SOCIETY OP THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 49 



ice and paddled his canoe amongst the Hoes and borgs precisely as the 

 Esquimaux does at the present day in Greenland. 



Before leaving the subject of the Clydeside canoes, I would briefly 

 indicate to you the attempts made to estimate their probable age. 



It was at first supposed that all this upheaval of land took place 

 previous to the Roman invasion, but careful examination on the part 

 of Geikie and others of the foundations of the Roman wall built 

 by Antonine, has led to the conclusion that about 25 feet of 

 elevation has occurred since the Roman occupation, i.e., during a 

 period of seventeen centuries. Now, from the position of some of 

 the buried canoes and other indications, there is evidence of at least 

 30 feet of upheaval, and assuming that the rate of upheaval has 

 been uniform throughout, though there may have been longer or 

 shorter periods of rest, this would imply 3,400 years, or, in other 

 words, carry us back to the time of the exodus of the children of 

 Israel from Egypt. 



Up to this point tho relics giving clues to the age of prehistoric 

 man, which we have been considering, have been associated with 

 shells and remains of animals in deposits of recent geological for- 

 mation, but let us now go a step further back and examine the 

 evidences of man's existence at a much earlier date to the alluvial 

 or river deposits of the post-pliocene period. About the beginning 

 of last century M. Tournal wrote an account of human bones and 

 teeth together with fragments of rude pottery which he found in a 

 cave in Bize in France. In the cave mud, cemented by stalagmite, 

 land shells and the bones of mammalia, some of extinct and some of 

 living species were embedded. 



M. C-hristol, who was engaged in similar researches, described 

 some human bones as occurring in the cavern of Pondres near 

 Nismes in the same mud with the bones of an extinct hyena and 

 rhinoceros. The cavern was in this instance filled up to the roof 

 with mud and gravel in which fragments of two kinds of pottery were 

 detected, the ruder below the level of the extinct mammalia. 



But the researches of Dr. Schmerling in 1832 in the Belgium 



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