118 THE ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 



up to those comparatively modern times, when first the Greek 

 trade, and afterward the entire overthrow of the Carthaginian 

 power by the Romans, terminated forever the age of bronze, and 

 substituted the age of iron. This would leave, according to our 

 ordinary chronologies, at least ten or fifteen centuries for the post- 

 diluvian stone period ; a time quite sufficient, in our view, for all 

 that part of it represented by such remains as those of the Danish 

 coast, and the still more remarkable platform habitations, whose 

 remains have been found in the Swiss lakes, and which belong pro- 

 perly to the recent period of geology. In connection with this 

 we would advise the reader to study the many converging lines of 

 evidence derived from history, from monuments, and from lan- 

 guage, which Dr. Wilson shows, in his concluding chapter, to point 

 to the comparatively recent origin of at least post-diluvian man. 

 Let it be observed, also, that the attempts of Bunsen and others to 

 deduce an extraordinarily long chronology from Egyptian monu- 

 ments, and from the diversity of languages, have signally failed; and 

 that the observations made by Mr. Horner in the Nile alluvions 

 are admitted to be open to too many doubts to be relied on.* 



Before leaving the recent period, it is deserving of note that Sir 

 C. Lyell shows on the best evidence, that in Scotland, since the 

 building of the Wall of Antoninus, an elevation of from twenty-five 

 to twenty-seven feet has occurred both on the eastern and western 

 coast, and consequently that the raised sea bottoms containing 

 canoes, &c, in the valley of the Clyde, supposed by some to be of 

 extremely ancient date, were actually under water in the time of 

 the Romans ; a fact of which, but for their occupation of the country, 

 we should have been ignorant. 



From the Recent period we pass, under the guidance of Sir 

 Charles, to the Post-pliocene, geologicaly distinguished from the 

 Recent by the fact that its deposits contain the bones of many 

 great extinct quadrupeds ; as for instance the mammoth, Elephas 

 primigenius, the wooly rhinoceros, B. tichorhinus, and others, here- 

 tofore, (but it would seem on insufficient evidence,) supposed to 

 have disappeared before the advent of man. The evidence now 



* The chronology deduced from the Delta of the Tiniere, which 

 would give to the stone period an antiquity of 5000 to 7000 years, ap- 

 pears to us to be similarly defective ; and the data assigned to human 

 remains in the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio, and the old reefs of 

 Florida still more so. 



