Human Origins

In fact the area over which these evidences of man's existence have been found may be best defined by the negative, where they have not been found, as there is every probability that it will eventually be proved that, with a few exceptions, wherever man could have existed during the Quaternary period, there he did exist. The northern portions of Europe which were buried under ice-caps are the only countries where considerable search has failed to discover palæolithic implements, while nearly all Asia, Africa, and America, and vast extents of desert and forests remain unexplored.

The next point to observe is, that throughout the whole of the Quaternary period there has been a constant progression of human intelligence upwards. Any theory of human origins which says that man has fallen and not risen is demonstrably false. How do we know this? The time scale of the Quaternary as of other geological periods is determined partly by the superposition of strata, and partly by the changes of fauna. In the case of existing rivers which have excavated their present valleys in the course of ages, it is evident that the highest deposits are the oldest. If the Somme, Seine, or Thames left remains of their terraces and patches of their silts and gravels at heights 100 feet or more above their present level, it is because they began to run at these higher levels, and gradually worked their way downwards, leaving traces of their floods ever lower and lower. In the case of deposits in caves or in still water, or where glacial moraines and débris are superimposed on one another, the case is reversed, and the lowest are the oldest and the highest the most recent.

In like manner if the fauna has changed, the remains found in the highest deposits of rivers and lowest, of caves will be the oldest, and will become more modern as we descend in the one case or ascend in the others.

This is practically confirmed by the coincidence of innumerable observations. The oldest Quaternary fauna is characterized by a preponderance of three species, the mammoth (Elephas primigenius), the woolly rhinoceros (Rhinoceros tichorinus), and the cave-bear (Ursus spelæus).

There are a few survivals from the Pliocene, as the gigantic elephant (Elephas antiquus) and a few anticipations of later phases, as the reindeer, horse, and ox, but the three mentioned are, with palæolithic man, the most characteristic. Then comes a long period when a strange mixture of northern and southern forms occurs. Side by side with the remains of Arctic animals such as the mammoth, the glutton, the musk ox, and the lemming, are found those of African species adapted only for a warm climate, the lion, panther, hyena, and above all the hippopotamus, not distinguishable from the existing species, which could certainly not have lived in rivers that were frozen in winter.

The intermixture is most difficult to account for. No doubt Africa and Europe were then united, and the theory of migration is invoked. The Arctic animals may, it is said, have moved south in winter and the African animals north in summer, and this was doubtless the case to some extent. But there are some facts which militate against this theory; for instance, the hyena caves, which seem to show a continuous occupation by the same African species for long periods. Nor is it easy to conceive how the hippopotamus could have travelled every summer from Africa to Yorkshire, and retreated every autumn with the approach of frost. Such instances point rather to long inter-glacial periods with vicissitudes of climate, enabling now a northern, and now a southern fauna to inhabit permanently the same region.

Be this as it may, the fact is certain that this strange intermixture of northern and southern species is found in almost all the European deposits of the Quaternary age, until towards its close with the coming on of the second great glacial period, when the southern forms disappear, and the reindeer, with an Arctic or boreal flora and fauna, become preponderant, and extend themselves over Southern France and Germany up to the Alps and Pyrenees.

The Quaternary period is therefore roughly divided by geologists into three stages: 1st, that of the mammoth and cave-bear, there being some difference of opinion as to which came first, though probably they were simultaneous; 2nd, the middle stage of the mixed fauna; 3rd, the latest stage, that of the reindeer.

Now to these stages there is an exact correspondence in the character of the human implements found in them. In the earliest, those of the oldest deposits and of the oldest animals, we find the rudest implements. They consist almost exclusively of native stones, chipped roughly into a few primitive shapes: celts, which are merely lumps of flint or other hard stone with a little chipping to supplement natural fractures in bringing them to a point or edge, while the butt-end is left rough to be grasped by the hand; scrapers with a little chipping to an edge on one side; very rude arrow-heads without the vestige of a barb or socket; and flakes struck off at a blow, which may have served for knives. As we ascend to later deposits we find these primitive types constantly improving. The celts are chipped all over and the butt-ends adapted for haftings, so also are the other implements and weapons, and the arrow-heads by degrees acquire barbs. But the great advance occurs with the use of bone, which seems to have been as important a civilizing agent for palæolithic as metals were for neolithic man. This again seems to have been due to the increasing preponderance of the reindeer, whose horns afforded an abundant and easily manipulated material for working into the desired forms by flint knives.

