END OF THE PALANTHROPIC AGE 89 



Putting these facts together, we cannot doubt 

 that the submergence at the close of the palanthropic 

 age was very considerable, and that it was followed 

 by a partial re-emergence. Further, there is no 

 evidence of any serious fractures or folding of the 

 crust taking place at the time, though it is possible 

 that great lava ejections like some of those ot 

 Western America may belong to this period. It is 

 therefore allowable to suppose that the cause of sub- 

 mergence may have been either depression of the 

 land, or elevation of the bed of the ocean throwing 

 its waters over the land, or possibly a combination 

 of both. Movements of these kinds have recurred 

 again and again in geological time. Their causes 

 are mysterious, but their effects have been of the 

 most stupendous character. Fortunately, they occur 

 at rare intervals, and that to which we are now 

 referring is the last of which we have any record, and 

 differs from all others in having occurred at a time 

 when man was widely spread over the world. 



The geological chronometers already referred to 

 inform us that the land of the northern hemisphere 

 rose from the great pleistocene submergence about 

 eight thousand to ten thousand years ago, and the 

 second continental period with its forests and its 

 teeming and widely-extended animal and human 

 life, may have been established within two thousand 



Caspian plain and the Pamirs, so that all Asia must have been sub- 

 merged within a very recent period. See also Fossil Man, by the 

 author, 1880. 



