in
Schmerling's figure. Mr. Busk, when he saw this cast, remarked to
me that, although the forehead was, as Schmerling had truly stated,
somewhat narrow, it might nevertheless be matched by the skulls of
individuals of European race, an observation since fully borne out by
measurements, as will be seen in the sequel.
OBSERVATIONS BY PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE HUMAN SKULLS OF ENGIS AND THE
NEANDERTHAL.
[Illustration: Figure 2]
"The Engis skull, as originally figured by Professor Schmerling, was in
a very imperfect state; but other fragments have since been added to it
by the care of Dr. Spring, and the cast upon which my observations are
based (Figure 2) exhibits the frontal, parietal, and occipital regions,
as far as the middle of the occipital foramen, with the squamous and
mastoid portions of the right temporal bone entire, or nearly so, while
the left temporal bone is wanting. From the middle of the occipital
foramen to the middle of the roof of each orbit, the base of the skull
is destroyed, and the facial bones are entirely absent.
"The extreme length of the skull is 7.7 inches, and as its extreme
breadth is not more than 5.25, its form is decidedly dolichocephalic.
At the same time its height (4 3/4 inches from the plane of the
glabello-occipital line (a d) to the vertex) is good, and the forehead
is well arched; so that while the horizontal circumference of the skull
is about 20 1/2 inches, the longitudinal arc from the nasal spine of
the frontal bone to the occipital protuberance (d) measures about 13 3/4
inches. The transverse arc from one auditory foramen to the other across
the middle of the sagittal suture measures about 13 inches. The sagittal
suture (b c) is 5 1/2 inches in length. The superciliary prominences
are well, but not excessively, developed, and are separated by a median
depression in the region of the glabella. They indicate large frontal
sinuses. If a line joining the glabella and the occipital protuberance
(a d) be made horizontal, no part of the occiput projects more than
1/10th of an inch behind the posterior extremity of that line; and the
upper edge of the auditory foramen is almost in contact with the same
line, or rather with one drawn parallel to it on the outer surface of
the skull.
(FIGURE 2. SIDE VIEW OF THE CAST OF PART OF A HUMAN SKULL
FOUND BY DR. SCHMERLING EMBEDDED AMONGST THE REMAINS OF
EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN THE CAVE OF ENGIS, NEAR LIEGE.
a. Superciliary ridge and glabella.
b. Coronal suture.
c. The apex of the lamboidal suture.
d. The occipital protuberance.)
"The Neanderthal skull, with which also I am acquainted only by means
of Professor Schaaffhausen's drawings of an excellent cast and of
photographs, is so extremely different in appearance from the Engis
cranium, that it might well be supposed to belong to a distinct race
of mankind. It is 8 inches in extreme length and 5.75 inches in extreme
breadth, but only measures 3.4 inches from the glabello-occipital line
to the vertex. The longitudinal arc, measured as above, is 12 inches;
the transverse arc cannot be exactly ascertained, in consequence of
the absence of the temporal bones, but was probably about the same, and
certainly exceeded 10 1/4 inches. The horizontal circumference is
23 inches. This great circumference arises largely from the vast
development of the superciliary ridges, which are occupied by great
frontal sinuses whose inferior apertures are displayed exceedingly well
in one of Dr. Fuhlrott's photographs, and form a continuous transverse
prominence, somewhat excavated in the middle line, across the lower part
of the brows. In consequence of this structure, the forehead appears
still lower and more retreating than it really is. To an anatomical eye
the posterior part of the skull is even more striking than the anterior.
The occipital protuberance occupies the extreme posterior end of the
skull when the glabello-occipital line is made horizontal, and so far
from any part of the occipital region extending beyond it, this region
of the skull slopes obliquely upward and forward, so that the lambdoidal
suture is situated well upon the upper surface of the cranium. At the
same time, notwithstanding the great length of the skull, the sagittal
suture is remarkably short (4 1/2 inches), and the squamosal suture is
very straight.
