RECENT ANTHROPOLOGY. 149 



the sea. This he describes as the geological deluge which separates 

 the post-glacial period from the modern, and the earlier from the later 

 prehistoric period of the archaeologists. 



My reason for going here into these computations of Dr. Dawson's 

 is, that the date about 2200 b. c, to which he thus assigns these great 

 geological convulsions, is actually within historic times. In Egypt 

 successive dynasties had been reigning for ages, and the pyramids had 

 long been built ; while in Babylonia the old Chaldean kings had been 

 raising the temples whose ruins still remain. That is to say, we are 

 asked to receive, as matter of geology, that stupendous geological 

 changes were going on not far from the Mediterranean, including a 

 final plunge of I know not how much of the earth's surface beneath 

 the waters, and yet national life on the banks of the Nile and the 

 Euphrates went on unbroken and apparently undisturbed through it all. 

 To us in this section it is instructive to see how the free use of parox- 

 ysms and cataclysms makes it possible to shorten up geological time. 

 Accustomed as we are to geology demanding periods of time which 

 often seem to history exorbitant, the tables are now turned, and we are 

 presented with the unusual spectacle 'of Chronology protesting against 

 Geology for encroaching on the historical period. 



In connection with the question of quaternary man, it is worth while 

 to notice that the use of the terms " primeval " or " primitive " man, 

 with reference to the savages of the mammoth period, seems some- 

 times to lead to unsound inferences. There appears no particular rea- 

 son to think that the relics from the drift-beds or bone-caves represent 

 man as he first appeared on the earth. The contents of the caves espe- 

 cially bear witness to a state of savage art, in some respects fairly high, 

 and which may possibly have somewhat fallen off from an ancestral 

 state in a more favorable climate. Indeed, the savage condition gen- 

 erally, though rude and more or less representing early stages of cul- 

 ture, never looks absolutely primitive, just as no savage language ever 

 has the appearance of being a primitive language. What the appear- 

 ance and state of our really primeval ancestors may have been seems 

 too speculative a question, until there shall be more signs of agreement 

 between the anthropologists, who work back by comparison of actual 

 races of man toward an hypothetical common stock, and the zoologists, 

 who approach the problem through the species adjoining the human. 

 There is, however, a point relating to the problem to which attention is 

 due. Naturalists not unreasonably claim to find the geographical cen- 

 ter of man in the tropical regions of the Old World inhabited by his 

 nearest zoological allies, the anthropomorphous apes, and there is at 

 any rate force enough in such a view to make careful quest of human 

 remains worth while in those districts, from Africa across to the East- 

 ern Archipelago. Under the care of Mr. John Evans a fund has been 

 raised for excavations in the caves of Borneo by Mr, Everett, and, 

 though the search has as yet had no striking result, money is well 