At any rate the fact is, that as we trace palæolithic man upwards into the later half of the Quaternary period when the reindeer became abundant, we find a notable advance of civilization. Needles appear, showing that skins of animals were stitched together with sinews to provide clothing. Barbed arrows and harpoons show that the arts of war and of the chase had made a great advance on the primitive unhafted celt. And finally we arrive at a time when certain tribes showed not only an advance in the industrial arts, but a really marvellous proficiency in the arts of sculpture and drawing. In the later reindeer period, when herds of that animal and of the wild horse and ox roamed over the plains of Southern France and Germany, and when the mammoth and cave-bear, though not extinct, were becoming scarce, tribes of palæolithic savages who lived in the caves and rock shelters of the valleys of Southern France and Germany, and of Switzerland and Belgium, drew pictures of their chases and of the animals with which they were surrounded, with the point of a flint on pieces of bone or of schist. They also carved bones into images of these animals, to adorn the handles of their weapons or as idols or amulets. Both drawings and sculptures are in many cases admirably executed, so as to leave no doubt of the animal intended, especially in the case of the wild animals, for the rare portraits of the human figure are very inferior. Most of them represent the reindeer in various attitudes, but the mammoth, the cave-bear, the wild horse, the Bos primigenius, and others, are also represented with wonderful fidelity.

With the close of the reindeer age we pass into the Recent period and from palæolithic to neolithic man. Physically there is no very decided break, and we cannot draw a hard-and-fast line where one ends and the other begins. All we can say is, that there is general evidence of constantly decreasing cold during the whole post-glacial period, from the climax of the second great glaciation until modern conditions of climate are fairly established, and the existing fauna has completely superseded that of the Quaternary, the older characteristic forms of which having either become extinct or migrated. How does this affect the most characteristic of all Quaternary forms, that of man? Can we trace an uninterrupted succession from the earliest Quaternary to the latest modern times, or is there a break between the Quaternary and Recent periods which with our present knowledge cannot be bridged over? And did the division of mankind into distinct and widely different races, which is such a prominent feature at the present day and ever since the commencement of history, exist in the case of the palæolithic man, whose remains are so widespread?

These are questions which can only be answered by the evidence of actual remains of the human body. Implements and weapons may have altered gradually with the lapse of ages, and new forms may have been introduced by commerce and conquest, without any fundamental change in the race using them. Still less can language be appealed to as a test of race, for experience shows how easily the language of a superior race may be imposed on populations with which it has no affinity in blood. To establish distinction of races we consult the anthropologist rather than the geologist or philologist.

Of these indications of race we cannot hope to meet with any of the former class in Quaternary gravel or caves. We have to trust to the anatomical character to be drawn from skulls and skeletons, of which it may be inferred, as a matter of course, that they will be few and scanty, and will become constantly fewer and more imperfect as we ascend the stream of time to earlier periods. It must be remembered also that even these scanty specimens of early man are confined almost entirely to one comparatively small portion of the earth, that of Europe, and that we have hardly a single palæolithic skull or skeleton of the black, the yellow, the olive, the copper-coloured, or other typical race into which the population of the earth is actually divided.

We are confined therefore to Europe for anything like positive evidence of these anatomical characters of prehistoric and primæval man, and can only draw inferences from implements as to those of other portions of the earth and other races. Fortunately these racial characters are very persistent, especially those of the skull and stature, and they exist in ample abundance throughout the historic, prehistoric, and neolithic ages, to enable us to draw very certain conclusions. Thus at present, and as far as we can see back with certainty, the races which have inhabited Europe may be classified under the heads, tall and short, long-headed and broad-headed, and those of intermediate types, which latter may be dismissed for the present, though constituting a majority of most modern countries, as they are almost certainly not primitive, but the result of intercrossing.

Colour, complexion, and hair are also very persistent, though, as we have pointed out, we have no certain evidence by which to test them beyond the historical period. But the form of skulls, jaws, teeth, and other parts of the skeleton remain wonderfully constant in races where there has been little or no intermixture.

The first great division is in the form of the skull. Comparing the extreme breadth of the skull with its extreme length from front to back, if the breadth does not exceed three-fourths or 75 per cent. of the length, the skull is said to be dolicocephalic or long-headed; if it equals or exceeds 83 per cent. it is called brachycephalic, i.e. short or broad-headed. Intermediate indices between 75 and 83 per cent. are called sub-dolicocephalic, or sub-brachycephalic, according as they approach one or the other of these extremes, but these are of less importance, as they probably are the result of intercrossing.

The prognathism also of the jaws, the form of the eye-orbits and nasal bones, the superciliary ridges, the proportion of the frontal to the posterior regions of the skull, the stature and proportions of the limbs, are also both characteristic and persistent features, and correspond generally with the type of the skull.

The controversy as to the origin of the Aryans has led to a great deal of argument as to these ethnological traits in prehistoric and neolithic times, and the interesting volume of Canon Taylor's on the Origin of the Aryans, and Professor Huxley's article on the same subject in the Nineteenth Century for November 1890, give a summary of the latest researches on the subject. We shall have to refer to these more fully in discussing the question as to the place or places of human origins; but for the present it is sufficient to state the general result at which the latest science has arrived.