[Illustration: Figure 3. Cast of Human Skull]
(FIGURE 3. SIDE VIEW OF THE CAST OF A PART OF A HUMAN SKULL
FROM A CAVE IN THE NEANDERTHAL, NEAR DUSSELDORF.
a. Superciliary ridge and glabella.
b. The coronal suture.
c. The apex of the lamboidal suture.
d. The occipital protuberance.)
"In human skulls, the superior curved ridge of the occipital bone and
the occipital protuberance correspond, approximatively, with the level
of the tentorium and with the lateral sinuses, and consequently with the
inferior limit of the posterior lobes of the brain. At first, I found
some difficulty in believing that a human brain could have its posterior
lobes so flattened and diminished as must have been the case in the
Neanderthal man, supposing the ordinary relation to obtain between the
superior occipital ridges and the tentorium; but on my application,
through Sir Charles Lyell, Dr. Fuhlrott, the possessor of the skull, was
good enough not only to ascertain the existence of the lateral sinuses
in their ordinary position, but to send convincing proofs of the fact,
in excellent photographic views of the interior of the skull, exhibiting
clear indications of these sinuses.
"There can be no doubt that, as Professor Schaaffhausen and Mr. Busk
have stated, this skull is the most brutal of all known human skulls,
resembling those of the apes not only in the prodigious development of
the superciliary prominences and the forward extension of the orbits,
but still more in the depressed form of the brain-case, in the
straightness of the squamosal suture, and in the complete retreat of the
occiput forwards and upward, from the superior occipital ridges.
[Illustration: Figure 4. Skull of Chimpanzee]
(FIGURE 4. OUTLINE OF THE SKULL OF AN ADULT CHIMPANZEE, OF THAT
FROM THE NEANDERTHAL, AND OF THAT OF A EUROPEAN, DRAWN TO THE SAME
ABSOLUTE SIZE, IN ORDER BETTER TO EXHIBIT THEIR RELATIVE
DIFFERENCES.
The superciliary region of the Neanderthal skull
appears less prominent than in Figure 3, as the contours are all
taken along the middle line where the superciliary projection of
the Neanderthal skull is least marked. a. The glabella. b. The
occipital protuberance, or the point on the exterior of each skull
which corresponds roughly with the attachment of the tentorium, or
with the inferior boundary of the posterior cerebral lobes.)
"But the cranium, in its present condition, is stated by Professor
Schaaffhausen to contain 1033.24 cubic centimetres of water, or, in
other words, about 63 English cubic inches. As the entire skull could
hardly have held less than 12 cubic inches more, its minimum capacity
may be estimated at 75 cubic inches. The most capacious healthy European
skull yet measured had a capacity of 114 cubic inches, the smallest (as
estimated by weight of brain) about 55 cubic inches, while, according to
Professor Schaaffhausen, some Hindoo skulls have as small a capacity as
about 46 cubic inches (27 ounces of water). The largest cranium of
any Gorilla yet measured contained 34.5 cubic inches. The Neanderthal
cranium stands, therefore, in capacity, very nearly on a level with
the mean of the two human extremes, and very far above the pithecoid
maximum.
[Illustration: Figure 5. Skull]
(FIGURE 5. SKULL ASSOCIATED WITH GROUND FLINT IMPLEMENTS,
FROM A TUMULUS AT BORREBY IN DENMARK, AFTER A CAMERA LUCIDA
DRAWING BY MR. G. BUSK, F.R.S.
The thick dark line indicates so much of the skull as
corresponds with the fragment from the Neanderthal.
a. Superciliary ridge.
b. Coronal suture.
c. The apex of the lamboidal suture.
d. The occipital protuberance.
e. The auditory foramen.)
"Hence, even in the absence of the bones of the arm and thigh, which,
according to Professor Schaaffhausen, had the precise proportions found
in Man, although they were stouter than ordinary human bones, there
could be no reason for ascribing this cranium to anything but a man;
while the strength and development of the muscular ridges of the
limb-bones are characters in perfect accordance with those exhibited,
in a minor degree, by the bones of such hardy savages, exposed to a
rigorous climate, as the Patagonians.
