SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 39 



perience. I was lucky enough, however, to have the matter for this 

 paper placed before me by a friend, and trust it will be of some 

 interest to this society. It treats of that subject which for the past 

 hundred years or more has engaged the serious attention of many 

 learned and deep-thinking men, namely, " The Antiquity of Man," or, 

 in other words, how long has man inhabited this globe. 



Until, comparatively speaking, recent times it was the universal 

 belief that man's earthly existence did not extend beyond a period of 

 (5,000 years from the present time. The data on which this was based 

 were drawn chieHy from the Bible. But that Scripture record is not 

 designed to teach chronology, any more than to teach science, is now 

 generally accepted, I think. The general belief, however, in the 

 correctness of chronological deduction from the Bible had the effect 

 of foreclosing the question of the antiquity of man and of preventing 

 its investigation for centuries, notwithstanding that from time to time 

 interesting discoveries were cropping up which could receive no 

 adequate explanation owing to this preconceived opinion. Such were 

 the discoveries of human fossil bones associated with those of the 

 extinct hyena, bear, elephant and rhinoceros, buried deeply in cave 

 breccias and overlaid with stalagmite in various localities in England 

 and on the Continent. 



The explanation which was offered and for long accepted as 

 satisfactory was that these caves formed the dens of the animals 

 during a geological period long anterior to man's advent to these 

 lands, and that in a subsequent age they had been used by man as 

 places of sepulchre, or even domicile, or that on occasion of land 

 floods the remains of human beings had been swept into the caves 

 and thus mingled with the bones of these animals. But the facts 

 brought to light between forty to fifty years ago during the systematic 

 investigation of Brischam Cave in Devonshire excited anew the 

 curiosity of the public and led scientists and geologists to the con- 

 clusion that man and these extinct animals must have co-existed at 

 one period. Since that time many of the facts adduced in favour 

 of this contention and hitherto persistently rejected have been 



