NATURE 



97 



THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 1877 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 



1""HE Conference on the Antiquity of Man lately held 

 by the Anthropological Institute, and reported in 

 these columns, has led to a result by no means unsatis- 

 fictory, when all the conditions of the problem are duly 

 weighed. The result is merely negative, but in arriving 

 at it several misconceptions and errors of fact seem to us 

 to have been swept away. In its discussion there were 

 two parties represented, one eager to show that the anti- 

 quity of man has been proved by modern discovery to be 

 far older than the date which had been arrived at by the 

 labours of Falconer, Lyell, Prestwich, Evans, Boyd 

 Dawkins, and others, while the other contended that the 

 subject had not advanced in the least degree during the 

 last {&\\ years, and that the so-called discoveries were 

 either errors of observation, or resulting from premises 

 which were altogether unsatisfactory. The field of the 

 discussion lay in matters geological rather than archseo- 

 logical, and the caution which the president urged upon 

 the conference was certainly not urged in vain. 



The chief interest of the debate turned upon the ques- 

 tion as to whether there was any evidence in this country 

 of man in the caves or river deposits older than post- 

 glacial times. The readers of the works of Messrs. Croll 

 and James Geikie will remember that they ascribe all the 

 traces of paleolithic man in this country either to a pre- 

 or inter-glacial age, basing their conclusions principally 

 upon the fart that in the river deposits and caves some of 

 the associated animals, such as the hysena, lion, and 

 hippopotamus are now only to be found in hot climates ; 

 and seeing that no traces of a warm climate are presented 

 by any post-glacial deposit in Britain, they infer that 

 those in question are of a much higher antiquity. They 

 account for the association of southern and northern 

 animals by the supposition that they occupied the country 

 at different times, during glacial or interglacial reons of 

 from five to twelve thousands years in length. To this it 

 was objected that the intimate association of forms prove 

 that both sets of animals inhabited the country at the 

 same time, and were the result of the overlapping of dif- 

 ferent faunas during seasonal changes. The reindeer 

 fornitd a large portion of the piry of the hyjena, and 

 must therefore have been a contemporary. It was also 

 pointed out by one of the speakers, that there is no 

 evidence from the animals that there ever was anything 

 like " the perpetual summer," advocated by Mr. Geikie at 

 any time in the pleistocene age. The hippopotamus 

 in Regent's Park takes his tub regularly in spite of the 

 east winds so prevalent in the spring, which remind one of 

 the glacial period ; and the tiger crosses the frost-bound 

 rivers of the Amoor to prey upon the reindeer. The lion, 

 now found only in the south, lived in the days of Hero- 

 dotus in the inclement mountains of Thrace. It seems, 

 therefore, to us, that any argument based upon fossil 

 animals as to a warm inter-glacial period, is worthless. 

 And further, it is obviously unfair in treating of the fauna 

 associated with man to adopt the forensic device of 

 choosing some witnesses to the exclusion of others. It 

 would be as easy to prove the climate in question to have 

 Vol. .\vi.— No. 397 



been temperate from the associated remains of bison, 

 stag, and horse, as it would be to prove it to have been 

 arctic from the associated musk sheep, lemmings, and 

 reindeer. It was probably a varying climate, with great 

 extremes, similar to that in Central Siberia, in which the 

 summer heat and winter cold are very severe. 



The fossil mammalia of the pleiostocene tell us nothing 

 as to the relation of man to the glacial period. The 

 Arctic species invaded Europe probably from Asia, while 

 the ice was finding its way southwards from the mountains 

 of Scandinavia, and occupied the area north of the Alps 

 and the Pyrenees, while the confluent glaciers covered 

 the area north of the valley of the Thames. When the 

 ice ultimately retreated they followed it, and thus were 

 both pre- and post-glacial. Nor do the survivals from the 

 pleiocene age tell us anything, such as the hippopotamus, 

 the Rhinoceros leptorhiiuis, and the Elephas antiqiius, 

 since they belong both to the earlier and later pleistocene 

 stf.ita, and are also associated with remains of reindeer, 

 and other northern species. The presence of the reindeer 

 in all the palaeolithic caverns stamps the age of man as late 

 pleistocene, according to Prof. Boyd Dawkins, but it does 

 not afford any clue as to his pre- or post-glacial age. The 

 glacial period is not a hard and fast line dividing one 

 fauna from another. One pateolithic cave, however, in 

 this country, that of Pont Newydd, in the valley of the 

 Elwy, near St. Asaph, is of well-ascertained post-glacial 

 age. 



The argument urged in favour ofpateolithic man being 

 pre- or inter-glacial, based upon the distribution of the 

 mammalia in southern and eastern England, and in 

 France, while they are conspicuous by their absence in 

 the glaciated areas of Scotland, Cumberland, and Wales, 

 was met by the view that the barren areas were covered 

 with ice, ivliile other districts further to the south were 

 occupied by the animals. The hypothesis that the uplands 

 of Wales and Northern Britain were ever stocked by the 

 same animals as the fertile river-bottoms of the south, 

 seems to us little less than absurd. Yet this is necessary 

 for the view that their remains have been removed from 

 the barren areas by the subsequent grinding of the ice- 

 sheet. 



In the course of the discussion the reputed cases of the 

 occurrence of palsolithic remains in the deposits older 

 than the post-glacial were minutely criticised. Prof. 

 Busk stated that the fibula of the Victoria Cave, formerly 

 supposed to be human, was altogether too insignificant 

 a fragment to base any conclusion upon as to man's 

 antiquity. Two small cut-bones, however, of goat were 

 brought forward by Mr. Tiddeman in support of the pre- 

 or inter-glacial age of man in the Victoria Cave. On the 

 other hand, it was urged that these were derived from the 

 superficial stratum containing Roman coins and pottery, 

 lie, in which they were very abundant. From the nature 

 of the cuts it seems to us that if it be established that 

 they were discovered in the undisturbed stratum along 

 with the hyaenas, they would prove not only the presence 

 of man, but of a user of a knife or chopper of bronze or iron. 

 The absence of the goat, also (probably a domestic ani- 

 mal) from all undisturbed pleistocene deposits in thi- 

 country, and in France, Belgium, and Germany, renders 

 it very probable that the animal was introduced into those 

 regions after the close of the pleistocene ag-r But even 



