One of the most remarkable discoveries of modern times is that of the site of ancient Troy by Dr. Schliemann, and it affords clear and decisive evidence as to the historic value of the ages to which we have referred.

Troy was destroyed by the Greeks perhaps about 1300 B.C., and we know from Homer that this was in what for the Greeks and Trojans may properly be termed the copper age, weapons and armor of that metal being in common use, and also the mode of burial by cremation. We may well suppose that at that early date the stone age was still in full force in Northern Europe and Asia, and in the mountains of Switzerland; and as the tin mines of England had not yet been reached, bronze was scarce and dear even in Eastern Europe and Asia. Now Schliemann has disinterred the undoubted Trojan Ilium on the hill of Hissarlik; but he finds it to be only one of several buried cities, and the succession of strata will be most clearly seen in the section on the following page, compiled from his clear and circumstantial descriptions. It is needless to say that this presents a succession of the stone age to one of comparatively high civilization. It also forms an epitome of that of the whole East, and of primitive man in general, in some very important respects. We have first, at a date probably coeval with that of the earliest monarchies of Assyria and Egypt, a primitive people whose arts and mode of life remind us strongly of the American Toltecans and Peruvians. [123] Schliemann supposes them to have been Aryan, but they were more probably of Turanian race. They must have occupied the site for a very long time. They were succeeded by a more cultivated people of fine physical organization, yet possibly still Turanians or primitive Aryans, who by trade or plunder had accumulated large stores of metallic wealth, and had made advances in the arts of life placing them on a level with the early Phoenicians and Egyptians, with whom they probably had intercourse. These

were the Trojans of the Homeric poems, and the destruction of their city was probably in the first instance celebrated in their own native songs, which Homer at a date but little later [124] wove into his magnificent poem, and idealized and exaggerated. The Trojans worshipped an owl-headed goddess—the Athena of the Homeric poems; and from symbols found are believed also to have had the worship of a sacred tree, and of fire or of the Sun. All of these are widespread superstitions over both the Old and New World. But while Troy flourished there were barbarous nations not far off still in the stone age; and when the city had fallen, these, possibly in successive hordes, took possession of the fertile plain and used the old city as their stronghold, perhaps till the foundation of the Greek city about 650 B.C. I have sketched in some detail these interesting discoveries, as they so clearly illustrate an actual succession of ages, and so conclusively show the uncertainty of the classification into ages of stone and metal, except when taken in connection with the precise circumstances of each locality.

I have referred above only to the question of historic or postdiluvian man. We have still to consider what remains exist of antediluvian man. These may be studied in connection with our third head of geological evidences of man's antiquity; for if the Mosaic narrative be true, the diluvial catastrophe must have constituted a physical separation between historic man and prehistoric; since, in so far as antediluvian ages are concerned, all are prehistoric or mythical everywhere except in the sacred history itself. Antediluvian men may thus in geology be Pleistocene as distinguished from modern, or Palæocosmic as distinguished from Neocosmic. [125]

2. Language in Relation to the Antiquity of Man.—In many animals the voice has a distinctive character; but in man it has an importance altogether peculiar. The gift of speech is one of his sole prerogatives, and identity in its mode of exercise is not only the strongest proof of similarity of psychical constitution, but more than any other character marks identity of origin. The tongues of men are many and various; and at first sight this diversity may, as indeed it often does, convey the impression of radical diversity of race. But modern philological investigations have shown many and unexpected links of connection in vocabulary or grammatical structure, or both, between languages apparently the most dissimilar. I do not here refer to the vague and fanciful parallels with which our ancestors were often amused, but to the results of sober and scientific inquiry. "Nothing," says Professor Max Müller, "necessitates the admission of different independent beginnings for the material elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech; nay, it is possible even now to point out radicals which, under various changes and disguises, have been current in these three branches ever since their first separation." Of the truth of this I have convinced myself by some original investigation, and also of the farther truth that of this radical unity of all human tongues there is more full evidence than many philologists are disposed to admit, and that the results of future study must be to connect more and more with each other the several main stems of language. Whether this results merely from the psychical unity of the human race, or from the historical derivation of languages from one root, is not so material as the fact of unity; but that the latter is implied it would not be difficult to show. [126] Let us examine for a little these results as they are presented to us by Latham, Müller, Bunsen, and other modern philologists.

A convenient starting-point is afforded by the great group of languages known as the Indo-European, Japhetic, or Aryan. From the Ganges to the west coast of Ireland, through Indian, Persian, Greek, Italian, German, Celt, runs one great language—the Sanscrit and the dark Hindoo at one extreme, the Erse and the xanthous Celt at the other. No one now doubts the affinity of this great belt of languages. No one can pretend that any one of these nations learned its language from another. They are all decided branches of a common stock. Lying in and near this area are other nations—as the Arabs, the Syrians, the Jews—speaking languages differing in words and structure—the Semitic tongues. Do these mark a different origin? The philologists answer in the negative, pointing to the features of resemblance which still remain, and above all to certain intermediate tongues of so high antiquity that they are rather to be regarded as root-stocks from which other languages diverged than as mixtures. The principal of these is the ancient Egyptian, represented by the inscriptions on the monuments of that wonderful people, and by the more modern Coptic, which, according to Bunsen and Latham, presents decided affinities to both the great classes previously mentioned, and may be regarded as strictly intermediate in its character. It has accordingly been designated by the term Sub-Semitic. [127] But it shares this character with all or nearly all the other African languages, which bear strong marks of affinity to the Egyptian and Semitic tongues. On this subject Dr. Latham says, "That the uniformity of languages throughout Africa is greater than it is either in Asia or in Europe, is a statement to which I have not the least hesitation in committing myself." [128] To the north the Indo-European area is bounded by a great group of semi-barbarous populations, mostly with Mongolian features, and speaking languages which have been grouped as Turanian. These Turanian languages, on the one hand, graduate without any break into those of the Esquimaux and American Indians; on the other, according to Müller and Latham, they are united, though less distinctly, with the Semitic and Japhetic tongues. They not improbably represent in more or less altered forms the most primitive stock of language from which both the Semitic and Japhetic groups have branched. Another great area on the coasts and in the islands of the Pacific is overspread by the Malay, which, through the populations of Transgangetic India, connects itself with the great Indo-European line. Mr. Edkins, in his remarkable book on "China's Place in Philology," has collected a large amount of fact tending to show that the early Chinese in its monosyllabic radicals presents root-forms traceable into all the stocks of human speech in the Old World; and the American languages would have furnished him with similar lines of affinity. If we regard physical characters, manners, and customs, and mythologies, as well as mere language, it is much easier thus to link together nearly all the populations of the globe. In investigations of this kind, it is true, the links of connection are often delicate and evanescent; yet they have conveyed to the ablest investigators the strong impression that the phenomena are rather those of division of a radical language than of union of several radically distinct.

