Part 5

How is it, then, that we have believed the traditionary story for so long and now reject it as absurd? People have believed the story of the creation according to Genesis partly because it was dangerous to do otherwise and partly because there was no absolute proof to the contrary. In 1774, however, a German of the name of Esper made a discovery which gave the finishing touch to the mortal wound inflicted upon the Christian and Jewish superstitions by the previous adoption of the Copernican system of astronomy; and, just as Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton drove the first half-dozen nails into the coffin of the Bible, so did this discovery of Esper drive into it the first of the last half-dozen, the remaining five to be subsequently added by Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, Spencer, and Carpenter. The discovery made by J. F. Esper consisted of some human bones, mingled with remains of the Northern bear and other species then unknown, which were lying in the famous cavern of Gailenreuth, in Bavaria; and this was soon followed by the discovery, in 1797, by John Frere, at Hoxne, in Suffolk, of a number of flint weapons, mixed up with bones of extinct animals, the whole being embedded in rocks. These and other similar discoveries made some sensation among scientific men, which resulted in the publication, in 1823, of Dr. Buckland’s “Reliquiæ Diluvianæ,” in which the author summed up all the facts then known tending to the establishment of the truth that man co-existed with animals long since extinct. Immediately after this, in 1826, Tournal, of Narbonne, gave to the world an account of some discoveries he had made in a cave in Aude (France), where he had found bones of the bison and reindeer, cut and carved by the hand of man, together with remains of edible shell-fish, which must have been brought there by some one who dwelt there. A few years afterwards De Christol, of Montpellier, discovered human bones and fragments of pottery, mixed with the remains of the Northern bear, hyæna, and rhinoceros, in the caverns of Pondres and Souvignargues. In 1833 Schmerling found in the caverns of Engis and Enghihoul, in Belgium, two human skulls, surrounded by teeth of the rhinoceros, elephant, bear, and hyæna, on some of which were marks of human workmanship, and under which were flint knives and arrow-heads. Two years afterwards Joly, a Montpellier professor, found in the cave of Nabrigas (Lozère) the skull of a cave-bear, having upon it marks made by an arrow, beside which were scattered fragments of pottery bearing the imprints of human fingers. Following upon these discoveries were those made in 1842 by Godwin Austen at Kent’s Cavern, near Torquay, consisting of animal remains and results of man’s handiwork; and those made in 1844, by Lund, in the caves of Brazil, consisting of skeletons of thirty human beings, an ape, various carnivora, rodents, pachyderms, sloths, etc. Kent’s Cavern, in 1847, was again the spot to which all eyes were turned; for there McEnery had found, under a layer of stalagmite, the remains of men and extinct animals. This remarkable discovery was followed, in the same year, by the appearance of a work by Boucher de Perthes, of Abbeville, in which he described the flint tools, etc., found in the excavations made there and in the Somme valley as far as Amiens. In 1857 the celebrated Neanderthal skull was discovered; and in 1858 Prestwich, Falconer, and Pengelly (Englishmen) found more flint implements in the lower strata of the Baumann cave, in the Hartz mountains, at the same time that Gosse _fils_ obtained from the sand-pits of Grenelle various flint implements and bones of the mammoth; while in the following year Fontan discovered in the cave of Massat (Ariége) utensils, human teeth, and bones of the cave-bear, hyæna, and cave-lion. Near Bedford, about the same time, Wyatt found, in the gravel-beds, flints similar to those found at Abbeville, and bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, ox, horse, and deer; which discovery was soon followed by that of the celebrated human burial place at Aurignac, by Lartet, in 1860, in which were found human remains, together with bones of the bear, reindeer, bison, hyæna, wolf, mammoth, and rhinoceros, a number of flint and horn implements, and the remaining ashes of fires. The world was at last induced to give some heed to the new cry of man’s extreme antiquity when Boucher de Perthes, of Abbeville, in 1863, discovered at Moulin-Quignon, at a depth of fifteen feet, in a virgin argilo-ferruginous bed belonging to the later Pleiocene or early Pleistocene period, the half of a human lower jaw-bone (which had belonged to an aged person of small stature), covered with an earthy crust, by the side of which lay a flint hatchet, covered with the same kind of crust; and not far from which were also buried, in the same bed, two mammoths’ teeth. After this discovery scientific men generally subscribed to the new theory of the antiquity of man, and all seemed eager to pursue their investigations without delay, the result being that we are now receiving, almost day by day, fresh evidence on the subject, and hope soon to arrive at a tolerably accurate conclusion as to the earliest date of man’s appearance upon earth.

