io8 



NA TURE 



{June 7, 1877 



language seems to have been the parent also of the old Egyptian. 

 But in order to allow for the changes that had taken place 

 in the structure of the Semitic languages, and the struc- 

 ture of the Egyptian language, we must assume a very 

 great period of time. With regard to the Aryan family, the 

 different dialecs could be traced back lo the parent speech 

 spoken in some part of Western Asia. That parent language 

 could be restored by comparison with the later languages and 

 dialects. In all points that parent speech was as fully developed 

 as Sanscrit, or Greek, or Latin, the people who spoke it were 

 in an advanced stage of civilisation, and the language itself was 

 in a highly advanced condition. When the grammatical details 

 of the language were analysed, it became quite plain that it was 

 the product of a long series of successive stages of growth. Take 

 another language, the old language of Chaldea. The earliest 

 monuments tliat contained that language were between 3000 and 

 2000 li.c. On these monuments the language appeared in a 

 stage of the most utter decline and decay. Therefore there was 

 evidence of a language which had behind it a long and undeter- 

 mined past. If, as several scholars believed, that language 

 belonged to the Ural-Altaic famiy, in order to get back to a period 

 when those languages were one and the same, they must suppose 

 an enormous period of time. Tnere was another consideration 

 connected with the evidence of langu.ige. It would seem that 

 most languages, whatever their present structure might be, were 

 at one time in a condition similar to that of the Esquimaux 

 language at the present time, that is to say, a time when as yet 

 the single word is not distinguished from the sentence as an 

 independent unit, but forms part of the sentence in which it is 

 embodied. In the case of languages so highly developed as, 

 say, the Aryan languages, in order to get back to a time when 

 those languages were in a condition similar to the present con- 

 dition of the Esquimaux language, they must allow not hundreds 

 but thousands of years. Those were the conclusions to which 

 the present investigations of language would appear to point. 



Mr. T. K. Callard, referring to the outline of the head of a 

 horse, drawn upon a bone represented as belonging to tlie palaeo- 

 lithic age, found in association with extinct animals, said they 

 had always been led to think that pala'olithic man was a rude 

 savage who could only chip his flint implement, but who could 

 not smooth it (that would indicate the neolithic period), but 

 they were now getting evidence of a different character. They 

 had heard of a bone needle being found in the cave-earth, which 

 at once suggested a step in civilisation, as men did not make 

 bone needles unless they intended to use them, and that would 

 lead their thoughts to a palreolithic tailor. In that very cave 

 were found traces of a no mean artist, for not one man in three 

 at the present time could make a sketch like that of the horse. 

 It struck him that that Royal Academician of the palteolithic age 

 had for his model a horse with his mane clipped^ which indicated 

 another stage of civilisation. Were they justified in saying that 

 because the remains of mammoth and woolly rhinoceros were 

 found in close proximity to the remains of man, therefore man 

 lived at such a remote period? He was inclined to think that 

 it proved not so much the antiquity of man, as that the ex- 

 tinct mammalia were more modern than they are supposed to 

 be. The works of man being found with the remains of the 

 extinct mammalia, tells nothing of the period of man's existence, 

 unless it is also proved when the mammalia referred to became 

 extinct ; of this there was no proof adduced, and therefore, to his 

 mind, the argument for man's antiquity based on the contempo- 

 raneity of man and the extinct mammalia has not been sustained. 



Mr. Harrison said the palceolithic character of the flint imple- 

 ments found at Cissbury in connection with the remains of exist- 

 ing fauna, including goat and pig, showed that the form and 

 finish of prehistoric tools and weapons were not of themselves a 

 safe criterion of age. Though the earliest implements would 

 necessarily have been the rudest, the converse was by no means 

 true. There were doubtless art-centres in early times, as there 

 are now, and Cisibu'y would not appear to have been one of 

 them, but rather belonged to the far larger class of village manu- 

 factories. Some of the pits, he wished to say as the result of 

 personal observation, may have been opened but a short period 

 before our era. Their age does not directly affect the question 

 of the antiquity of man in this country, which depends for its 

 solution on geological facts. 