The theory of a common Asiatic centre from which all the races of mankind have migrated is given up as unsupported by the slightest vestige of evidence. When we first know anything of the Aryan and other European races, we find them occupying substantially very much the same regions as at present. There are four distinct European types, two tall and two short, two long-headed and two broad-headed. Of these two were fair, and two dark, and one, apparently the oldest in Western Europe and in the Mediterranean region, and probably represented by the Iberians, and now by the Spanish Basques, was short, dark, and long-headed; a second short, dark, and broad-headed, who are probably represented by the ancient Ligurians, and survive now in the Auvergnats and Savoyards; a third, tall, fair, and long-headed, whose original seats were in the regions of the Baltic and North Sea, and who were always an energetic and conquering race; and the fourth, like the third, tall and fair, but with broad heads, and possibly not a primitive race, but the result of some very ancient intermixture of the third or Northern type with some of the broad-headed races.

Now as far back as frequent human remains enable us to form some satisfactory conclusion, that is up to the early neolithic period, we find similar race-types already existing, and to a considerable extent in the same localities. In modern and historical times we find, according to Canon Taylor, "all the anthropological tests agreeing in exhibiting two extreme types—the African, with long heads, long eye-orbits, and flat hair; and the Mongolian, with round heads, round orbits, and round hair. The European type is intermediate—the head, orbits, and sections of hair are oval. In the east of Europe we find an approximation to the Asiatic type; in the south of Europe to the African."

More specifically, we find in Europe the four races mentioned above of tall and short long-heads, and tall and short broad-heads. The question is, how far back can any of these races be identified?

The preservation of human remains depends mainly on the practice of burying the dead. Until the corpse is placed in a tomb protected by a stone coffin or dolmen, or in a grave dug in a cave, or otherwise sheltered from rains, floods, and wild beasts, the chances of its preservation are few and far between. Now it is not until the neolithic period that the custom of burying the dead became general, and even then it was not universal, and in many nations even in historical times corpses were burnt, not buried. It was connected doubtless with ideas of a future existence, which either required troublesome ghosts to be put securely out of the way, or to retain a shadowy existence by some mysterious connection with the body which had once served them for a habitation. Such ideas, however, only come with some advance of civilization, and it is questionable whether in palæolithic times the human animal had any more notion of preserving the body after death than the other animals by which he was surrounded.

This neolithic habit moreover of burying, though it preserves many relics of its own time, increases the difficulty when we come to deal with those of an earlier age. A great many caves which had been inhabited by palæolithic man were selected as fitting spots for the graves of their neolithic successors, and thus the remains of the two periods became intermixed. It is never safe to rely on the antiquity of skulls and skeletons found in association with palæolithic implements and extinct animals, unless the exploration has been made with the greatest care by some well-known scientific observer, or the circumstances of the case are such as to preclude the possibility of later interments. Thus in the famous cavern of Aurignac there is no doubt that it had been long a palæolithic station, and that many of the human remains date back to this period; but whether the fourteen skeletons which were found in it, and lost owing to the pietistic zeal of the Mayor who directed their burial, were really palæolithic, is a disputed point, or rather the better opinion is that they were part of a secondary neolithic interment.

But to return to undoubted neolithic skulls, we have very clear evidence that the four distinct European races already existed. Thus in Britain we have two distinct forms of barrows or burial tombs, one long, the other round, and it has become proverbial that long skulls go with long barrows, and round skulls with round barrows. The long barrows are the oldest, and belong entirely to the stone age, no trace of metal, according to Canon Greenwell, having ever been found in them. The skulls and skeletons are those of a long-headed, short, and feeble race, who may be identified with the Iberians; while the round barrows contain bronze and finally iron, and the people buried in them were the tall, fair, round-headed Gauls or Celts of early history, or intermediate types between these and the older race. Later came in the tall, fair, and long-headed Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian races, so that we have three out of the four European types clearly defined in the British islands and traceable in their descendants of the present day. But when we attempt to go beyond the Iberians of the neolithic age in Britain, we are completely at fault. We have abundant remains of palæolithic implements, but scarcely a single undoubted specimen of a palæolithic skeleton, and it is impossible to say whether the men who feasted on the mammoth and rhinoceros in Kent's cavern, or who left their rude implements in the high-level gravel of the chalk downs, were tall or short, long-headed or round-headed. On the contrary, there seems a great hiatus between the neolithic and the palæolithic periods, and, as Geikie has shown, this appears to be the case not in England only but in a great part of Europe. It would almost seem as if the old era had disappeared with the last glacial period, and a completely new one had been introduced. But although the skulls and bones of palæolithic races are wanting in Britain and scarce everywhere, enough of them have been found in other European countries to enable anthropologists not merely to say that different races already existed at this immensely remote period, but to classify them by their types, and see how far these correspond with those of later times. This has been done especially in France and Belgium, where the discoveries of palæolithic skeletons and skulls have been far more frequent than elsewhere. Debierre in his L'Homme avant l'histoire, published in the Bibliothèque Scientifique of 1888, enumerates upwards of forty instances of such undoubted Quaternary human remains, of which at least twenty consisted of entire skulls, and others of jaws and other important bones connected with racial type.

