ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN" RACE. 



17 



ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 



Among the interesting subjects that are oc- 

 cupying the attention of geologists is that of 

 the greater antiquity of the human race than 

 the historic period ; and new arguments from 

 various sources are brought to sustain this view, 

 some of which will be presented below. The 

 subject was first brought prominently before 

 the public by the discoveries, made by M. 

 Boucher de Perthes, of flints fashioned by 

 hand, found in the drift in the valley of the 

 Somme, in France. The localities have been 

 examined by many distinguished geologists, as 

 Joseph Prestwick, Sir Charles Lyell, Sir Roder- 

 ick Murchison, and others, most of whom are 

 satisfied, that the conclusions arrived at by M. 

 de Perthes cannot be questioned. Mr. Murchi- 

 son, in his address before the geological section 

 of the British Association, 1861, not only ex- 

 presses his full belief " in the commixture in 

 that ancient alluvium of the works of man with 

 the reliquiae of extinct animals ; " but adds his 

 gratification " in learning that England, in sev- 

 eral localities, is also affording proofs of similar 

 intermixture." Professor H. D. Rogers, who 

 also examined the localities, while admitting 

 that the flints were really shaped by human 

 agency and are found buried together with 

 bones of extinct mammalia, still questions the 

 fact of the men who left the flints, and of the 

 animals that possessed the bones, having neces- 

 sarily lived together in the same epoch. Or, 

 admitting that they were contemporaneous, it 

 is not proved that the Elephas primigenius and 

 the other mammals of the diluvium may not 

 have belonged to the historic period. (See his 

 paper in " Blackwood's Magazine " for Octo- 

 ber, 1860.) 



Among other evidences adduced to establish 

 a high antiquity for the human race, are the 

 mounds of shells discovered of late years in nu- 

 merous places along the coasts of Denmark. 

 These are of vast extent, and contain, mixed up 

 with the shells, broken bones of deer, beaver, 

 wild boar, bos, mus, &c., together with charcoal, 

 fragments of coarse pottery, stone hatchets, 

 arrow-heads, and knives of flint, and various 

 implements and ornaments of horns and bones, 

 all indicating the existence at an unknown and 

 very distant period of savage and populous 

 tribes, of whom no other vestiges nor traditions 

 remain. Bearing upon the same subject, Sir 

 Charles Lyell has called attention to the large 

 Indian mound of similar character at Can- 

 non's Point, on St. Simon's Island, in Georgia. 

 " This covers 10 acres in area, having an av- 

 erage height of 5 feet, and is chiefly composed 

 of cast-away oyster-shells, throughout which 

 arrow-heads, stone axes, and Indian pottery are 

 dispersed.'' Similar mounds are scattered over 

 the swamps near New Orleans, and their 'ma- 

 terials were employed by Gen. Joseph Swift, 

 for constructing the foundation of the Lake 

 Pontchartrain Railroad ; and by his advice 

 they have since been used for macadamizing 

 the streets of New Orleans, and forming the 



9 



shell-roads in its vicinity. The vast extent of 

 these mounds and their evident human origin 

 have perplexed all who have studied them. 



A paper was recently read by M. Lartet, be- 

 fore the London Geological Society, " On the 

 Co-existence of Man with certain Extinct Quad- 

 rupeds, proved by Fossil Bones from various 

 Pleistocene Deposits bearing incisions made by 

 sharp instruments." 



If, says the author, the presence of worked 

 flints in the gravel and sands of the valley of 

 the Somme, have established with certainty 

 the existence of man at the time when those 

 very ancient deposits were formed, the traces 

 of an intentional operation on the bones of 

 Rhinoceros, Aurochs, Megaceros, Certus some- 

 nensis, etc., supply equally the inductive de- 

 monstration of the contemporaneity of those 

 species with the human race. M. Lartet points 

 out that the Aurochs, though still existing, was 

 contemporaneous with the Ekphas primigenius, 

 and that its remains occur in preglacial depos- 

 its ; and, indeed, that a great proportion of our 

 living mammifers have been contemporaneous 

 with E. primigenius and _Z?. tichorhinv.s, the 

 first appearance of which in Western Europe 

 must have been preceded by that of several of 

 our still existing quadrupeds. 



The author also remarks, that there is good 

 evidence of changes of level having occurred 

 since man began to occupy Europe and the 

 British Isles, yet they have not amounted to 

 catastrophes so general as to affect the regular 

 succession of organized beings. 



Lastly, M. Lartet announced that a flint 

 hatchet and some flint knives had lately been 

 discovered in company with remains of ele- 

 phant, aurochs, horse, and a feline animal, in 

 the sands of the Parisian suburb of Grenelle, 

 by M. Gosse, of Geneva. 



The late discovery of ancient bronze imple- 

 ments near Moskowie, in Bohemia, also bears 

 upon this interesting question. These are coated 

 with successive layers of malachite, the copper 

 derived from the bronze, and evidently very 

 slowly produced. It has even been supposed 

 that these prove that bronze instruments were 

 in use in middle Europe at a period far beyond 

 that of historical research. 



Lastly, the " evidence of language " has been 

 adduced to assign to man a high antiquity in 

 the following paper, read before the British 

 Association in 1861, by Mr. Crawfurd : 



" The periods usually assigned for man's first 

 appearance on earth, date only from the time 

 when he had already attained such an amount 

 of civilization as to enable him to frame some 

 kind of record of his own career, and take no 

 account of the many ages which must have 

 transpired before he could have attained that 

 power. Among the many facts attesting the 

 high antiquity of man, the formation of lan- 

 guage might be adduced, and his object was to 

 give a few of the most striking facts which it 

 yields. Language was not innate, but adven- 

 titious. Infants were without language, and 