Let us now look more closely at the discoveries made in the various caves referred to above, and also see what advances had been made by geologists in other directions during the same period, as well as what amount of progress has been made during the last twenty years. Dr. Schmerling, the Belgian geologist and comparative anatomist, after exploring the Engis and other caves in the province of Liège, published an illustrated work, giving the results of his investigations, which were highly interesting, and contributed largely to the establishment of the theory of man’s antiquity. In these caves Schmerling found the bones of the cave-bear, hyæna, elephant, and rhinoceros, together with human bones, none of which gave any evidence of having been gnawed, from which circumstance it was inferred that these caves had not been the dwelling-places of wild beasts; and the fact that the bones were scattered about without any order having been observed in their distribution pointed to the conclusion that the caves had not been used as burying-places. Probably, therefore, these remains had been washed into the caves from time to time, and had gradually become covered with deposit, and thus protected and preserved. There were no complete skeletons found; but in the Engis cave were discovered the remains of at least three human beings, the skull of one being embedded by the side of a mammoth’s tooth, and in such a state of disintegration that it fell to pieces on being moved; while the skull of another, an adult, was buried, five feet deep, by the side of a tooth of a rhinoceros, several bones of a horse, and some reindeer bones. Besides the bones, there were also discovered some rude flint implements, a polished bone needle, and other products of man’s industry, all embedded in the same layer as the bones. It follows from these facts that man lived on the banks of the Meuse at the same time as the rhinoceros, mammoth, hyæna, and cave-bear, extinct animals of the Pleiocene and early Pleistocene era.

Not far from these caves are those of the Lesse Valley, in which Dupont discovered, in 1864, three different layers of human and other remains, the lowest of which contained the bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and other extinct animals, together with flint instruments of the rudest type, instruments of reindeer horn, and a human lower jaw with a marked resemblance to the lower jaw of the higher apes. Another discovery at some little distance away from these caves was made in 1857 in what is called the Neanderthal Cave, in the valley of the Düssel, between Düsseldorf and Elberfeld, which is important, not so much as an indication of the length of time that man has lived on the earth, as of the close resemblance existing between the skulls of human beings in the early Pleistocene era and the skulls of apes. The discovery consisted of a human skull and a number of human bones, together with the bones of the rhinoceros, which latter were subsequently unearthed. The skull was of such a character as to raise the question of whether it was human or not, the forehead being narrow and very low and the projection of the supra-orbital ridges enormously great. The long bones of the skeleton agreed with those of men of the present day in respect to length, but were of extraordinary thickness, and the ridges for the attachment of muscles were developed in an unusual degree, showing that the individual was possessed of great muscular strength, especially in the thoracic neighbourhood. Drs. Schaafhausen and Fuhlrott pointed out that the depression of the forehead was not due to any artificial pressure, as the whole skull was symmetrical, and that the individual must have been distinguished by an extraordinarily small cerebral development as well as uncommon corporeal strength. Professor Huxley considers this Neanderthal skull to be the most ape-like one he ever beheld, and Busk, a great authority, gives valuable reasons for supposing it to be the skull of an individual occupying a position midway between the man and the gorilla or chimpanzee. Huxley has carefully compared the Engis and Neanderthal skulls, and his remarks upon them are given in their entirety in Lyell’s “Antiquity of Man.” From these remarks we gather that the Engis skull was dolichocephalic in form, extreme length 7.7 inches, extreme breadth not more than 5.25 inches, forehead well arched, superciliary prominences well but not abnormally developed, horizontal circumference 20½ inches, longitudinal arc from nasal spine to occipital protuberance 13¾ inches, transverse arc from one auditory foramen to the other, across the middle of the sagittal suture, 13 inches. The Neanderthal skull is so different from the Engis skull that Huxley says “it [Neanderthal] might well be supposed to belong to a distinct race of mankind.” It is 8 inches in extreme length, 5.75 inches in breadth, and only 3.4 inches from the glabello-occipital line to the vertex; the longitudinal arc is 12 inches, and the transverse arc probably about 10¼ inches, but, owing to incompleteness of temporal bones, this could not be correctly ascertained; the horizontal circumference is 23 inches, which high figure is due to the vast development of the superciliary ridges; and the sagittal suture, notwithstanding the great length of the skull, only 4½ inches. Huxley sums up his examination of the Neanderthal skull in these words: “There can be no doubt that, as Professor Schaafhausen and Mr. Busk have stated, this skull is the most brutal of all known human skulls, resembling those of the apes, not only in the prodigious development of the superciliary prominences and the forward extension of the orbits, but still more in the depressed form of the brain-case, in the straightness of the squamosal suture, and in the complete retreat of the occiput forward and upward from the superior occipital ridges;” and he then proceeds to clearly show that the skull could not have belonged to an idiot. On the whole, the Engis skull more clearly approaches the Caucasian type, while the Neanderthal differs entirely from all known human skulls, being more nearly allied to the chimpanzee than to the human. Both these skulls belonged to individuals who lived in the early Pleistocene era, the Engis being probably the older of the two, and yet the Engis is the most like the modern European skull, which tells us plainly that in those remote times there were existing in Belgium and the surrounding districts two different races of men, one highly advanced in brain evolution and the other in a wretchedly low condition of intellectual development. The Neanderthal skull probably formed part of an individual belonging to the tail-end of a semi-human race, while the Engis skull, in all probability, belonged to an oriental immigrant belonging to a more advanced race. It must be always remembered that scientific men have long since admitted the truth of the theory that the differences in character between the brain of the highest races of men and that of the lowest, though less in degree, are of the same order as those which separate the human from the ape brain, the same rule holding good in regard to the shape of the skull.