The best and latest conclusions of modern anthropology from these remains will be found in this work of Debierre's, and in Hamy's Palæontologie humaine, Quatrefages' Races humaines, and Topinard's Anthropologie, and it will be sufficient to give a short summary of the results.

The history of Quaternary fossil man is divided, in the Crania Ethnica of Quatrefages and Hamy, into four races: 1st, the Canstadt race; 2nd, the Cro-Magnon race; 3rd, the races of Grenelle and Furfooz; 4th, the race of Truchere.

The Canstadt race, so called from the first skull of this type, which was discovered in the loess of the valley of the Rhone near Wurtemburg, though it is better known from the celebrated Neanderthal skull, which gave rise to so much discussion, and was pronounced by some that of an idiot, by others the most pithecoid specimen of a human skull yet known, in fact almost the long-sought-for missing link.

A still later discovery, however, has set at rest all doubt as to the reality of this Neanderthal type, and of its being the oldest Quaternary human type known in Western Europe. In the year 1886 two Belgian savants, Messrs. Fraissent and Lohest, one an anatomist, the other a geologist, discovered in a cave at Spy near Namur two skeletons with the skulls complete, which presented the Neanderthal type in an exaggerated form. They were found under circumstances which leave no doubt as to their belonging to the earliest Quaternary deposit, being at the bottom of the cave, in the lowest of three distinct strata, the two uppermost of which were full of the usual palæolithic implements of stone and bone, while the few found in the lowest stratum with the skeletons were of the rudest description. Huxley pronounces the evidence such as will bear the severest criticism, and he sums up the anatomical characters of the skeletons in the following terms—

"They were short of stature, but powerfully built, with strong, curiously curved thigh-bones, the lower ends of which are so fashioned that they must have walked with a bend at the knees. Their long depressed skulls had very strong brow-ridges, their lower jaws, of brutal depth and solidity, sloped away from the teeth downwards and backwards, in consequence of the absence of that especially characteristic feature of the higher type of man, the chin prominence."

M. Fraissent says, "We consider ourselves in a position to say that, having regard merely to the anatomical structure of the man of Spy, he possessed a greater number of pithecoid characters than any other race of mankind."

And again he says—

"The distance which separates the man of Spy from the modern anthropoid ape is undoubtedly enormous; but we must be permitted to point out that if the man of the Quaternary age is the stock whence existing races have sprung, he has travelled a very great way. From the data now obtained, it is permissible to believe that we shall be able to pursue the ancestral type of man and the anthropoid apes still further, perhaps as far as the Eocene and even beyond."

This Canstadt or Neanderthal type was widely diffused early in the Quaternary period, having been found in a skull from the breccia of Gibraltar, in skulls from Italy, Spain, Austria, Sweden, and in France, Belgium, and Western Germany; in fact almost everywhere where skulls and skeletons have been found in the oldest deposits of caves and river-beds, notably in the alluvia of the Seine valley near Paris, where three distinct superimposed strata are found, each with different human types, that of Canstadt being the oldest. Wherever explorations have been carefully made it seems to be certain that the oldest race of all in Europe was dolicocephalic, and probable that it was of the Canstadt type, the skulls of which are all low and long, the length being attained by a great development of the posterior part of the head, which compensates for a deficient forehead.

This type is also interesting because, although the oldest, it shows occasional signs of survival through the later palæolithic and neolithic ages down to recent times. The skulls of St. Manserg, a mediæval bishop of Toul, and of Lykke, a scientific Dane of the last century, closely resemble the Neanderthal skull in type, and can scarcely be accounted for except as instances of that atavism, or reversion to old ancestral forms, which occasionally crops up both in the human and in animal species. It is thought by many that these earliest palæolithic men may be the ancestors of the tall, fair, long-headed race of Northern Europe; and Professor Virchow states that in the Frisian islands off the North German coast, where the original Teutonic type has been least affected by intermixture, the Frisian skull unmistakably approaches the Neanderthal and Spy type. But if this be so, the type must have persisted for an immense time, for, as Huxley observes, "the difference is abysmal between these rude and brutal savages, and the comely, fair, tall, and long-headed races of historical times and of civilized nations." At the present day the closest resemblance to the Neanderthal type is afforded by the skulls of certain tribes of native Australians.

