376 



ETHNOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY. 



earlier than antiquarians had yet assigned to 

 them. 



Sir Charles Lyell expressed himself as sure 

 that changes of level must have taken place in 

 the lake. The author of the paper had sug- 

 gested that these changes were brought about 

 by the growth of peat, obstructing gradually 

 the ancient outlet. Why, now, was it not pos- 

 sible to determine a proximate date for these 

 habitations hence the general rate of growth 

 of peat ; and thus to obtain a rule applicable in 

 other cases? If the bronze period must be 

 carried farther back than antiquarians gener- 

 ally had supposed, how very ancient must 

 then be that of stone ? And yet, both epochs 

 belonged to a period in which there was not 

 found one of those extinct animals of which 

 geologists had discovered so many unequivo- 

 cal remains. 



Geological Position and Era of the Remains 

 thus far Described. Few, if any, of the human 

 remains and works described in the sections 

 just preceding, can be considered as going 

 back in geological time beyond the period 

 within which has occurred the latest of the 

 alluvial formations that known as the " re- 

 cent," or most modern of the Quaternary 

 deposits. And in respect to human eras, none of 

 these remains date back, certainly, beyond the 

 " stone " age ; while it is, in fact, questionable 

 whether the oldest of them go beyond that 

 of "bronze." None of them reach 'the time 

 of any of the species of animals which have 

 been extinct throughout the historic period; 

 for even though the Urus, or wild bull (Bos 

 primigenius), which existed in the stone and 

 bronze ages, including that of the Swiss lake- 

 dwellings, has now been long extinct, yet this 

 animal was seen by Julius Caesar, and survived 

 after his time. 



Now the reader should bear in mind 'that, 

 not to speak of other instances, the now well- 

 known cases of the human and other bones, 

 and implements of the Belgian caverns, the dis- 

 coveries made in the Brixham cave, and the 

 yet more familiar discoveries by M. Boucher 

 de Perthes and others, of the sort known up to 

 the close of 1862, in the alluvium of the Somme 

 valley, especially at Abbeville and St. Acheul, 

 as also those of the cave of Aurignac, appear 

 to have (before 1863) traced man back far into 

 the Post-pliocene deposits belonging to the pe- 

 riod of the drift; hence, into the earlier for- 

 mations of the Post-tertiary period. None of 

 these latter discoveries, however, had appeared 

 to carry man beyond this limit, into the Ter- 

 tiary strata. And M. Broca, at a meeting 

 of the Anthrop. Society of Paris some time 

 since, recognizing this limit, stated in sub- 

 stance that, thus far " the antiquity of Man is 

 reduced to the commencement of the Quater- 

 nary period. Positive facts, irrefutable evi- 

 dence" he declared " show that man existed 

 at the time of the diluvium. But this is the 

 first known date in his history ; though it is 

 still not impossible that we may find traces of 



his earlier existence." In most, or all, of the 

 instances last named above, moreover, the flint 

 implements are found associated with the 

 bones of animals extinct from before the his- 

 torical period ; and in respect to human eras, 

 these works and results due to the agency of 

 man take us back far anterior to 'the date of 

 the stone age, if this were to be determined by 

 such relics only as those of the Danish "mid- 

 dens " and the Swiss lake-dwellings ; or, more 

 strictly speaking, they appear to conduct us 

 back through three successive ages of one vast 

 stone period beyond the most recent polished 

 or sharpened stone implements, as those of the 

 Danish mounds, to the hatchets rudely chipped 

 (worked), but unground, of the Somme valley, 

 and in some of the instances to those consisting 

 of mere fragments orjffa&esof flint implements 

 in regard to which such ideas as that of fash- 

 ioning, much less that of grinding were not 

 yet to be conceived of for hundreds, perhaps 

 thousands, of years. 



Meanwhile, however, it could not fail to be 

 remarked as singular, and the fact is so recog- 

 nized in terms by Lyell and his reviewers, as 

 well as by others, that while, in the many parts 

 of the south and west of Europe yielding these, 

 at least thousands of genuine flint implements 

 have been discovered, and while, more recently, 

 portions of the skeletons of many extinct ani- 

 mals have been found which show evidences 

 of having been cut and marked by implements 

 used by man, still not a single human skeleton 

 of unquestionably fossil character, not indeed 

 so much as a human tooth, had been discovered 

 in connection with, or as undoubtedly referable 

 to the same age as, these older or post-pliocene 

 remains ! 



^ Now, as to the specific question, why fos- 

 sil human remains have not been found along 

 with the implements and marked bones of the 

 post-pliocene, many answers, more or less satis- 

 factory, had been given. Some had urged that 

 the fact was bat an illustration of the extreme 

 imperfection of the geological records; and 

 these have cited as parallel the facts that, 

 the bones of the musk buffalo were not until 

 recently found as fossils, and have remarked 

 that the entire assemblage of the fossil quadru- 

 peds of the Picardy alluvium must still be but; 

 a small part of the whole number of species 

 with which these were contemporaneous. 

 Others have urged the fact of the extremely 

 small proportion which the districts yet ex- 

 plored bear to the entire extent of the alluvium 

 in which fossils may exist, upon theEa'stern, 01' 

 upon both of the continents. Even Mr. Cnuv- 

 furd, who appears to covet the attitude of an- 

 tagonist upon all the later anthropological theo- 

 ries of the time, after stating (in the outset of 

 his paper before the Brit. Assoc. upon the) 

 Aryan theory and the races of mankind,) nil 

 conviction that the evidences of late years ad- 

 duced satisfactorily establish for man on th<> 

 earth an antiquity far beyond the usual esti- 

 mate, making him the contemporary of animals 