This impression is farther strengthened when we regard several results incidental to these researches. Latham has shown that the languages of men may be regarded as arranged in lines of divergence, the extreme points of which are Fuego, Tasmania, Easter Island; and that from all these points they converge to a common centre in Western Asia, where we find a cluster of the most ancient and perfect languages; and even Haeckel is obliged to adopt in his map of the affiliation of races of men a similar scheme, though he, without any good historical or scientific evidence, extends it back into the imaginary lost continent of Lemuria. Farther, the languages of the various populations differ in proceeding from these centres in a manner pointing to degeneracy such as is likely to occur in small and rude tribes separating from a parent stock. These lines of radiation follow the most easy and probable lines of migration of the human race spreading from one centre. It must also be observed that in the primary migration of men, there must of necessity have been at its extreme limits outlying and isolated tribes, placed in circumstances in which language would very rapidly change; especially as these tribes, migrating or driven forward, would be continually arriving at new regions presenting new circumstances and objects. When at length the utmost limit in any direction was reached, the inroads of new races of population would press into close contact these various tribes with their different dialects. Where the distance was greatest before reaching this limit, we might expect, as in America, to find the greatest mutual variety and amount of difference from the original stock. After the primary migration had terminated, the displacements arising from secondary migrations and conquests, would necessarily complicate the matter by breaking up the original gradations of difference, and thereby rendering lines of migration difficult to trace.

Taking all these points into the account, along with the known tendencies of languages in all circumstances to vary, it is really wonderful that philology is still able to give so decided indications of unity.

There is, in the usual manner of speaking of these subjects, a source of misapprehension, which deserves special mention in this place. The Hebrew Scriptures derive all the nations of the ancient world from three patriarchs, and the names of these have often been attached to particular races of men and their languages; but it should never be supposed that these classifications are likely to agree with the Bible affiliation. They may to a certain extent do so, but not necessarily or even probably. In the nature of the case, those portions of these families which remained near the original centre, and in a civilized state, would retain the original language and features comparatively unchanged. Those which wandered far, fell into barbarism, or became subjected to extreme climatic influences, would vary more in all respects. Hence any general classification, whether on physical or philological characters, will be likely to unite, as in the Caucasian group of Cuvier, men of all the three primitive families, while it will separate the outlying and aberrant portions from their main stems of affiliation. Want of attention to this point has led to much misconception; and perhaps it would be well to abandon altogether terms founded on the names of the sons of Noah, except where historical affiliation is the point in question. It would be well if it were understood that when the terms Semitic, Japhetic, [129] and Hametic are used, direct reference is made to the Hebrew ethnology; and that, where other arrangements are adopted, other terms should be used. It is obviously unfair to apply the terms of Moses in a different way from that in which he uses them. A very prevalent error of this kind has been to apply the term Japhetic to a number of nations not of such origin according to the Bible; and another of more modern date is to extend the term Semitic to all the races descended from Ham, because of resemblance of language. It should be borne in mind that, assuming the truth of the Scriptural affiliation, there should be a "central" group of races and languages where the whole of the three families meet, and "sporadic" [130] groups representing the changes of the outlying and barbarous tribes.

While, however, all the more eminent philologists adhere to the original unity of language, they are by no means agreed as to the antiquity of man; and some, as for instance Latham and Dr. Max Müller, are disposed to claim an antiquity for our species far beyond that usually admitted. In so far as this affects the Bible history, it is important, inasmuch as this would appear to limit the possible antiquity of all languages to the time of the deluge. The date of this event has been variously estimated, on Biblical grounds, at from 1650 B.C. (Usher) to 3155 B.C. (Josephus and Hales); but the longest of these dates does not appear to satisfy the demands of philology. The reason of this demand is the supposed length of time required to effect the necessary changes. The subject is one on which definite data can scarcely be obtained. Languages change now, even when reduced to a comparatively stable form by writing. They change more rapidly when men migrate into new climates, and are placed in contact with new objects. The English, the Dutch, and the German were perhaps all at the dawn of the mediæval era Mæso-Gothic. At the same rate of change, allowing for greater barbarism and greater migrations, they may very well have been something not far from Egyptian or Sanscrit 2000 years before Christ. The truth is that present rates of variation afford no criterion for the changes that must occur in the languages of small and isolated tribes lapsing into or rising from barbarism, possessing few words, and constantly requiring to name new objects and until some ratio shall have been established between these conditions and those of modern languages, fixed by literature and by a comparatively stationary state of society, it is useless to make any demands for longer time on this ground. [131]

Even in the present day, Moffat informs us that in South Africa the separation of parts of a tribe, for even a few months, may produce a notable difference of dialect. If we take the existing languages of civilized men whose history is known, we shall find that it is impossible to trace many of them back as far as the Christian era, and when we have passed over even half that interval, they become so different as to be unintelligible to those who now speak them. Where there are exceptions to this, they arise entirely from the effects of literature and artificial culture. While, therefore, there is good ground in philology for the belief in one primitive language, there seems no absolute necessity to have recourse even to the confusion of tongues at Babel to explain the diversities of language. [132] Farther, the Bible carries back the Semitic group of languages at least to the time of the Deluge, but it does not seem necessary on the mere ground of antediluvian names, to carry it any farther back, and the Assyrian inscriptions show the coexistence of Turanian and Semitic tongues at the dawn of history in the region of the Euphrates and Tigris. One or other of these—or a monosyllabic language underlying it—was probably an antediluvian tongue, and the other a very early derivative; and both history and philology would assign the precedence to the Turanian language, which was probably most akin to that which had descended from antediluvian times, and which at that early period of dispersion indicated in the Bible story of Babel, had begun to throw off its two great branches of the Aryan and Semitic languages. These, proceeding in two dissimilar lines of development, continue to exist to this day along with the surviving portions of the uncultivated Turanian speech. To this point, however, we may return under another head.