Next in antiquity to the Canstadt type, though still in the early age when the mammoth and cave-bear were abundant, and the implements and weapons still very rude, a totally different type appears, that of Cro-Magnon. The name is taken from the skeleton of an old man, which was found entire in the rock shelter of Cro-Magnon in the valley of the Vezere, near the station of Moustier, which gave the type of some of the oldest and rudest stone implements of the age of the mammoth. The skeleton was found in the inner extremity of the shelter, buried under a mass of débris and fallen blocks of limestone, and associated with bones of the mammoth and implements of the Moustier type, so that there can be no doubt, of its extreme antiquity.

The skull, like that of the Canstadt type, is dolichocephalic, but in all other respects totally different. The brow-ridges and generally bestial characters have disappeared; the brain is of fair or even large capacity; the stature tall; the forehead fairly high and well-rounded; the face large; the nose straight, the jaws prognathous, and the chin prominent.

This type is found in a number of localities, especially in the south-west of France, Belgium, and Italy, and it continued through the quaternary into the neolithic period, being found in the caves of the reindeer age, and in the dolmens. It is thought by some ethnologists to present analogies to the Berber type of North Africa, and to that of the extinct Guanches of the Canary Islands.

Coexistent with or a little later than this type is one of a totally different character both from it and from that of Canstadt, viz. that of a brachycephalic race of very short stature, closely resembling the modern Lapps. This has been subdivided into the several races of Furfooz, Grenelle, and Truchere, according to the degree of brachycephaly and other features; but practically we may look on these as the results of local variations or intercrossings, and consider all the short, brachycephalic races as forming a third type sharply opposed to those of Canstadt and Cro-Magnon.

We have thus distinct evidence that the Quaternary fauna in Europe comprised at least three distinct races of palæolithic men, and there is a good deal of evidence for the existence of a fourth distinct race in America with features differing from any of the European races, and resembling those of the native American men in recent times. But this affords absolutely no clue as to the existence of other palæolithic types in Asia, Africa, India, Australia, and other countries, forming quite three-fourths of the inhabited world, in which totally different races now exist and have existed since the commencement of history, who cannot possibly have been derived from any of the European types within the lapse of time comprised within the Quaternary period.

The Negro race is the most striking instance of this, for it differs essentially from any other in many particulars, which are all in the direction of an approximation towards the pithecoid type.

The size of the brain is less, and a larger proportion of it is in the hinder half; the muzzle much more projecting, and the nose flatter; the fore-arm longer; and various other anatomical peculiarities all point in the same direction, though the type remains perfectly human in the main features. It diverges, however, from the known types of Quaternary man in Europe and from the American type, as completely as it does from those of modern man, and it is impossible to suppose that it can be derived from them, or they from it, in the way of direct descent. If there is any truth in evolution, the Negro type must be one of the oldest, as nearest to the animal ancestor, and this ancestor must be placed very far back beyond the Quaternary period, to allow sufficient time for the development of such entirely different and improved races.

This will be the more evident if we consider the case of the pygmy Negritos and Negrillos, who are spread over a wide tropical belt of half the circumference of the earth, from New Guinea to Western Africa. They seem originally to have occupied a large part of this belt, and to have been driven into dense forests, high mountains, and isolated islands, by taller and stronger races, such as the true Negro, the Melanesian, and the Malay, and probably represent therefore a more primitive race. But they had already existed long enough to develop various sub-types among themselves, for although always approaching more to the Negro type than any other, the Asiatic Negrito and the African Negrillo and Bushman differ in the length of skull, colour, hair, prognathism, and other particulars. But they all agree in the one respect which makes it impossible to associate them with any known Quaternary type, either as ancestors or descendants, viz. that of dwarfish stature. As a rule the Bushmen and Negritos do not average above four feet six inches, and the females three inches less; while in some cases they are as low as four feet—i.e. they are quite a foot shorter than the average of the higher races, and nearly a foot and a half below that of the Quaternary Cro-Magnon and Mentone skeletons, and of the modern Swedes and Scotchmen. And they are small and slightly built in proportion, and by no means deformed specimens of humanity. Professor Flower suggests that they may be "the primitive type from which the African Negroes on the one hand, and the Melanesians on the other have sprung." In any case they must certainly have existed as a distinct type in the Quaternary period, and probably much earlier. It is remarkable also that the very oldest human implements known get continually smaller as they get older, until those of the Miocene, from Thenay and Puy Courny, are almost too small for the hands even of Stanley's pygmies. If mere guesses were worth anything, it would be rather a plausible one that the original Adam and Eve were something between a monkey and an Andaman islander.