"The Neanderthal cranium has certainly not undergone compression, and,
in reply to the suggestion that the skull is that of an idiot, it may be
urged that the onus probandi lies with those who adopt the hypothesis.
Idiotcy is compatible with very various forms and capacities of the
cranium, but I know of none which present the least resemblance to the
Neanderthal skull; and, furthermore, I shall proceed to show that
the latter manifests but an extreme degree of a stage of degradation
exhibited, as a natural condition, by the crania of certain races of
mankind.
"Mr. Busk drew my attention, some time ago, to the resemblance between
some of the skulls taken from tumuli of the stone period at Borreby in
Denmark, of which Mr. Busk possesses numerous accurate figures, and the
Neanderthal cranium. One of the Borreby skulls in particular (Figure 5)
has remarkably projecting superciliary ridges, a retreating forehead, a
low flattened vertex, and an occiput which shelves upward and forward.
But the skull is relatively higher and broader, or more brachycephalic,
the sagittal suture longer, and the superciliary ridges less projecting,
than in the Neanderthal skull. Nevertheless, there is, without doubt,
much resemblance in character between the two skulls--a circumstance
which is the more interesting, since the other Borreby skulls have
better foreheads and less prominent superciliary ridges, and exhibit
altogether a higher conformation.
"The Borreby skulls belong to the stone period of Denmark, and the
people to whom they appertained were probably either contemporaneous
with, or later than, the makers of the 'refuse-heaps' of that country.
In other words, they were subsequent to the last great physical changes
of Europe, and were contemporaries of the urus and bison, not of the
Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and Hyaena spelaea.
"Supposing for a moment, what is not proven, that the Neanderthal skull
belonged to a race allied to the Borreby people and was as modern
as they, it would be separated by as great a distance of time as of
anatomical character from the Engis skull, and the possibility of its
belonging to a distinct race from the latter might reasonably appear to
be greatly heightened.
"To prevent the possibility of reasoning in a vicious circle, however,
I thought it would be well to endeavour to ascertain what amount of
cranial variation is to be found in a pure race at the present day; and
as the natives of Southern and Western Australia are probably as pure
and homogeneous in blood, customs, and language, as any race of savages
in existence, I turned to them, the more readily as the Hunterian museum
contains a very fine collection of such skulls.
"I soon found it possible to select from among these crania two
(connected by all sorts of intermediate gradations), the one of which
should very nearly resemble the Engis skull, while the other should
somewhat less closely approximate the Neanderthal cranium in form, size,
and proportions. And at the same time others of these skulls presented
no less remarkable affinities with the low type of Borreby skull.
"That the resemblances to which I allude are by no means of a merely
superficial character, is shown by the accompanying diagram (Figure 6),
which gives the contours of the two ancient and of one of the Australian
skulls, and by the following table of measurements.
TABLE 5/1.
COLUMN 1: TYPE OF SKULL.
COLUMN 2 (A): The horizontal circumference in the plane of a line
joining the glabella with the occipital protuberance.
COLUMN 3 (B): The longitudinal arc from the nasal depression along the
middle line of the skull to the occipital tuberosity.
COLUMN 4 (C): From the level of the glabello-occipital line on each
side, across the middle of the sagittal suture to the same point on the
opposite side.
COLUMN 5 (D): The vertical height from the glabello-occipital line.
COLUMN 6 (E): The extreme longitudinal measurement.
COLUMN 7 (F): The extreme transverse measurement.*
(* I have taken the glabello-occipital line as a base in
these measurements, simply because it enables me to compare
all the skulls, whether fragments or entire, together. The
greatest circumference of the English skull lies in a plane
considerably above that of the glabello-occipital line, and
amounts to 22 inches.)
Engis : 20 1/2: 13 3/4: 12 1/2: 4 3/4: 7 3/4: 5 1/4.
Australian,
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