CHAPTER XIV.

UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN—(Continued.)

3. Geological Evidence as to the Antiquity of Man.—No geological fact can now be more firmly established than the ascending progression of animal life, whereby from the early invertebrates of the Eozoic and Primordial series we pass upward through the dynasties of fishes and reptiles and brute mammals to the reign of man. In this great series man is obviously the last term; and when we inquire at what point he was introduced, the answer must be in the later part of the great Cainozoic or Tertiary period, which is the latest of the whole. Not only have we the negative fact of the absence of his remains from all the earlier Tertiary formations, but the positive fact that all the mammalia of these earlier ages are now extinct, and that man could not have survived the changes of condition which destroyed them and introduced the species now our contemporaries. This fact is altogether independent of any question as to the introduction of species by derivation or by creation. The oldest geological period in which any animals nearly related in structure to man occur is that named the Miocene, and no traces of man have as yet been found in any deposits of this age. All human remains known belong either to the Pleistocene or Modern. Now the Pleistocene was characterized by one of those periods of glacial cold which have swept over the earth—by one of those great winters which have so chilled the continents that few forms of life could survive them—and man comes in at the close of this cold period, in what is called the Post-glacial age. Some geologists, it is true, hold to an interglacial warm period, in which man is supposed to have existed, but the evidence of this is extremely slender and doubtful, and it carries back in any case human antiquity but a very little way. I have, in my "Story of the Earth and Man," shown reason for the belief, in which I find Professor Hughes, of Cambridge, coincides with me, [133] that the interglacial periods are merely an ingenious expedient to get rid of the difficulties attending the hypothesis of the universal glaciation of the northern hemisphere.

But, though man is thus geologically modern, it is held that historically his existence on earth may have been very ancient, extending perhaps ten or twenty, or even a hundred times longer than the period of six or seven thousand years supposed to be proved by sacred history. Let us first, as plainly and simply as possible, present the facts supposed thus to extend the antiquity of man, and then inquire as to their validity and force as arguments in this direction.

The arguments from geology in favor of a great antiquity for man may be summarized thus: (1) Human remains are found in caverns under very thick stalagmitic crusts, and in deposits of earth which must have accumulated before these stalagmites began to form, and when the caverns were differently situated with reference to the local drainages. (2) Remains of man are found under peat-bogs which have grown so little in modern times that their antiquity on the whole must be very great. (3) Implements, presumably made by men, are found in river-gravels so high above existing riverbeds that great physical changes must have occurred since they were accumulated. (4) One case is on record where a human bone is believed to have been found under a deposit of glacial age. (5) Human remains have been found under circumstances which indicate that very important changes of level have taken place since their accumulation. (6) Human remains have been found under circumstances which indicate great changes of climate as intervening between their date and that of the modern period. (7) Man is known to have existed, in Europe at least, at the same time with some quadrupeds formerly supposed to have been extinct before his introduction. (8) The implements, weapons, etc., found in the oldest of these repositories are different from those known to have been used in historic times.

These several heads include, I think, all the really material evidence of a geological character. It is evidence of a kind not easily reducible into definite dates, but there can be no doubt that its nature, and the rapid accumulation of facts within a small number of years, have created a deep and widespread conviction among geologists and archæologists that we must relegate the origin of man to a much more remote antiquity than that sanctioned by history or by the Biblical chronology. I shall first review the character of this evidence, and then state a number of geological facts which bear in the other direction, and have been somewhat lost sight of in recent discussions. Of the facts above referred to, the most important are those which relate to caverns, peat-bogs, and river-gravels. We may, therefore, first consider the nature and amount of this evidence.

That the reader may more distinctly understand the geological history of these more recent periods of the earth's history which are supposed to have witnessed the advent of man, in Western Europe at least, I quote the following summary from Sir Charles Lyell of the more modern changes in that portion of the world. These are:

"First, a continental period, toward the close of which the forest of Cromer flourished; when the land was at least 500 feet above its present level, perhaps much higher. * * * The remains of Hippopotamus major and Rhinoceros etruscus, found in beds of this period, seem to indicate a climate somewhat milder than that now prevailing in Great Britain. [This was a Preglacial era, and may be regarded as belonging to the close of the Pliocene tertiary.]

"Secondly, a period of submergence, by which the land north of the Thames and Bristol Channel, and that of Ireland, was generally reduced to * * * an archipelago. * * * This was the period of great submergence and of floating ice, when the Scandinavian flora, which occupied the lower grounds during the first continental period, may have obtained exclusive possession of the only lands not covered with perpetual snow. [This represents the Glacial period; but according to the more extreme glacialists only a portion of that period.]

"Thirdly, a second continental period, when the bed of the glacial sea, with its marine shells and erratic blocks, was laid dry, and when the quantity of land equalled that of the first period. * * * During this period there were glaciers in the higher mountains of Scotland and Wales, and the Welsh glaciers * * * pushed before them and cleared out the marine drift with which some valleys had been filled during the period of submergence. * * * During this last period the passage of the Germanic flora into the British area took place, and the Scandinavian plants, together with northern insects, birds, and quadrupeds, retreated into the higher grounds. * * *

"Fourthly, the next and last change comprised the breaking up of the land of the British area once more into numerous islands, ending in the present geographical condition of things. There were probably many oscillations of level during this last conversion of continuous land into islands, and such movements in opposite directions would account for the occurrence of marine shells at moderate heights above the level of the sea, notwithstanding a general lowering of the land. * * * During this period a gradual amelioration of temperature took place, from the cold of the glacial period to the climate of historical times." [134]

The second continental period above referred to is that which appears on the best evidence to have been the time of the introduction of man; but such facts as that of the Settle Cave, and the implements of the breccia in Kent's Cave, if rightly interpreted, would make man preglacial or "interglacial."