In concluding this summary of the evidence as to Quaternary man, I must remark on the analogy which it presents to that of the historical period dealt with in the earlier chapters. In each case we have distinct evidence carrying us a long way back; in that of the historical period for 7000 years; in that of the Quaternary for a vastly longer time, which, if the effects of high eccentricity, postulated by Croll's theory, had any influence on the two last glacial periods, cannot be less than 200,000 years, an estimate which is confirmed by the amount of geological work and changes of flora and fauna which have taken place. In each case also the positive evidence takes us back to a state of things which gives the most incontrovertible proof of long previous existence; in the historical case the evidence of a dense population and high civilization already long prevailing when written records began; in the case of palæolithic man, that of his existence in the same state of rude civilization in the most remote regions, and over the greater part of the habitable earth, his almost uniform progression upwards from a lower to a higher civilization, and his existing at the beginning of the Quaternary period already differentiated into races as remote from one another as the typical races of the present day. These facts of themselves afford an irresistible presumption that the origin of the human race must be sought much further back, and it remains to consider what positive evidence has been adduced in support of this presumption.

Definition of Periods—Passage from Pliocene to Quaternary—Scarcity of Human Remains in Tertiary—Denudation—Evidence from Caves wanting—Tertiary Man a necessary inference from widespread existence of Quaternary Man—Both equally inconsistent with Genesis—Was the first great Glaciation Pliocene or Quaternary?—Section of Perrier—Confirms Croll's Theory—Elephas Meridionalis—Mammoth—St. Prest—Cut Bones—Instances of Tertiary Man—Halitherium—Balæonotus—Puy Courny—Thenay—Evidence for—Proofs of Human Agency—Latest Conclusions—Gaudry's Theory—Dryopithecus—Type of Tertiary Man—Skeleton of Castelnedolo—- Shows no approach to the Missing Link—Contrary to Theory of Evolution—- Must be sought in the Eocene—Evidence from the New World—Glacial Period in America—Palæolithic Implements—Quaternary Man—Similar to Europe—California—Conditions different—Auriferous Gravels—Volcanic Eruptions—Enormous Denudation—Great Antiquity—Flora and Fauna—Point to Tertiary Age —Discovery of Human Remains—Table Mountain—Latest Finds—Calaveras Skull—Summary of Evidence—Other Evidence—Tuolumne—Brazil—Buenos Ayres—Nampa Images—Take us farther from First Origins and the Missing Link—If Darwin's Theory applies to Man, must go back to the Eocene.

The first difficulty which meets us in this question is that of distinguishing clearly between the different geological periods. No hard-and-fast line separates the Quaternary from the Pliocene, the Pliocene from the Miocene, or the Miocene from the Eocene. They pass from one into the other by insensible gradations, and the names given to them merely imply that such considerable changes have taken place in the fauna as to enable us to distinguish one period from another. And even this only applies when we take the periods as a whole, and see what have been the predominant types, for single types often survive through successive periods. The course of evolution seems to be that types and species, like individuals, have their periods of birth, growth, maturity, decay, and death. Thus fish of the ganoid type appear sparingly in the Silurian, culminate in the Devonian, and gradually die out in the later formations. So also Saurian reptiles appear in the Carboniferous, culminate in the Lias, and die out with the Secondary, or so nearly so that the crocodilia are their sole remaining representatives.

And this applies when we attempt to take our first step backwards in tracing the origin of man, and follow him from the Quaternary into the Pliocene. When did the Pliocene end and the Quaternary begin? Within which of the two did the first great glacial period fall? Does pre-glacial mean Pliocene, or is it included in the Quaternary? and to which do the oldest human remains belong, such as the skeletons of Spy?

The difficulty of answering these questions is increased because, as we go back in time, the human remains which guide us in the Quaternary age necessarily become scarcer. Mankind must have been fewer in number, and their relics to a great extent removed by denudation. Thus the evidence from caves, which affords by far the most information as to Quaternary man, entirely fails us as to the Pliocene and earlier periods. This may be readily accounted for when we consider the great amount of the earth's surface which has been removed by denudation. In fact we have seen that nearly 2000 feet of a mountain range must have disappeared from denudation in the Weald of Kent, since the streams from it rolled down the gravels with human implements, scattered over the North Downs as described by Professor Prestwich. What chance would Tertiary caves have of surviving such an extensive denudation? Moreover, if any of the present caves existed before the glacial period, their original contents must have been swept out, perhaps more than once, before they became filled by the present deposits. There is evidence in many caves that this was the case, from small patches of the older deposit being found adhering to the roof, as at Brixham and Maccaguone in Sicily, in which latter case flakes of chipped stone and pieces of carbon were found by Dr. Falconer in these patches of a hard breccia.

There is another consideration also which must have greatly diminished the chance of finding human remains in Tertiary deposits. Why did men take to living in dark and damp caves? Presumably for protection against cold. But in the Miocene and the greater part of the Pliocene there was no great cold. The climate, as shown by the vegetation, was mild, equable, and ranged from semi-tropical to south-temperate, and the earth was to a certain extent covered by forests sustaining many fruit-bearing trees. Under such conditions men would have every inducement to live in the open air, and in or near forests where they could obtain food and shelter, rather than in caves. And a few scattered savages, thus living, would leave exceedingly few traces of their existence. If the pygmy races of Central Africa, or of the Andaman Islands, became extinct, the chances would be exceedingly small of a future geologist finding any of their stone implements, which alone would have a chance of surviving, dropped under secular accumulations of vegetable mould in a wide forest.

