SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 27. 



ported by geological facts, nor the history 

 of the development of human culture. 

 Progessive early quarternary man could 

 not have remained stationary for 70,000 

 years VFithout advancing further than the 

 status attained by ' man of the early stone 

 period.' "There is nothing to represent 

 geologically that long period of time, nor 

 have biologists been able to detect any es- 

 sential structural differences between paleo- 

 lithic man and neolithic man in support of 

 such a conclusion; all the evidence tends, on 

 the contrary, to prove that late glacial (or 

 post-glacial man), together with the great 

 extinct mammalia, came down approxi- 

 mately to within some 10,000 to 12,000 

 years of our own time, and that the ' rubble 

 drift ' marks the stroke of the pendulum 

 when the glacial period came to a close and 

 the Neolithic age ' commenced.' " 



It is well known that the stern repression 

 of the physicists has compelled the majority 

 of geologists and biologists to make consid- 

 erable reductions in their estimates of the 

 duration of geological time and of the ages 

 requisite for the evolution of life on the 

 earth. These conjectures have varied fi-om 

 Mr. J W McGee's revised maximum of 

 six thousand millions of years to Professor 

 Winchell's modest minimum of three mil- 

 lions. Mr. C. D. Walcott, who has recently 

 passed this subject in review (American 

 Geologist, December, 1893), came to the safe 

 conclusion that " the earth is very old and 

 that man's occupation of it is but a day's 

 span compared with the eons that have 

 elapsed since the first consolidation of the 

 rocks with which the geologist is ac- 

 quainted."* 



"With regard to the approximate duration 

 of this ' span,' however, quarternary geolo- 

 gists and archaiologists are by no means 

 agreed. Mr. Warren Upham would extend 



* The majority ot estimates now range from fifty to 

 ninety-five millions, more than one hundred millions 

 less than Darwin suggested as the age of the world. 



its limits to 100,000 years at least. Profes- 

 sor Prestwich would make it much shorter. 

 He ascribes from 15,000 to 25,000 years to 

 the glacial epoch, and to the post-glacial 

 period at most 10,000 years; from 20,000 

 to 30,000 years in all to paleolithic man. 

 (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, London, p. 407 

 Vol. 43, 1887). 



Historic archaeologists, on the other hand, 

 are daily accumulating evidence that the 

 dawn of civilization was remote from our 

 era, that the arts and sciences began long, 

 long ago. Drawing, painting, sculptures, 

 writing, calculating and astronomical ob- 

 servations were fully developed and wide- 

 spread at the earliest historical period, and 

 their origin lies far beyond our ken. The 

 researches of Prof. ISTorman Lockyer have 

 revealed a knowledge and practice of the 

 elements of astronomy in the Old World 

 as far back as the history of Egj'pt and 

 Asia Minor can be traced, while those of 

 Mrs. Zelia Nuttall on ' the calendar system 

 of the Ancient Mexicans ' have demonstrated 

 the hitherto unsuspected facts that such 

 knowledge was developed and observations 

 practiced in the New World at an almost 

 equally remote period of time. 



Of a truth there is no finality about 

 science. The enunciation of modern theo- 

 ries postdating the antiquitj' of man coin- 

 cides with facts antedating the dawn of 

 human civilization. Unless we may assume 

 with Professor Prestwich, that the two 

 periods overlapped in Europe and Asia, that 

 while man in a more advanced state flour- 

 ished in the East he may have been in one 

 of his later post-glacial stages in the West, 

 or are permitted to apply to human culture 

 the principle of ' accelerated development ' 

 so dear to American biologists, the recon- 

 ciliation of two such apparent contradic- 

 tions must still be left a ' Problem of the 

 Future.' 



Agnes Crane. 



Brighton, England. 