The deposits found in caverns in France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and England have afforded a large proportion of the remains from which we derive our notions of the most ancient prehistoric men of Europe. From the Belgian caves, as explored by M. Dupont, we learn that there were two successive prehistoric races, both rude or comparatively uncivilized. The first were men of Turanian type, but of great bodily stature and high cerebral organization, and showing remarkable skill in the manufacture of implements and ornaments of bone and ivory. These men are believed to have been contemporary with the earlier postglacial mammals, as the mammoth and hairy rhinoceros, and to have lived at a time when the European land was more extensive than at present, stretching far to the west of Ireland, and connecting Great Britain with the Continent. The skeletons found at Cro-Magnon, Mentone, and elsewhere in France fully confirm the deductions of Dupont as to this earliest race of Palæocosmic, Palæolithic, or antediluvian man. This grand race seems to have perished or been driven from Europe by the great depression of the level of the land which inaugurated the modern era, and which was probably accompanied by many oscillations of level as well as by considerable changes of climate. They were succeeded by a second race, equally Turanian in type, but of small stature, and resembling the modern Lapps. These were the "allophylian" peoples displaced by the historical Celts, and up to their time the reindeer seems to have existed abundantly in France and Germany. These two successive prehistoric populations have been termed respectively men of the "mammoth" age and men of the "reindeer" age. The Bible record would lead us to regard the earlier and gigantic men as antediluvian, and the smaller or Lappish race as postdiluvian. We may therefore, having already at some length considered the postdiluvian age, take up the mode of occurrence of the remains of the earlier of the two races—that of the mammoth age.

The caverns themselves may be divided into those of residence, of sepulture, and of driftage, though one cavern has often successively assumed two at least of these characters. In the caverns of residence large accumulations have been formed of ashes, charcoal, bones, and other débris of cookery, among which are found flint and bone implements, the general character of which, as well as that of the needles, stone hammers, mortars for paint, and other domestic appliances, are not more dissimilar from those of the Red Indian and Esquimau races in North America than these are from one another, and in many things, as in the bone harpoons, the resemblance is very striking indeed. In tendency to imitative art, and in the skill of their delineations of animals, the prehistoric men seem to have surpassed all the American races except the semi-civilized mound-builders and the more cultivated Mexican and Peruvian nations. With regard to the residence of these men of the mammoth age in caverns, several things are indicated by American analogies to which some attention should be paid.

It is not likely that caverns were the usual places of residence of the whole population. They may have been winter houses for small tribes and detached families of fugitives or outlaws, or they may have been places of resort for hunting parties at certain seasons of the year. The large quantities of broken and uncooked bones of particular species, as of the horse and reindeer, in some of the caverns, would farther indicate a habit of making great battues, like those of the American hunting tribes, at certain seasons, and of preparing quantities of pemmican or dried meat preserved with marrow and fat for future use. The number of bone needles found in some of the caves would seem to hint that, like the Americans, they sewed up their pemmican in skin bags. The multitude of flint flakes and of rude stone implements applicable to breaking bones certainly indicates a wholesale cutting of flesh and preparation of marrow. In the "Story of the Earth," I have suggested in connection with this that there may have been towns or villages of these people unknown to us, and which would afford higher conceptions of their progress in the arts. This anticipation appears recently to have been realized in the discovery of such a town or fortified village of the mammoth age at Soloutre, in France, and which seems to afford evidence that these ancient people had already domesticated the horse, using it as food as well as a beast of burden, in the manner of the Khirgis and certain other Tartar tribes of Central Asia. [135] This, with the undoubtedly high cerebral organization indicated by the skulls of the mammoth age, notably raises our estimate of the position of man at this early date.

With regard to caves of sepulture, the same remark may be made as with regard to the caves of residence. They do not seem to have been the burial-places of large populations, but only occasional places of interment, few bodies being found in them, and these often interred in the midst of culinary débris, evidencing previous or contemporary residence. With regard to the latter, it seems to have been no uncommon practice with some North American tribes to bury the dead either in the floors of their huts or in their immediate proximity. It is probable, however, that the few examples known of caves of sepulture of this period indicate not tribal or national places of burial, but occasional and accidental cases, happening to hunting or war parties, perhaps remote from their ordinary places of residence. In so far as method of burial is concerned, the men of the Palæocosmic or Mammoth age seem to have buried the dead extended at full length, and not in the crouching posture usual with some later races. Like the Americans, they painted the dead man, and buried him with his robes and ornaments, and probably with his weapons, thus intimating their belief in happy hunting-grounds beyond the grave. [136] I may remark here that all the known interments of the mammoth age indicate a race of men of great cerebral capacity, with long heads and coarsely marked features, of large stature and muscular vigor, surpassing indeed much in all these respects the average man of modern Europe. These characteristics befit men who had to contend with the mammoth and his contemporaries, and to subdue the then vast wildernesses of the eastern continent, and they correspond with the Biblical characteristics of antediluvian man.

Among caves of driftage may be classed some of those near Liège, in Belgium, and, partially at least, those of Kent's Hole and Brixham, in England. In these only disarticulated remnants of human skeletons, or more frequently only flint implements, some of them of doubtful character, have been found. In my "Story of the Earth," I have taken the carefully explored Kent's Cavern of Torquay as a typical example, and have condensed its phenomena as described by Mr. Pengelly. I now repeat this description, with some important emendations suggested by that gentleman in more recent reports and in private correspondence.

The somewhat extensive and ramifying cavern of Kent's Hole is an irregular excavation, evidently due partly to fissures or joints in limestone rock, and partly to the erosive action of water enlarging such fissures into chambers and galleries. At what time it was originally cut we do not know, but it must have existed as a cavern at the close of the Pliocene or beginning of the Post-pliocene period, since which time it has been receiving a series of deposits which have quite filled up some of its smaller branches.

First and lowest, according to Mr. Pengelly, of the deposits as yet known, is a "breccia," or mass of broken and rounded stones, with hardened red clay filling the interstices. Some of the stones are of the rock which forms the roof and walls of the cave, but the greater number, especially the rounded ones, are from more distant parts of the surrounding country. Many are fragments of grit from the Devonian beds of adjacent hills. There are also fragments of stalagmite from an old crust broken up when the breccia was deposited, and possibly belonging to Pliocene times. In this mass, the depth of which is unknown, are numerous bones, nearly all of one kind of animal, the cave bear or bears, for there may be more than one species—creatures which seem to have lived in Western Europe from the close of the Pliocene down to the modern period. They must have been among the earliest and most permanent tenants of Kent's Hole at a time when its lower chambers were still filled with water. Teeth of a lion and of the common fox also occur in this deposit, but rarely. Next above the breccia is a floor of "stalagmite," or stony carbonate of lime, deposited from the drippings of the roof, and in some places more than twelve feet thick. This also contains bones of the cave bear, deposited when there was less access of water to the cavern. Mr. Pengelly infers the existence of man at this time from the occurrence of chipped flints supposed to be artificial; but which, in so far as I can judge from the specimens described and figured, must still be regarded as of doubtful origin.

