ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 241 



within the Recent period, several oscillations of land 

 in Sweden; and similar evidence exists in regard to 

 many other parts of western Europe. 



The facts above presented are suggestive rather 

 than exhaustive ; but they tend to show the necessity 

 of suspending our judgment on the antiquity of man 

 until larger inductions have been made, and until the 

 facts known are better understood. Such caution is 

 rendered the more necessary by the numerous instances,, 

 in the progress of this investigation, of errors current 

 for a time, and then exploded. The archasological lite- 

 rature of the last ten years is strewn with the wrecks 

 of supposed facts establishing the antiquity of man, 

 but which more careful examination has shown to 

 have been wrongly observed or misunderstood.* 



If we attempt to reduce to terms of years such 

 changes as those above discussed, which appear to 

 have happened since the advent of man in Europe, 

 there are two considerations often neglected, to which 

 we must give their due weight. These are, (1) That 



* It may be instructive to mention as instances, the calcu- 

 lations of time based on the Cone of the Tiniere, the peats of 

 Abbeville and of Denmark, the excavation of valleys in north- 

 ern France out of solid chalk, the growth of stalagmite in 

 caverns, and the Sodertelje Hut in Sweden. These have been 

 well exposed by Torell, Andrews, Southall, and others. Or 

 we may refer to the evidences of Pre-glacial man supposed 

 to be furnished by the Victoria Cave, the flint implements 

 of Brandon, the bone cave of Diirnten, the Pliocene man of 

 Denise, the cut bones of Tuscany, the Miocene chipped flints 

 of Thenay and of the Dardanelles. All of these are now re- 

 jected, even by the most advanced advocates of the great 

 antiquity of man. 



R 