It is the more important therefore where instances of human remains in Tertiary strata, supported by strong primâ facie evidence, and vouched for by competent authorities, do actually occur, to examine them dispassionately, and not, as a good many of our English geologists are disposed to do, dismiss them with a sort of scientific non possumus, like that which was so long opposed to the existence of Quaternary man, and the discoveries of Boucher-de-Perthes. It is perfectly evident from the admitted existence of man throughout the Quaternary period, already spread over a great part of the earth's surface, and divided into distinct types, that if there is any truth in evolution, mankind must have had a long previous existence. The only other possible alternative would be the special miraculous creations of men of several different types, and in many different centres, at the particular period of time when the Tertiary was replaced by the Quaternary. In other words that, while all the rest of the animal creation have come into existence by evolution from ancestral types, man alone, and that not merely as regards his spiritual qualities, but physical man, with every bone and muscle having its counterpart in the other quadrumana, was an exception to this universal law, and sprang into existence spontaneously or by repeated acts of supernatural interference.

As long as the account of the creation in Genesis was held to be a divinely-inspired narrative, and no facts contradicting it had been discovered, it is conceivable that such a theory might be held, but to admit evolution for Quaternary, and refuse to admit it for Tertiary man, is an extreme instance of "straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel," for a duration of even 10,000 or 20,000 years is just as inconsistent with Genesis as one of 100,000 or half a million.

In attacking the question of Tertiary man, the first point is to aim at some clear conception of where the Pliocene ends and the Quaternary begins. These are after all but terms applied to gradual changes through long intervals of time; still they require some definition, or otherwise we should be beating the air, and ticketing in some museums as Tertiary the identical specimens which in others were labelled as Quaternary. This turns very much on whether the first great glaciation was Pliocene or Quaternary, and must be decided partly by the order of superposition and partly by the fauna. If we can find a section where a thick morainic deposit is interposed between two stratified deposits, a lower one characterized by the usual fauna of the Older Pliocene, and an upper one by that of the Newer Pliocene, it is evident that the glacier or ice-cap which left this moraine must have existed in Pliocene times. We know that the climate became colder in the Pliocene, and rapidly colder towards its close, and that in the cliffs of Cromer, the forest bed with a temperate climate had given place to Arctic willows and mosses, before the first and lowest boulder-clay had brought blocks of Scandinavian granite to England. We should be prepared, therefore, for evidence that this first period of greatest cold had occurred within the limits of the Pliocene period.

Such evidence is afforded by the valleys which radiate from the great central boss of France in the Auvergne. The hill of Perrier had long been known as a rich site of the fossil remains of the extinct Pliocene fauna, and its section has been carefully studied by some of the best French geologists, whose results are summed up as follows by Hamy in his Palæontologie humaine—

"The bed-rock is primitive protogine, which is covered by nearly horizontal lacustrine Miocene, itself covered by some metres of fluviatile gravels. Above comes a bed of fine sand, a mètre thick, which contains numerous specimens of the well-known mammalian fauna of the Lower Pliocene, characterized by two mastodons (M. Armenicus and M. Borsoni). Then comes a mass of conglomerates 150 mètres thick, consisting of pebbles and boulders cemented by yellowish mud; and above this a distinct layer of Upper Pliocene characterized by the Elephas Meridionalis.

"The boulders, some of which are of great size, are all angular, never rounded or stratified, often scratched, and mostly consisting of trachyte, which must have been transported twenty-five kilomètres from the Puy de Dôme. In short, the conglomerate is absolutely indistinguishable from any other glacial moraine, whether of the Quaternary period or of the present day. It is divided into three sections by two layers of rolled pebbles and sands, which could only have been caused by running water, so that the glacier must have advanced and retreated three times, leaving each time a moraine fifty mètres thick, and the whole of this must have occurred before the deposit of the Upper Pliocene stratum with its Elephas Meridionalis and other Pliocene mammals."

The importance of this will presently be seen, for the Elephas Meridionalis is one of the extinct animals which is most directly connected with the proofs of man's existence before the Quaternary period. It is also important as confirming the immense time which must have elapsed between the date of the first and second maxima of glacial cold, and thus adding probability to the calculations derived from Croll's periods of maximum and minimum eccentricity.

The three advances and retreats of the great Perrier glacier also fit in extremely well with the calculated effects of precession during high eccentricity, as about three of such periods must have occurred in the period of the coming on, culminating, and receding of each phase of maximum eccentricity.