After the old stalagmite floor above mentioned was formed, the cave again received deposits of muddy water and stones; but now a change occurs in the remains embedded. This stony clay, or "cave earth," has yielded an immense quantity of teeth and bones, including those of the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, hyena, cave bear, reindeer, and Irish elk. With these were found weapons of chipped flint, and harpoons, needles, and bodkins of bone, precisely similar to those of the North American Indians and other rude races. The "cave earth" is four feet or more in thickness. It is not stratified, and contains many fallen fragments of rock, rounded stones, and broken pieces of stalagmite. It also has patches of the excrement of hyenas, which the explorers suppose to indicate the temporary residence of these animals; and besides fragments of charcoal scattered in the mass, there is in one spot, near the top, a limited layer of burned wood, with remains which indicate the cooking and eating of repasts of animal food by man. It is clear that when this bed was formed the cavern was liable to be inundated with muddy water, carrying stones and perhaps some of the bones and implements, and breaking up in places the old stalagmite floor. [137] One of the most puzzling features, especially to those who take an exclusively uniformitarian view, is that the entrance of water-borne mud and stones implies a level of the bottom of the water in the neighboring valleys of nearly one hundred feet above its present height. The cave earth is covered by a second crust of stalagmite, less dense and thick than that below, and containing only a few bones, which are of the same general character with those beneath, but include a fragment of a human jaw with teeth. Evidently when this stalagmite was formed the influx of water-borne materials had ceased, or nearly so; and Mr. Pengelly appears to affirm, though without assigning any reason, that none of these bones could, like the masses of stalagmite, have been lifted from lower beds, or washed into the cave from without.

The next bed marks a new change. It is a layer of black mould from three to ten inches thick. Its microscopic structure does not seem to have been examined; but it is probably a forest soil, introduced by growth, by water, by wind, and by ingress of animals, all of them modern, and contains works of art from the old British times before the Roman invasion up to the porter bottles and dropped half-pence of modern visitors. Lastly, in and upon the black mould are many fallen blocks from the roof of the cave.

There can be no doubt that this cave and the neighboring one of Brixham have done very much to impress the minds of British geologists with ideas of the great antiquity of man; and they have, more than any other postglacial monuments, shown the existence of some animals now extinct up to the human age. Of precise data for determining time, they have, however, given nothing. The only measures which seem to have been applied, namely, the rate of growth of stalagmite and the rate of erosion of neighboring valleys, are, from the very sequence of the deposits, obviously worthless; and the only apparently constant measure, namely, the fall of blocks from the roof, seems not to have been applied, and Mr. Pengelly declares that it can not be practically used. We are therefore quite uncertain as to the number of centuries involved in the filling of this cave, and must remain so until some surer system of calculation can be devised. We may, however, attempt to sketch the series of events which it indicates.

The animals found in Kent's Hole are all "postglacial," some of them of course survivors from "preglacial" times, and some of them still surviving. They therefore inhabited the country after it rose from the great glacial submergence. Perhaps the first colonists of the coast of Devonshire in this period were the cave bears, migrating on floating ice, and subsisting like the arctic bear and the black bear of Anti-costi, on fish, and on the garbage cast up by the sea. They may have found Kent's Hole a sea-side cavern, with perhaps some of its galleries still full of water and filling with breccia, with which the bones of dead bears became mixed. In the case of such a deposit as this breccia, however, the precise time when its materials were finally laid down in their present form, or the length of time necessary for its accumulation, can not be definitely settled. It may be a result of continued torrential action or of some sudden cataclysm. As the land rose, these creatures for the most part betook themselves to lower levels, and in process of time the cavern stood upon a hill-side, perhaps several hundreds of feet above the sea; and the mountain streams, their beds not yet emptied of glacial detritus, washed into it stones and mud, and probably bones also, while it appears that hyenas occupied the cave at intervals, and dragged in remains of mammals of many species which had now swarmed across the plains elevated out of the sea, and multiplied in the land. This was the time of the cave earth; and before its deposit was completed, though how long before an unstratified and therefore probably often-disturbed bed of this kind can not tell, man himself seems to have been added to the inhabitants of the British land. In pursuit of game he sometimes ascended the valleys beyond the cavern, or even penetrated into its outer chambers; or perhaps there were even in those days rude and savage hill-men, inhabiting the forests and warring with the more cultivated denizens of plains below, which are now deep under the waters. Their weapons, and other implements dropped in the cavern or lost in hunting, or buried in the flesh of wounded animals which crept to the streams to assuage their thirst, are those found in the cave earth. The absence of the human bones may merely show that the mighty hunters of those days were too hardy, athletic, and intelligent often to perish from accidental causes, and that they did not use this cavern for a place of burial. The fragments of charcoal show that they were acquainted with fire, and possibly that they sometimes took shelter in the cave. But the land again subsided. The valley of that now nameless river, of which the Rhine and the Thames may have alike been tributaries, disappeared under the sea; and perhaps some tribe, driven from the lower lands, took up its abode in this cave, now again near the encroaching waves, and left there the remains of their last repasts ere they were driven farther inland or engulfed in the waters. For a time the cavern may have been wholly submerged, and the charcoal of the extinguished fires became covered with its thin coating of clay. But ere long it re-emerged to form part of an island, long barren and desolate; and the valleys having been cut deeper by the receding waters, it no longer received muddy deposits, and the crust formed by drippings from its roof contained only bones and pebbles washed by rains and occasional land floods from its own clay deposits. Finally, the modern forests overspread the land, and were tenanted by the modern animals. Man returned to use the cavern again as a place of refuge or habitation, and to leave there the relics contained in the black earth. This seems at present the only intelligible history of this curious cave and others resembling it; though, when we consider the imperfection of the results obtained even by a large amount of labor, and the difficult and confused character of the deposits in this and similar caves, too much value should not be attached to such histories, which may at any time be contradicted or modified by new facts or different explanations of those already known. The time involved depends very much on the answer to the question whether we should regard the postglacial subsidence and re-elevation as somewhat sudden, or as occupying long ages at the slow rate at which some parts of our continents are now rising or sinking.

