4IO 



NATURE 



{Sept. 7, 1876 



antiquity of the human type has been brought prominently forward 

 by Prof. Mivart.^ He shows by a careful comparison of all parts of 

 the structure of the body, that man is related, not to any one, but 

 almost equally to many of the existing apes — to the orang, the 

 chimpanzee, the gorilla, and even to the gibbons — in a variety of 

 ways ; and these relations and differences are so numerous and 

 so diverse that on the theory of evolution the ancestral form 

 which ultimately developed into man must have diverged from 

 the common stock whence all these various forms and their ex- 

 tinct allies originated. But so far back as the Miocene deposits 

 of Europe, we find the remains of apes allied to these various 

 forms, and especially to the gibbons, so that in all probability 

 the special line of variation which Jed up to man branched off at 

 a still earlier period. And these early forms, being the initiation 

 of a far higher type, and having to develop by natural selection into 

 so specialised and altogether distinct a creatuie as man, must have 

 risen at a very early period into the position of a dominant race, and 

 spread in dense waves of population over all suitable portions of 

 the great continent — for thi?, on Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, is 

 essential to rapid developmental progress through the agency of 

 natural selection. 



Under these circumstances we might certainly expect to find some 

 relics of these earlier forms of man along with those of animals 

 which were presumably less abundant. Negative evidence of 

 this kind is not very weighty, but still it has some value. It has 

 been suggested that as apes are mostly tropical, and anthropoid 

 apes are now confined almost exclusively to the vicinity of the 

 equator, we should expect the ancestral forms also to have in- 

 habited these Fame localities — West Africa and the Malay 

 Islands. But this objection is hardly valid, because existing 

 anthropoid apes are wholly dependent on a perennial supply of 

 easily accessible fruits, which is only found near the equator, 

 while not only had the south of Europe an almost tropical 

 climate in Miocene times, but we must suppose even the earliest 

 ancestors of man to have been terrestrial and omnivorous, since it 

 must have taken ages of slow modification to have produced the 

 perfectly erect form, the short arms, and the wholly non-prehen- 

 sile foot, which so strongly differentiate man from the apes. 



The conclusion which I think we must arrive at is, that if man 

 has been developed from a common ancestor, with all existing 

 apes, and by no other agencies than suck as have affected their 

 development, then he must have existed in something approach- 

 ing his present form, during the tertiary period— and not merely 

 existed, but predominated in numbers, wherever suitable condi- 

 tions prevailed. If then, continued researches in all parts of 

 Europe and Asia fail to bring to light any proofs of his presence, 

 it will be at least a presumption that he came into existence at a 

 much later date, and by a much more rapid process of develop- 

 ment. In that case it will be a fair argument, that, just as he is 

 in his m.ental and moral nature, his capacities and aspirations, 

 so infinitely raised above the brutes, so his origin is due to 

 distinct and higher agencies than such as have affected their 

 development. 



There is yet another line of inquiry bearing upon this subject 

 to which I wish to call your attention. It is a somewhat curious 

 fact, that, while all modern writers admit the great antiquity of 

 man, most of them maintain the very recent development of his 

 intellect, and will hardly contemplate the possibility of men 

 equal in mental capacity to ourselves, having existed in pre- 

 historic times. This question is generally assumed to be settled, 

 by such relics as have been preserved of the manufactures of the 

 older races showing a lower and lower state of the arts ; by the 

 successive disappearance in early times of iron, bronze, and 

 pottery ; and by the ruder forms of the older flint implements. 

 The weakness of this argument has been well shown by Mr. 

 Albert Mott in his very original, but little known presidential 

 address to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool 

 in 1873. He maintains that "our most distant glimpses of the 

 past are still of a world peopled as now with men both civilised 

 and savage" — and, "that we have often entirely misread the 

 past by supposing that the outward signs of civilisation must 

 always be the same, and must be such as are found among our- 

 selves. " In support of this view he adduces a variety of striking 

 facts and ingenious arguments, a few of which I will briefly 

 summarise. 