The discoveries made in Kent’s Cavern, in the year 1842 and again in 1847, led to a thorough investigation of the series of galleries forming the now celebrated Brixham Caves, near Torquay, and as early as 1859 the labours of the explorers were rewarded by the discovery of a number of flint implements in the cave-earth or loam, _underneath_ the layer of stalagmite, which were the work of men living in Palæolithic times, prior to the existence of the reindeer, whose antlers were found deposited _in_ the layer of stalagmite. Previous to this time, when McEnery, in 1826, examined Kent’s Cavern, he had stated that he had found several teeth of _Ursus cultridens_, a huge carnivore belonging to Tertiary formations, but now extinct; and as this monster was first known in Meiocene deposits in France, but had never been traced in any cavern or fluviatile Pleistocene deposits, although it had occurred in Pleiocene formations, considerable excitement was caused on the score that the flint implements lately found might possibly have belonged to Meiocene, or at latest early Pleiocene men. Further investigations were accordingly commenced for the purpose of solving this problem, the explorations being under the superintendence of Messrs. Vivian and Pengelley; and in 1872 they at last came upon a fine incisor of _Ursus cultridens_ in the uppermost part of the cave-earth, which settled the point as to man’s existence at the same time with the extinct bear in England. The Kent’s Cavern deposits are as follows:—1. Limestone. 2. Black mould, containing articles of mediæval, Romano-British, and pre-Roman date. 3. Stalagmite floor, from 16 to 20 inches thick, containing a human jaw and remains of extinct animals. 4. Black earth, containing charcoal and other evidence of fire, and also bone and flint instruments. 5. Red cave-earth, containing Palæolithic implements and bones and teeth of extinct animals, such as cave-lion, mammoth, rhinoceros, and hyæna, and including the tooth of the _Ursus cultridens_, or _Machairodus latidens_. 6. Second stalagmite floor, from 3 to 12 feet thick, covering bones of bears only. 7. Dark red sandy loam, containing bones of bears, three flint implements, and one flint chip. The fact of the _Ursus cultridens_ being contemporary in England with man is of enormous interest to geologists and anthropologists, for it places the date of Palæolithic man as far back as the Pleiocene age, instead of, as heretofore, in the Pleistocene.

The caves of the Dordogne Valley in south-western France have supplied us with some very good relics of a very remote period. They are situated in rocks of Cretaceous age, and form shelters in which ancient huntsmen used to find dwelling-places, leaving behind them refuse-heaps and instruments of various kinds. In the Vezère Caves, which are included in the Dordogne series, there is one of very ancient date, Le Moustier, in which is a bed of sand having both above and below floors of a similar character, containing charcoal, flint instruments, and other remains. The depth of this sandy bed is about 10 inches, having the appearance of a river deposit; and, although many flint instruments have been found in it of a more ancient date than those unearthed in the other caves, yet no worked bone instruments have been discovered. In another cave, the Langerie, bronze and polished stone objects have been found, together with various kinds of pottery, below which, and under masses of fallen rock, covered with Palæolithic flints and sculptured bones and antlers of reindeer, a human skeleton was discovered lying under a block of stone. In another cave, La Madeleine, was found a mammoth tusk, on which was rudely carved a picture of the animal itself, proving incontestably that cave-men lived here in mammoth times. In the Mentone cave Dr. Rivière, in 1872, suddenly came upon the bones of a human foot, which caused him to make a very careful examination of the deposit, the result being that he unearthed an entire human skeleton at a depth of 20 feet, surrounded by a large number of unpolished flint flakes and scrapers, and a fragment of a skewer, about six inches long. No metal, pottery, or polished flint was found; but bones of extinct mammals were scattered about, thus suggesting a remote Palæolithic antiquity. The skeleton is 5 feet 9 inches high, the skull dolichocephalic, forehead narrow, temple flattened, and facial angle measuring 80 to 85 degrees; the teeth were worn flat by eating hard food, and the long bones are strong and flattened.