Mr. Pengelly thinks it possible, but not proved, that the lower breccia of Kent's Cavern may be interglacial or preglacial in age. One case only is known where a human bone has been found in a cavern under deposits supposed to be of the nature of the glacial drift. It is that of the Victoria Cave, at Settle, in Yorkshire. At this place a human fibula was found under a layer of boulder clay. But there are too many chances of this bone having come into this position by some purely local accident to allow us to attach much importance to it until future discoveries shall have supplied other instances of the kind. [138]

I may close this survey of the cave deposits with a summary of the results of M. Dupont, as obtained from two of the caves explored by him, that of Margite and that of Frontal. In the first of these caverns, resting on rolled pebbles which covered the floor, were four distinct layers of river mud deposited by inundations, and amounting to two yards and a half in thickness. In all of these layers were bones. The lowest contained rude flint implements, and bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, bear, horse, chamois, reindeer, stag, and hyena. In the overlying deposits are some flint implements of more artistic form and a greater prevalence of the bones of the reindeer. In the second cave, that of Frontal, over a similar deposit of alluvial mud of the mammoth age, was found a sepulchre containing the remains of sixteen individuals, of the second or diminutive Lappish race before referred to. The door of the cave had been closed by these people with a slab of stone, and in front was a hearth for funeral feasts, built on the deposits of the mammoth age, and containing bones of animals all recent or now living in Belgium, and without any traces of the bones of the extinct quadrupeds. This burial-place belonged to the Neocosmic yet prehistoric race which replaced the Palæocosmic men of the mammoth age.

What is the absolute antiquity of the Palæocosmic age in Europe? We have no monumental or historical chronology to answer this question, but only the measures of time furnished by the accumulation of deposits, by the deposition of stalagmite, by the gradual extinction of animals, and by the erosion of valleys and other physical changes. These somewhat loose measures have been applied in various ways, but the tendency of geologists, from the prevalence of uniformitarian views, and the prejudice created by familiarity with the long times of previous geologic periods, has been to assign to them too great rather than too little value, both as measures of time and as indicating a remote antiquity.

With reference to the accumulation of deposits, whether derived from disintegration of the roof and walls of the cave, introduced by land floods or river inundations or by the residence of man, their rate is of very difficult estimation. Loose stones fallen from the roof, as in the case of Kent's Cave, would give a fair measure of time if we could be sure that the climate had continued uniform, and that there had been no violent earthquakes. Mr. Pengelly has, however, hopelessly given up this kind of evidence. Where, as in the case of many of these caves, land floods and river inundations have entered, these may have been frequent or separated by long intervals of time, and they may have been of great or small amount. Where, for instance, as in one of the Belgian caves, there are six beds of ossiferous mud, but for the fact that five layers of stalagmite separate them we might not have known whether they represent six annual inundations, or floods separated by many centuries from each other.

In the case of the Victoria Cave at Settle, Dawkins, reasoning from the accumulation of two feet of detritus over British remains that may be supposed to be 1200 years old, gives a basis which would at the same rate of deposit allow about 5000 years for the date of palæolithic men; but Prestwich and others, on the basis of stalagmite deposits, claim a vastly higher antiquity for the men who made the implements found in Kent's Hole and Brixham.

If we now turn to these stalagmite floors, when we consider that they have been formed by the slow solution of limestone by rain-water charged with carbonic acid, and the dropping of this water on the floor, and when we are told that in Kent's Cavern a marked date shows that the stalagmite has grown at the rate of only one twentieth of an inch since 1688, and that there are two beds of stalagmite, one of which is in some places twelve feet thick, we are impressed with the conviction of a vast antiquity. But when we are told by Dawkins that the rate of deposit in Ingleborough Cave may be estimated at a quarter of an inch per annum, and when we consider that the present rate of deposit in Kent's Hole is probably very different from what it was in the former condition of the country, stalagmite becomes a very unsafe measure of time. With respect again to the accumulation of kitchen-midden stuff in the course of the occupancy of caverns, this proceeds with great rapidity, when caves are steadily occupied and it is not the practice to cleanse out the débris of fires, food, and bedding. Even when the occupation is temporary, a tribe of savages engaged with the preparation of dried meat and pemmican in a very short time produce a considerable heap of bones and other rejectamenta.

Looking next to the extinction of animals, we find that the species found in the oldest deposits containing human remains are in part still extant. Others which are locally extinct we know existed in Europe until historical times, that is, within the last two thousand years. How long previously to this the others became extinct we have no certain means of knowing, though it seems probable that they disappeared gradually and successively. We have, however, farther to bear in mind the possibility of cataclysms or climatal changes which may have proved speedily fatal to many species over large areas. In any case we have this certain fact that, though the time elapsed has been sufficient for the extinction of many species, it does not seem to have sufficed to effect any noteworthy change on those that survived. Farther, we may consider that time is only one factor in this matter, and not the one which is the efficient cause of change, since we know no reason why one species of animal should not continue to be reproduced as long as another, but for the occurrence of physical changes of a prejudicial character.

We have still remaining the changes which have taken place in the erosion of valleys since the caverns were occupied. Dupont informs us that the openings of some of the caverns once flooded by rivers are now in limestone cliffs two hundred feet above the water, while no appreciable lowering of the bottoms of the ravines is taking place now. This would in some contingencies put back the period of filling of the caves to an indefinite antiquity. But then the questions occur—Was there once more water in the rivers or more obstruction at their outlets, or was the erosive power greater at one time than now, or were the river valleys excavated in still more ancient time, and partly filled with mud when the water entered the caves, and may this mud have been since swept away? So, in like manner, the waters flowing in the channels near Brixham Cave and Kent's Hole were apparently about seventy feet higher in times of flood than at present, but the time involved is subject to the same doubts as in the case of the Belgian caves. Hughes has well remarked that elevations of the land, by causing rivers to form waterfalls and cascades, which they cut back, may greatly accelerate the rate of erosion. Farther, there is the best reason to believe that in the glacial period many old valleys were filled with clay, and that the modern cutting consisted merely in the removal of this clay. Belt has shown in a recent paper [139] good reason to believe that this is the case with the Falls of Niagara, and that the cutting actually effected through rock within the later Pleistocene and modern period has been that only of the new gorge from the whirlpool to Queenstown, the main part of the ravine being of older date and merely re-excavated. This would greatly reduce the ordinary estimate of time based on the cutting of the Niagara gorge.

