December 1, 1899. 



KNOWLEDGE. 



269 



was rarely covered over and adequately preserved. He 

 was small in comparison with the giant carnivores, with 

 which he competed for his food. Even if he died a natural 

 death, the very fowls of the air could combine to scatter 

 his remains. 



Hence, as we work backward, from the present deposits 

 to those of earlier days, the number of human skeletons 

 discoverable decreases with extreme rapidity. Yet there 

 are, up to a certain point, abundant evidences of the occu- 

 pation of the earth by man. The conclusion is that the 

 earUest types of humanity, without arts, and perhaps with- 

 out tribal organisation, have probably left very few traces 

 through the strata of the entire crust. 



As all interested in the subject are aware, the remains 

 now freely styled " prehistoric " were subjected at one time 

 to the most searching criticism. Had such keenness of 

 attack been directed, let us say, against the assertion that 

 the molluscs of one stratum dififered from those found 

 beneath it, William Smith might never have laid the 

 foimdations of stratigraphical geology. But the succession 

 of invertebrate life, when Smith was writing in 1815, 

 seemed somewhat remote from human interest ; on the 

 other hand, the succession of human remains, in 1847, 

 barely fifty years ago, excited the most lively controversy.* 

 In that year, M. Boucher de Perthes, in his " Antiquites 

 celtiques et antt'diluviens," claimed a human origin for his 

 series of chipped flints, found at Abbeville, in association 

 with remains of the mammoth, the rhinoceros, and other 

 mammals extinct in France, or even extinct throughout 

 the world. These flints, from a stratum of ancient river- 

 gravel, are now universally admitted to have been prepared 

 by man, and to be excellent illustrations of the paleolithic 

 stage of his culture in that particular region. If further 

 proof of the association of man and extinct mammalia 

 were wanted, it has been amply supplied by the incised 

 drawing of a mammoth on a curved piece of ivory, found 

 in the cave of La Madeleine, and by the discovery of 

 human bones in the Pampas beds of South America, to 

 mention no other of the pieces of evidence that have accu- 

 mulated in support of M. de Perthes, the long-suffering 

 pioneer. 



It is hard to believe that the pendulum of opinion, as 

 regards the antiquity of man, has now swung round with- 

 out full reason. It is true that Sir J. W. Dawson, who 

 held that man had existed in Europe for only some six 

 thousand years, wrote, in 1880, f that the antiquity of man 

 " is widely received, owing to the enthusiasm with which 

 novel and startling discoveries, and especially those 

 appearing to contradict old and received opinions, are 

 welcomed at present." If this assertion was made seriously, 

 it shows an amazing ignorance of the history of scientific 

 criticism. In 1880, and down to the present day, archiEo- 

 logists and anthropologists combined to view with the 

 greatest suspicion any new discovery of human remains 

 for which a high antiquity was claimed. Proofs have 

 been, and are, demanded in such cases, more stringent 

 than the stratigraphical geologist is commonly called upon 

 to give. If the coming of man can be clearly shown to 

 have occurred prior to the glacial epoch, this conclusion 

 will have been reached by the running of a blockade, under 

 the search-Ughts of the scientific world. Again and 

 again the blockade has resisted the attack ; again and 

 again the patient worker has had to confess that his 

 evidence was weak and insufficient. It is not the contro- 

 versialist, however, but the man who can produce his 



* See the full account in Prof. N. Joly's " Man before Metals " 

 (1883), p. 35. 



t "Fossil Men and their Modem Eepresentatives," p. 247. 



specimens, and who can invite inspection of his diggings, 

 who is likely to succeed in altering the preconceived 

 opinions of our time. 



The investigators of the glacial epoch have been, unwit- 

 tingly, a great bar to the rational treatment of the question. 

 The emphasis laid on the devastation of northern Europe 

 and America by the encroachment of land-ice has made 

 some geologists, at any rate, forget that the " glacial 

 period" or "epoch" is not the parallel of any period or 

 epoch recognised in our stratigraphical nomenclature. 

 Strictly speaking, it is an incident within a geological 

 epoch, and its serious effects were confined to the northern 

 part of the northern hemisphere. In this sense, the 

 inhabitants of Java may assert that they dwell in a vol- 

 canic epoch ; but life in most parts of the globe is not 

 inconvenienced by the fact. The remains of man in 

 Europe seemed, till recently, to be entirely post-glacial, 

 and consequently the existence of man before the invasion 

 of the ice was held to be highly improbable. But can we 

 believe that man, any more than the mammoth, sprang 

 full-armed from glacial furrows '? Are there many who 

 will agree with Sir J. Dawson's assertion" of the " abrupt 

 appearance of man in his full perfection " ? This phrase, 

 which classes us with the palseolithic savage, may seem at 

 first uncomplimentary ; but perhaps we are asked to 

 infer that the stone age was one of high civilisation. In 

 that case, we shall be all the more inclined to seek farther 

 back for the coming of the earliest man. 



It is, however, improbable that we shall find him, or 

 even relics of his race. In the first place, our view must 

 go far beyond Europe, where the deposits of the ice-age 

 have greatly obscured Pliocene terrestrial phenomena. 

 It may also be urged that man originated in warm 

 climates, and never entered Europe until the cold 

 had passed away. Some believe, however, that the 

 human race is an agglomerate of varieties of diverse 

 origin, the present species having resulted from the 

 parallel development of separate stocks, perhaps in sepa- 

 rate continents. Such a view, if proved, would com- 

 plicate the question, and would render the search for the 

 earliest human centre far more diflicult than before. In 

 any case, what we now desire to know is the geological 

 epoch of man's appearance and establishment on the earth. 

 To this we can at any rate approximate. 



If we listen to those who regard the glacial epoch as 

 limiting the Hfe of the whole globe, it is idle to push our 

 enquiries back even into the Pliocene period. Certain 

 statements, however, have been made from time to time 

 as to the occurrence of Miocene man ; and the fate of 

 these has made some workers unduly cautious. The most 

 famous case is that of the Abbe Bourgeois, who found 

 curiously chipped flints in the Lower Miocene of Thenay, 

 near Pont Levoy, in Loir-et-Cher. Figures of these will 

 be found in various works, such as Zittel's " Handbuch der 

 Palieontologie," Band IV., p. 720 ; but no satisfactory 

 proof can be given of their human origin. It is asserted 

 that the heat of forest-fires can split flint into similar 

 forms ; and Zittel compares them with the flakes produced 

 by weathering on the surface of the Libyan desert. Prof. 

 H. W. Haynest visited Thenay with the Abbe Bourgeois 

 in 1877, and also decides against the acceptance of the 

 flakes, quoting similar occurrences as far back as the 

 Eocene period. Their characters at Thenay, however, are 

 such that some hesitation is allowable. Bather, however, 

 than attribute them to the work of man, most authors will 



* Op. cit., p. 246. 



t Appendix on Tertiary Man, in G. F. Wright's " Man and the 

 G-lacial Period" (1892), p." 370. 



