144 ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES EXPLAINED. CHAP. vm. 



Somme is a formation which, in all likelihood, took thousands 

 of years for its growth. But no change of a marked character 

 has occurred in the mammalian fauna since it began to ac 

 cumulate. The contrast of the fauna of the ancient alluvium, 

 whether at high or low levels, with the fauna of the oldest peat 

 is almost as great as its contrast with the existing fauna, the 

 memorials of man being common to the whole series ; hence 

 we may infer that the interval of time which separated the 

 era of the large extinct mammalia from that of the earliest 

 peat, was of far longer duration than that of the entire growth 

 of the peat. Yet we by no means need the evidence of the 

 ancient fossil fauna to establish the antiquity of man in this 

 part of France. The mere volume of the drift at various 

 heights would alone suffice to demonstrate a vast lapse of 

 time during which such heaps of shingle, derived both from 

 the Eocene and the cretaceous rocks, were thrown down 

 in a succession of river-channels. We observe thousands of 

 rounded and half-rounded flints, and a vast number of angular 

 ones, with rounded pieces of white chalk of various sizes, 

 testifying to a prodigious amount of mechanical action, 

 accompanying the repeated widening and deepening of the 

 valley, before it became the receptacle of peat ; and the po 

 sition of many of the flint tools leaves no doubt on the mind 

 of the geologist that their fabrication preceded all this 

 reiterated denudation. 



On the Absence of Human Bones in the Alluvium of 

 the Somme. 



It is naturally a matter of no small surprise that, after we 

 have collected many hundred flint implements (including 

 knives, many thousands), not a single human bone has yet 

 been met with in the alluvial sand and gravel of the Somme. 

 This dearth of the mortal remains of our species holds true 