This evidence from Perrier does not stand alone, for in the neighbouring valleys, and in many other localities, isolated boulders of foreign rocks which could only have been transported by ice, are found at heights considerably above those of the more recent moraines and boulders which had been supposed to mark the limit of the greatest glaciation. Thus on the slopes of the Jura and the Vosges, boulders of Alpine rocks, much worn by age, and whose accompanying drifts and moraines have disappeared by denudation, are found at heights 150 or 200 mètres above the more obvious moraines and boulders, which themselves rise to a height of nearly 4000 feet, and must have been the front of glaciers from the Alps which buried the plain of Switzerland under that thickness of solid ice.

The only possible alternative to this evidence from Perrier would be to throw back the duration of the Quaternary and limit that of the Pliocene enormously, by supposing that all the deposits above the great glacial conglomerate or old moraine, are inter-glacial and not Tertiary. This is, as has been pointed out, very much a question of words, for the phenomena and the time required to account for them remain the same by whatever name we elect to call them. But it still has its importance, for it involves the fundamental principle of geology, that of classifying eras and formations by their fauna. If the Elephas Meridionalis is a Pliocene and not a Quaternary species, we must admit, with the great majority of continental geologists, that the first and greatest glaciation fell within the Pliocene period. If, on the other hand, this elephant is, like the mammoth, part of the Quaternary fauna, we may believe, as many English geologists do, that the first glacial period coincided with and probably occasioned the change from Pliocene to Quaternary, and that everything above the oldest boulder-clays and moraines is not Tertiary but inter-glacial.

As bones of the Elephas Meridionalis have been frequently found in connection with human implements, and with cuts on them which could only have been made by flint knives ground by the human hand, it will be seen at once what an interest attaches to this apparently dry geological question, of the age of the great southern elephant.

The transition from the mastodon into the elephant took place in the Old World (for in America the succession is different) in the Pliocene period. In the older Pliocene we have nothing but mastodons, in the newer nothing but elephants, and the transition from the older to the newer type is distinctly traced by intermediate forms in the fossil fauna of the Sewalek hills. The Elephas Meridionalis is the oldest known form of true elephant, and it is characteristic of all the different formations of the Upper Pliocene, while it is nowhere found in cave or river deposits which belong unmistakably to the Quaternary. It was a gigantic animal, fully four feet higher than the tallest existing elephant, and bulky in proportion. It had a near relation in the Elephas Antiquus, which was of equal size, and different from it mainly in a more specialized structure of the molar teeth, and the remains of this elephant have been found in the lower strata of some of the oldest bone-caves and river-silts, as to which it is difficult to say whether they are older or younger than the first glacial period. The remains of a pygmy elephant, no bigger than an ass, have also been found in the Upper Pliocene, at Malta and Sicily, and those of the existing African elephant in Sicily and Spain. It would seem, therefore, that the Upper Pliocene was the golden age of the elephants where they were most widely diffused, and comprised most species and most varieties, both in the direction of gigantic and of diminutive size. But in passing from the Pliocene into the Quaternary period, they all, or almost all, disappeared, and were superseded by the Elephas Primigenius, or mammoth, which had put in a first appearance in the latest Pliocene, and became the principal representative of the genus Elephas in Europe and Northern Asia down to comparatively recent times.

This succession is confirmed by that of the rhinoceros, of which several species were contemporary with the Elephas Meridionalis, while the Rhinoceros tichorinus, or woolly rhinoceros, who is the inseparable companion of the mammoth, appeared and disappeared with him.

In these matters, those who are not themselves specialists must rely on authority, and when we find Lyell, Geikie, and Prestwich coinciding with all modern French, German, Italian, and Belgian geologists, in considering Elephas Meridionalis as one of the characteristic Upper Pliocene fauna, we can have no hesitation in adopting their conclusion.

In this case the section of St. Prest, near Chartres, affords a first absolutely secure foothold in tracing our way backwards towards human origins beyond the Quaternary. The sands and gravels of a river which ran on the bed rock without any underlying glacial débris are here exposed. It had no relation to the existing river Eure, the bed of which it crosses at an angle, and it must have run before that river had begun to excavate its valley, and when the drainage of the country was quite different. The sands contain an extraordinary number of bones of the Elephas Meridionalis, associated with old species of rhinoceros, and other Pliocene species. Lyell, who visited the spot, had no hesitation in calling it a Pliocene river. In fact it never would have been disputed if the question of man's antiquity had not been involved in it, for in these sands and gravels have been found numerous specimens of cut bones of the Elephas Meridionalis, together with the flint knives which made the cuts, and other stone implements, rude but still unmistakably of the usual palæolithic type.

The subjoined plate will enable the reader to compare the arrow-head, which is the commonest type found at St. Prest, with a comparatively recent arrow-head from the Yorkshire wolds, and see how impossible it is to concede human agency to the post-glacial and deny it to the Pliocene specimen.