May 5, 1882.] 



♦ KNOW^LEDGE - 



567 



^ilar energy of rotation, due to the fan-like action he 

 Attributes to the sun, and that resulting from the tides on 

 the earth, is unsound. However, I must defer to next 

 week any further comments on this subject 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN WESTERN 

 EUKOPE. 



By Edw.\rd Clodd. 

 PART II. 



THE division of Pala?olithic time suggested by M. de 

 Mortillet is as follows : — * 



Eolithic Thcnaisian... Stone split by fire. 



I'alaolitliic . Aclieulian ... Age of the Mammoth. 



Monsterian... 



Solntrian ... 



Magdalenian 



Cave Bear. 



Keindeernnd Mammoth. 



Reindeer. 



The Cave period. 



The evidenes in support of the presence of man in Europe 

 in mid-Tertiary times consists of worked flints found in the 

 calcaire de Beatice, a Miocene stratum at Thenay, in 

 Loire-et-her, hence the term Thenaisian. The symmetrical 

 form of the flakes ; the " bulb of percussion," as it is called, 

 i.e., the conical projection at tlie end of a flint wliere the 

 blow striking oflF a splinter is given ; the rough cliipping 

 round the edges and the traces of wear and tear, are cited 

 by their discoverer, the Abb6 Bourgeois, as proofs of human 

 origin. Moreover, he believes that they were fractured by 

 the aid of fire, or used as " pot-boilers,''t which would be con- 

 clusive evidence, if proved. But it is not placed beyond 

 doubt that the flints may not have come from previously- 

 disturbed and later deposits nearer the surface, which is 

 strewn with stone implements, and although similar finds 

 are recorded from the Miocene beds of the Tagus, and bones 

 with apparently designed scratches and notches have been 

 found in the faluns of Pouance, the attitude of most 

 antliropologists is to wait for additional evidence. " Ex 

 pede Ilercidem," says the adage, "you judge Hercules by 

 his foot," but even the foot of Tertiary man " comest in 

 such a questionable shape '' that we cannot take his 

 measure from it. Indeed, as the foregoing table shows, M. 

 de Mortillet passes without pause from the relics of the 

 Thenay beds to those of St Acheul, which are within the 

 Post-Pliocene, Pleistocene, or Quaternary period, as it is 

 variously called, and wliich are now admitted as conclusive 

 regarding man's presence in Western Europe by every 

 anthropologist of repute. 



But before describing these in such detail as the im- 

 portance of the matter demands, let us glance at the 

 momentous changes in Europo which appear to have 

 preceded the arrival of Palaiolithic man. These may, in 

 measure, account for the scantiness of material vet pro- 

 ducible, and for the gaps in the sequence of geological 

 monuments bearing on the past history of man. " If we 

 consider," Sir Chas. Lyell remarks,* "the absence or 

 extreme scarcity of human bones and works of art in all 

 strata, whether marine or fresh water, even in those formed 

 in the immediate proximity of land inhabited by millions 

 of human beings, we shall be prepared for the general 

 dearth of human memorials in glacial formations, whether 

 recent, pleistocene, or of more ancient date. If there were 



* " Cf. Materianx ponr I'Histoire de I'Homme." Second Series. 

 Vol. II., p. 545. 



t In the absence of earthen or metal pots, we find the practice of 

 dropping red-hot stones into vessels of skin, wood, or bark, wide- 

 spread among ancient and modern savages. 



t " Antiq. of Man," 4th ed., p. 216. 



a few wanderers over lands covered with glaciers, or over 

 seas infested with icebergs, and if a few of them left their 

 bones or weapons in moraines or in marine drifts, the 

 chances, after the lapse of thousands of years, of a geologist 

 meeting with one of them must be infinitesimally small." 



At the close of the Pliocene Age, the land area was 

 greatly enlarged by slow elevation. The German Ocean, 

 which during that period had covered East Anglia, was 

 "high and dry." As evidenced by the forest^beds traced 

 from Cromer to Kessingland, oaks, firs, yews, birches, and 

 smaller trees abounded ; alders flourished in the congimial 

 swampy land ; water-lilies blossomed on the rivers, from whose 

 deposits the smacksnien on the Dogger Bank dredge up to- 

 day vast numbers of bones of mammals then wallowing 

 in the slime and roaming through the jungles- huge ele- 

 phants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, cave l>oars, Avolves, 

 (co-temporaries, be it remembered, of man), and even 

 " several large estuarine and marine mammalia, such as the 

 walrus, the narwhal, and the whale."* But, as testified by 

 strata superposed upon the Norfolk forest beds, the 

 temperature gradually declined, until an arctic cold 

 prevailed ; the land once more sank beneath the 

 "azure main," and the long, though intermittent, reign 

 of the Ice Age set in. The eflects of this in the 

 rounded hills of our island, the roc/(es mmUonnces of 

 the continent (so called from their resemblance to sheep 

 lying down) ; in the striated or grooved and polished rock- 

 surfaces ; in the erratic blocks — " foundlings," as the Swiss 

 happily name them — deposited in districts far from their 

 parent rocks, as, for example, the occurrence of Scandi- 

 navian boulders on the plains of Saxony ; in the mounds 

 of sand and gravel, and the deposits of " till " or clay 

 crammed with stones of all sorts and sizes and scantily 

 charged with derived and broken fossils, were long the 

 puzzle and problem of geology, and the source of numlier- 

 less legends. They were referred to every cause except 

 the true one, until Agassiz, after long study of glacial action 

 in Switzerland, proved them to be due to the mechanical 

 effects of ice. What brought about such alterations of 

 climate as to swathe the northern hemisphere in a vast 

 ice-sheet at one period, and to clothe it within a few 

 degrees of the pole with the vegetation of temperate climes 

 in another period, is explained to the satisfaction of most 

 competent judges by Dr. Croll's theory.t That is to say, 

 at certain periods, irregular in their recurrence, the earth's 

 orbit becomes much more elliptical, and its distance from 

 the sun correspondingly greater. If, when this period of 

 greatest ellipticity happens, the incidence of the seasons 

 has been changed by the precession of the equinoxes,;]: the 

 summer would be too brief to undo the work of the long 

 winter, and ever-increasing accumulations of snow and ice 

 would result. In the course of thousands of years these 

 conditions would be reversed, and the climates of northern 

 and southern hemispheres change places. 



Such is, in brief, the explanation of those remarkable 

 conditions which either beset or immediately preceded 

 palaeolithic man, and, only staying to remark that, with 

 subsequent upheaval of the land, Britain was once more 

 joined to the Continent, we may pass without further 

 break of story to the sure ground where his " works follow 

 him." 



More than fifty years ago, many of the bone-caves of 



* Lyell : " Antiquity of Man," p. 258. 



t "On the Physical Cause of Change of Climate during Geolo- 

 gical Epochs." Fhil. Mag. Angust, 1854, and, for further treatment, 

 " Climate and Time." 



X See Knowledge, No. 11, p. 218, for an admirably clear ex- 

 planation of this complex movement by the Editor. Cf. article by 

 Mr. Burr, " Intellect. Ohs.," vol. iii, pp. 354, et seq. 