The President, Mr. Evans, in summing up, said the ques- 

 tions principally discussed were — In the first place were they 

 to assign any implement found in this country to a pre-glacial 

 or inter-glacial period ? or must they restrict them to a post- 

 glacial period ? f- ome of the implements found in the liver 



gravels were made from stones derived from glacial drift, 

 and were therefore clearly post-glacial. The characteristic 

 forms of the implements gave a guide by which they might 

 fairly argue that others of a similar character belonged approxi- 

 mately to the same date. Some implements were very per- 

 sistent in their type ; but if in a certain part of England post- 

 glacial implements were found associated with a certain fauna, 

 and in another part the same forms of implements were found 

 alone, these also would appear to be postglacial. There were 

 certain distinctions to be pointed out m cave-deposits. In the 

 cave described by Prof. Dawkins there were a succession of beds, 

 and he thought it was in the upper beds of more recent date that 

 the relics of the tailor and the artist were found. Looking at the 

 enormous lapse of time comprised in the palaeolithic pei iod, which 

 was evidenced by the amount of time requisite for the erosion 

 of river valleys, he thought they would eventually be able to 

 establish some chronology. If they could form any idea of the 

 amount of time requisite for the excavation of a valley such as 

 the valley of the Thames, they could approximately estimate the 

 antiquity of man in this country, but for the last 2,500 years the 

 variation of the river bed and its level were practically nothing, 

 and therefore they were entirely at a loss without falling back 

 on some hypothesis as to variations in the climate. It was diffi- 

 cult to say with certainty whether the implements discovered 

 abroad in reputed miocene and pliocene beds were of necessity 

 worked by the hand of man, and whether they had in all cases 

 been found under the circumstances which were attributed to 

 them. With regard to the other deposits by which the early 

 existence of man had been traced, such as the skull alluded to 

 by Prof. Rolleston, if it nas found with a highly- finished spear- 

 head, he (ihe speaker) could not regard it as of pleistocene date. 

 The evidence of cut bones was by no means satisfactory. Some 

 of those incisions were probably induced by natural cruses. 

 Some present might remember a pair of horns of an Irish elk 

 which by mere pressure were embedded in each other. Still, 

 all such evidence should be carefully collected, and it would 

 become to a certain extent accumulative. The question as to 

 the distinction between the glacial period in the South of 

 England and that of the North was of very great importance. 

 If geologists carried back the early appearance of man in this 

 country to a time but little removed from the glacial period, they 

 might safely infer that he must have existed in other parts of 

 Europe at a much earlier period. 



As this interesting discussion could not well be post- 

 poned, and as the time at the disposal of the Conference 

 was necessarily brief, it now only remained for the three 

 principals to reply to any objections that may have been 

 raised to their statements and arguments. 



Prof. Boyd Dawkins said that the first point to be con- 

 sidered was the antiquity of man in the Victoria Cave, based 

 upon a small fragment of fibula, and two fragments of goat's 

 bones which presented the appearance of having been cut. 

 The fibula seemed to him to be ursine rather than human, and 

 in size came within a very little (two-tenths of an inch) of the 

 circumference of one of Ur^iis spe/irus from Lozere. With 

 regard to the goat's bones, he shared the opinion of Mr. Davies, 

 of the British Museum, that they are not fossil, but recent, in 

 other words, he did not bel'.eve that they were originally im- 

 bedded in the stratum containing the remains of the hytenas, but 

 were derived from an upper stratum of post-Roman age in the 

 cave, in which they are exceedingly abundant. The goat hitherto 

 has not been found in any pleistocene strata in this country or m 

 France, all the repeated cases of its occurrence turning out on 

 examination to be the result of the mixing of two suites of 

 animal remains, the one pleistocene, and the other historic or 

 pre-historic. This is very generally done by the workmen, and 

 this was probably the case in the Victoria Cave. But if these 

 equivocal data be assumed to prove that man was living in this 

 district while hya;nas occuiitd the cave, the evidence is still 

 unsatisfactory as lo their pre- or post-glacial age. The hya;na 

 stratum itself appeared to him, while the explorations were 

 under his direction, not to be of clearly defined pre- or inter- 

 glacial age ; and his doubts as to this point were, he believed, 

 shared by Prof. Hughes. He further remarked that the rein- 

 deer found in the hytena stratum had been omitted from Mr. 

 Tiddeman's list of species. The rudeness of the pala;olithic im- 

 plements in the Cresswell caves from the lower strata as com- 

 pared with the more highly finished ones found above them, 

 seemed to him to imply a progress in the arts in that district. 