This leads us next to consider the occurrence of human remains and objects of art in the river-gravels themselves, and the amount of excavation and deposit involved in the deposition of these gravels. In the river-gravels of the Somme, and of many other rivers in France and Southern England, chipped flints and rude flint implements are found in so great quantity as to imply that the beds and banks of these streams were resorted to for flint material, and that the unfinished and rejected implements left in the holes and trenches, or on the heaps where the work was carried on, were afterward sorted by running water, perhaps in abnormal floods and debacles, such as occur in all river valleys occasionally, perhaps in that great diluvial catastrophe which seems to have terminated the residence of Palæocosmic man in Europe. Wilson has well shown how the heaps left by American tribes in and near their flint quarries would furnish the material for such accumulations. The time required for the erosion of the valleys and the deposit of the gravels has been very variously estimated. In the case of the Somme, which river is not appreciably deepening its bed, if we suppose it to have cut its wide valley to the depth of one hundred and fifty feet out of solid chalk since the so-called "high level" gravels of France and the South of England were deposited, the time required shades off into infinity. So Evans, in his work on "The Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain," looking upon the amount of excavation of wide and deep valleys since the stone implements of Bournemouth are supposed to have been deposited in gravel, says, "Who can fully comprehend how immensely remote was the epoch when that vast bay was high and dry land?" and he becomes poetical in delineating the view that must have met the eyes of "palæolithic" man. And undoubtedly, if one is to be limited to the precise nature and amount of causes now at work in the district, the time must not only be "immensely remote," but illimitably so. The difficulty lies with the exaggerated uniformitarianism of the supposition that such causes could have produced the results. But, for reasons to be immediately stated, the time required is liable to numerous deductions; and recently Tylor, Pattison, Collard, and others have insisted ably on these deductions, as has also Professor Hughes, of Cambridge. I have myself urged them strongly in the work already referred to.

In the first place, when we see a deep river valley in which the present stream is doing an almost infinitesimal amount of deepening, we are not to infer that this represents all its work past and present. In times of unusual flood it may do in one week more than in many previous years. Farther, if there have been elevations or depressions of the land, when the land has been raised the cutting power has at once been enormously increased, and when depressed it has been diminished, or filling has taken the place of cutting. Again, if the climate in time past has been more extreme, or the amount of rainfall greater, the cutting action has then been proportionally rapid. Perhaps no influence is greater in this respect than that which is known to the colonists in Northeastern America as "ice-freshets," when in spring, before the ice has had time to disappear from the rivers, sudden thaws and rains produce great floods, which rushing down over the icy crust, or breaking and hurling its masses before them, work terrible havoc on the banks and alluvial flats, depositing great beds of gravel, and sweeping away immense masses that had lain undisturbed for centuries. Now we know that in Europe the human period was preceded by what has been termed the glacial age, and as it was passing away there must have been unexampled floods and ice-freshets, and a temporary "pluvial period," as it has been called, in which the volume of the rivers was immensely increased. Farther, it is an established fact that the period of the appearance of man was a time when the continents in the northern hemisphere were more elevated than at present, and when consequently the cutting action of rivers was at a maximum. This was again followed by a period of depression, accompanied probably by many local cataclysms, if not by a general deluge; and there are strong geological reasons to believe that this convulsion was connected with the disappearance from Europe of Palæocosmic man, and many of the animals his contemporaries. This view I advocated some time ago in my "Story of the Earth;" and more recently Mr. Pattison, in an able paper read before the Victoria Institute, has developed it in greater detail, and supported it by a great mass of geological authority. If the Palæocosmic period was one of continental elevation, when the greater seats of population were in the valleys of great rivers now covered by the German Ocean and the English Channel, and when the valleys of the Thames and the Somme were those of upland streams frequented by straggling parties and small tribes, and the seats of extensive flint factories for the supply of the plains below, and if this state of things was terminated by a diluvial debacle, we can account for all the phenomena of the drift implements without any extravagant estimate of time.

I quote with much pleasure on this subject the following from the report of a lecture on "Geological Measures of Time," by Professor Hughes, before the Royal Institution of London. Hughes was, like myself, a companion of Sir Charles Lyell in some of his journeys, though belonging to a younger generation of geologists, and is an accurate observer and reasoner.

"Another method of estimating the lapse of time is founded upon the supposed rate at which rivers scoop out their channels. Although no very exact estimates have been attempted, still the immense quantity of work that has been done, as compared with the slow rate at which a river is now excavating that same part of the valley, is often appealed to as a proof of a great lapse of time.

"The fact of such an enormous lapse of time is not questioned, but this part of the evidence is challenged.

"The previous considerations of the rate of accumulation of silt on the low lands prepares us to inquire whether there is any waste at all along the alluvial plains. Several examples were given to show that the lowering of valleys was brought about by receding rapids and waterfalls; for instance, following up the Rhine, its terraces could often be traced back to where the waterfall was seen to produce at once almost all the difference of level between the river reaches above and below it. At Schaffhausen the river terrace below the hotel could be traced back and found to be continuous with the river margin above the fall. The wide plains occurring here and there, such as the Mayence basin, were due to the river being arrested by the hard rocks of the gorges below Bingen so long that it had time to wind from side to side through the soft rocks above the gorges. When waterfalls cut back to such basins or to lakes they would recede rapidly, tapping the waters of the lake, eating back the soft beds of the alluvial plains, and probably in both cases leaving terraces as evidence, not of upheavals or of convulsions, but of the arrival of a waterfall which had been gradually travelling up the valley. So when the Rhone cuts back from the falls at Belgarde we shall have terraces where now is the shore of Geneva; so also when the Falls of Schaffhausen, and ages afterward when the Falls of Laufenburg have tapped the Lake of Constance, there will be terraces marking its previous levels. And so we may explain the former greater extent of the Lake of Zurich, which stood higher and spread wider by Utznach and Wetzikon before it was tapped by the arrival of waterfalls, which cut back into it and let its waters run off until they fell to their present level.