On one of the most remote islands of the Pacific — Easter 

 Island — 2,000 miles from South America, 2,000 from the Mar- 

 quesas, and more than 1,000 from the Gambier Islands, are 

 found hundreds of gigantic stone images, now mostly in ruins, 

 often thirty or forty feet high, while some seem to have been 

 " Man-and Apes," pp. 171-193. 



much larger, the crowns on their heads cut out of a red stone 

 being sometimes ten feet in diameter, while even the head and 

 neck of one is said to have been twenty feet high. ^ Thtse 

 once stood erect on extensive stone platforms, yet the island has 

 only an area of about thirty square miles, or considerably less 

 than Jersey. Now as one of the smallest images eight feet 

 high weighs four tons, the largest must weigh over a hundred 

 tons, if not much more ; and the existence of such vast works 

 implies a large population, abundance of food, and an esta- 

 blished gov. rnment Yet how could these coexist in a mere 

 speck of land wholly cut off from the rest of the world ? Mr. 

 Mott maintains that this necessarily implies the power of regular 

 communication with larger islands or a continent, the arts of 

 navigation, and a civilisation much higher than now exists in 

 any part of the Pacific. Very similar remains in other islands 

 scattered widely over the Pacific add weight to this argument. 



The next example is that of the ancient mounds and earth- 

 works of the North American continent, the bearing of which 

 is even more significant. Over the greater part of the exten- 

 sive Mississippi valley four well-marked classes of these earth- 

 works occur. Some are camps, or works of defence, situated 

 on bluffs, promontories, or isolated hills ; others are vast inclo- 

 sures in the plains and lowlands, often of geometric forms, and 

 having attached to them roadways or avenues often miles in 

 length ; a third are mounds corresponding to our tumuli, often 

 seventy to ninety feel high, and some of them covering acres of 

 ground ; while a fourth group consist of representations of 

 various animals modelled in relief on a gigantic scale, and 

 occurring chiefly in an area somewhat to the north-west of the 

 other classes, in the plains of Wisconsin. 



The first class — the camps or fortified inclosures — resemble in 

 general features the ancient camps of our own islands, but far 

 surpass them in extent. Fort Hill, in Ohio, is surrounded by a 

 wall and ditch a mile and a half in length, part of the way cut 

 through solid rock. Artificial reservoirs for water were made 

 within it, while at one extremity, on a more elevated point, a keep 

 is constructed with its separate defences and water- reservoirs. 

 Another, called Clark's Work, in the Scioto valley, which seems 

 to have been a fortified town, incloses an area of 127 acres, the 

 embankments measuring three miles in length,, and containing 

 not less than three million cubic feet of earth. This area 

 incloses numerous sacrificial mounds and symmetrical earth- 

 works in which many interesting relics and works of art have 

 been found. 



The second class — the sacred inclosures — maybe compared 

 for extent and arrangement with Avebury or Carnak — but are in 

 some respects even more remarkable. One of these, at Newark, 

 Ohio, covers an area of several miles with its connected groups 

 of circles, octagons, squares, ellipses, and avenues, on a grand 

 scale, and formed by embankments from twenty to thirty feet in 

 height. Other similar works occur in different parts of Ohio, 

 and by accurate survey it is found not only that the circles are 

 true, though some of them are one-third of a mile in diameter, 

 but that other figures are truly square, each side being over 1,000 

 feet long, and what is still more important, the dimensions of some 

 of these geometrical figures in different parts of the country and 

 seventy miles apart, are identical. Now this proves the use, by 

 the builders of these works, of some standard measures of length, 

 while the accuracy of the squares, circles, and, in a less degree, 

 of the octagonal figures — shows a considerable knowledge of 

 rudimentary geometry, and some means of measuring angles. The 

 difficulty of drawing such figures on a large scale is much greater 

 than any one would imagine who has not tried it, and the 

 accuracy of these is far beyond what is necessary to satisfy the 

 eye. We must therefore impute to these people the wish to 

 make these figures as accurate as possible, and this wish is a 

 greater proof of habitual skill and intellectual advancement than 

 even the ability to draw such figures. If, then, we take into 

 account this ability and this love of geometric truth, and further 

 consider the dense population and civil organisation implied by 

 the construction of such extensive systematic works, we must 

 allow that these people had reached the earlier stages of a civili- 

 sation of which no traces existed among the savage tribes who 

 alone occupied the country when first visited by Europeans. 



The animal mounds are of comparatively less importance for 

 our present purpose, as they imply a somewhat lower grade of 

 advancement ; but the sepulchral and sacrificial mounds exist in 

 vast numbers, and their partial exploration has yielded a quantity 

 of articles and works of art, which throw some further light on 

 the peculiarities of this mysterious people. Most of these mounds 

 ' Journ. of Roy. Geog. Soc, 1870, pp. 177, 178, 