No human bones have as yet been discovered in the deposit of the Somme valley, where so many Palæolithic flints have been found; but in the valley of the Seine, at Clichy, Messrs. Bertrand and Reboux found, in 1868, portions of human skeletons in the same beds where Palæolithic implements had been embedded. These bones were found at a depth of seventeen feet, and included a female skull of very inferior type, having enormously thick frontal bone and a low, narrow roof, slanting from before backwards. A very good specimen of human fossil is that known as the “Denise Fossil Man,” comprising the remains of more than one skeleton found in a volcanic breccia near Le Puy-en-Velay, in Central France. These bones have been very carefully examined by the members of the French Scientific Congress, as also the deposit in which they were found, and the opinion arrived at is that the fossils are genuine and their age early Pleistocene. Another most interesting specimen of ancient human remains is the skeleton found buried under four Cypress forests, superimposed one upon the other, in the delta of the Mississippi, near New Orleans, at a depth of sixteen feet. Dr. Dowler ascribes to this skeleton an antiquity of at least 50,000 years, reckoning by the minimum length of time that must have elapsed during the formation of the deposits found and the sinking of the four successive forest beds. In another part of the same delta, near Natchez, a human bone, _os innominatum_, accompanied by bones of the mastodon and megalonyx, was washed out of what is believed to be a still more ancient alluvial deposit. Dr. Dickeson, in whose possession the said bone is now, states that it was buried at a depth of thirty feet, and geologists agree that its date is very early, some maintaining that it is probably of a higher antiquity than any yet discovered.

From these discoveries it is abundantly evident that man existed on the earth contemporaneously with the mastodon and other extinct mammals belonging to the Pleiocene and early Pleistocene eras. There are, however, people who stoutly deny that this can be so—at any rate, as regards Northern and Central Europe—and who rank the discoveries at Moulin Quignon, Engis, Kent’s Cavern, etc., with late Pleistocene remains. They maintain that the beds in which these relics were found could not have been of Pleiocene or early Pleistocene formation, inasmuch as they lie _above_ the till and boulder-clay which form the glacial deposits of the time when Europe was an Arctic region—that is to say, of late Pleistocene times. Therefore, they say, man’s earliest existence in Europe was post-glacial or late Pleistocene. But while the fact of the human remains having been discovered above the boulder-clay appears to point to a post-glacial date, still there is confronting us the perplexing anomaly of the contemporary existence of extinct mammals belonging to a tropical fauna, which, if we accept this theory, involves the necessity of admitting that a tropical climate followed the last glacial epoch—a condition of things that we know never existed at all. The fact is there have been more periods of glaciation than one, each being followed by the deposition of boulder-clays; and between the periods of intense Arctic cold there were intervals of tropical or sub-tropical heat, when mammals belonging to and requiring a tropical climate ventured as far north as the north of England, to become extinct when the period of glaciation supervened. The last glacial period, we know, extended its area of influence as far as the high peaks of Switzerland and Northern Italy, completely overwhelming the whole of Northern Europe as far south as the latitude of 45º, and the whole of North America as far south as the latitude of 40º; since when there has been a gradual diminution of cold until the present temperate climate supervened. Now, if it can be positively ascertained that all the boulder-clays found in England and Northern Europe were deposited during and immediately after this last glacial period, the date of man’s first appearance in those districts, as far as we have as yet any evidence, must be post-glacial; but in such a case it would have been impossible that a tropical fauna and flora could have existed in the same localities, whereas their remains have been abundantly found lying side by side with the remains of Palæolithic man. The conclusion we must draw is that the boulder-clays found below the remains of Palæolithic man could not have been deposited after the last period of glaciation, but must have followed some prior glacial condition, and that man existed in England and Northern Europe contemporaneously with extinct mammalia during inter-glacial or pre-glacial times, when the climate of England was tropical or sub-tropical—that is to say, in middle Pleistocene or late Pleiocene times. If man really existed in England in Pleiocene times, in favour of which view there appears to be strong evidence, he would have been in all probability the companion of the extinct tropical mammalia found deposited in the Cromer Forest beds, and some of which belonged to Meiocene times. This forest was in existence at the close of the Pleiocene era, and stretched from Cromer far away into what is now the German Ocean, uniting Norfolk and Suffolk to Holland and Belgium; but soon after the commencement of the Pleistocene period the North Sea gradually swept over the old continent between Britain on the west and Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands on the east, thus converting the old forest at Cromer into the bed of the ocean, where the stumps of the trees may now be seen embedded in deposit at very low tide. Immediately after the disappearance of this forest the first period of glaciation commenced, from which moment until the close of the glacial periods the alternations in temperature and surface level were frequent and of enormous magnitude, the correct sequence of which changes we have as yet no proper conception.