"A small upheaval near the mouth of a river would have a similar effect. The Thames below London and the Somme below St. Acheul can now only just hand on the mud brought down from higher ground; but suppose an elevation of a hundred feet over those parts of England and France (quite imperceptible if extended over 10,000, 1000, or even 100 years), and the rivers would tumble over soft mud and clay and chalk, and soon eat their way back from Sheppey to London, and from St. Valery to Amiens.

"So when we want to estimate the age of the gravels on the top of the cliff at the Reculvers, or on the edge of the plateau of St. Acheul, we have to ask, not how long would it take the rivers to cut down to their present level from the height of those gravels at the rate at which that part of their channel is being lowered now, but how long would it take the Somme or Thames, which once ran at the level of those gravels, to cut back from where its mouth or next waterfall was then to where it runs over rapids now. We ought to know what movements of upheaval and depression there have been; what long alluvial flats or lakes which may have checked floods, but also arrested the rock-protecting gravel; how much the wash of the estuarine waves has helped. In fact, it is clear that observations made on the action of the rivers at those points now have nothing to do with the calculation of the age of the terraces above, and that the circumstances upon which the rate of recession of the waterfalls and rapids depends are so numerous and changeable that it is at present unsafe to attempt any estimate of the time required to produce the results observed."

I may close this discussion by quoting from the paper of my friend Mr. Pattison, already referred to, the following summing up of his conclusions, in which I fully concur:

"We may assume it as established that there was a time when England was connected with the Continent, when big animals roamed in summer up the watercourses and across the uplands, and man, armed only with rude stones, followed them into the marshes and woods, hunted them for sustenance, and consumed them in shelter of caves, then accessible from the river levels. This state of things was continued until disturbed by oscillations of surface, accompanied by excessive rainfalls and rushes of water from the water-sheds of the rivers, until the great animals were driven out or destroyed, and man ceased to visit these parts. The disturbances continued, the Strait of Dover was formed, the configuration of the soft parts of the islands and continents was fixed, action subsided, and the present state of things obtained. Man resumed his residence, but with loss of the mammoth and its companions. The reindeer now constituted the type of a state of things which lasted down to the historic period, without any other from that time to this. * * *

"Chronologists are agreed that about 2000 years B.C. Abraham migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and that at this time Egypt at least was old in civilization. Beyond this we have no positive scale of time in Scripture; for it is evident, from the narrative itself, that the latter does not cover the whole time. * * *

"Ussher estimates from Scripture the creation of man as about 2000 years before this. During the latter portion of this time civilization was proceeding under settled governments in the East, interrupted, says the record and tradition, by a flood. * * *

"So Lucretius:

'Thus, too, the insurgent waters once o'erpowered,
As fables tell, and deluged many a state;
Till, in its turn, the congregated waves
By cause more potent conquered, heaven restrain'd
Its ceaseless torrents, and the flood decreased.'

Barbarism covered the whole Western world; neither in the 2000 years before Abraham, nor in the 2000 years afterward, have we any light reflected from these regions to the East. In this 4000 years, or in the somewhat longer period which probably will be ultimately settled as warranted by the record, we place hypothetically all the phenomena of the later mammalian age, including the introduction of man as a hunter, the first occupation of the caves by him also, the diluvial phenomena of the wide valleys, the oscillations and disturbances of the earth's crust, alterations in the coast-line, and physical settlement of the country; after this comes the second occupation of the caves. In short, if we say that, hypothetically, the whole first known human age occurred within 4000 years of the Christian era, no one can say that it is geologically impossible. Who can say that 1643 years is insufficient to comprise all the phenomena that occurred during a period confessedly characterized by more rapid and extensive action than at present—a period during which ruptures in the earth's crust, oscillations, and permanent uprising took place, and the intermittent action of violent floods caused the deposit and disturbance and resettlement of the gravels and brick-earth? There is nothing to interfere with the prevalent opinion that man was introduced here while the glacial period was dying out, and while it was still furnishing flood-waters sufficient to scour and re-sort the gravels of the valleys down which they flowed. This supposition may be extended to both the great continents."

To conclude: Our mode of reconciling the Mosaic history of antediluvian man with the disclosures of the gravels and caves would be to identify Palæocosmic man, or man of the mammoth age, with antediluvian man; to suppose that the changes which closed his existence in Europe as well as Western Asia were those recorded in the Noachian deluge; and that the second colonization of the diminished and shrunken Europe of the modern period was effected by the descendants of Noah. It may be asked—Must we suppose that the Adam of the Bible was of the type of the coarsely featured and gigantic men of the European caverns? I would answer—Not precisely so; but it is quite possible that Adam may have been Turanian in feature. We should certainly suppose him to have been a man well developed in brain and muscle. Such men as those found in the caves would rather represent the ruder "Nephelim," the "giants that were in those days," than Adam in Eden. Farther, the new colonists of Europe after the deluge would no doubt be a very rude and somewhat degenerate branch of Noachidæ, probably driven before more powerful tribes in the course of the dispersion. The higher races of both periods are probably to be looked for in Western Asia; but even there we must expect to find cave men like those whose remains were found by Tristram in the caves near Tyre, and like the Horim of Moses; and we must also expect to find the antediluvian age in the main an age of stone everywhere, and its arts, except in certain great centres of population, perhaps not more advanced than those of the Polynesians, or those of the agricultural American tribes before the discovery of America by Columbus.

As a geologist, and as one who has been in the main of the school of Lyell, and after having observed with much care the deposits of the more modern periods on both sides of the Atlantic, I have from the first dissented from those of my scientific brethren who have unhesitatingly given their adhesion to the long periods claimed for human history, and have maintained that their hasty conclusions on this subject must bring geological reasoning into disrepute, and react injuriously on our noble science. We require to make great demands on time for the prehuman periods of the earth's history, but not more than sacred history is willing to allow for the modern or human age.