The Meeting-Place of Geology and History Part 4

Thus it may be affirmed that the land fauna of this primitive time was distinct from that now living. This implies either long time or a great physical break.

Thirdly, this change of fauna consists not so much in the introduction of new species as in the extinction of old forms, either absolutely or locally; and this agrees with the fact of diminution of land area, since it seems to be a law of the geological succession that increasing land brings in new land animals; diminishing land area leads to extinction, and not to introduction.

Fourthly, in accordance with this we find that, at the close of the palanthropic age, the continents of the northern hemisphere experienced a subsidence from which they have only partially recovered up to the present time, and which introduced the modern geographical and climatal features. This appears from raised beaches and beds of rubble, loam and loess of modern date overlying the _debris_ of the glacial period and holding the remains of post-glacial animals. These are widely spread over the whole northern hemisphere, and ascend in some districts to high levels. An interesting ill.u.s.tration has recently been given by Dr.

Nuesch and M. Boule, in the deposits under a rock-shelter at Schweizersbild, near Schaffhausen.[25] These show an overlying deposit with 'neolithic' implements and bones of recent animals, a bed of rubble and loam dest.i.tute of human remains, and below this a bed containing bone implements, worked flints, and traces of cookery of the palanthropic period. The whole rests on a bed of rolled pebbles, supposed to be the upper part of the glacial deposits. This shows the interval between the palanthropic and neanthropic periods, and also the post-glacial date of man in Switzerland, and it accords with a great many other instances.

[25] _Nouvelles archives des Missions_, &c. vol. iii. Noticed in _Natural Science_, 1893.

Were these changes sudden or gradual? Experience has no answer, for no similar events have occurred in historic times, and though there are records in the geological history of many mutations in the elevation of the land, we have no information as to their rate of progress, and we know little of their causes. The changes of this kind known to us in modern times are merely local, not general, and in regard to their rate are of two kinds. Some are abrupt and accompanied with earthquake shocks. These are very local, and usually occur in regions of volcanic activity. Others are so slow and gradual as to be scarcely perceptible, and are often of wider distribution. It is evident, however, that these slight and local phenomena furnish but little clue to the mutations of past periods. These were on a far grander scale and affected vast areas.

We have no modern instances of these almost world-wide depressions of continents under the sea, though we know that these have occurred, one of them within the human period, and it is idle to speculate as to their rate or duration in the absence of facts. We know pretty certainly, however, from the gauges of time which can be applied to the close of the glacial period, that this latest subsidence must have occurred within six thousand years of our time.

With reference to the particular movement in question, we know that the close of the palanthropic period was accompanied by a movement at least equal to the difference between the wide lands of the second continental period and the shrunken dimensions of the present lands. Besides this we find on the surface of the land modern raised beaches, deposits of loess and plateau gravels, intrusions of mud into caves of considerable elevation, and evidences, as in Siberia, of large herds of animals perishing on elevated lands on which they seem to have taken refuge.[26]

In short, no geological fact can be better established than the post-glacial subsidence.

[26] Prestwich, 'Evidence of Submergence of Western Europe,' _Trans.

Royal Society_, 1893; 'Possible Cause for the Origin of the Tradition of the Flood,' _Trans. Vict. Inst._, 1894; Dawkins, _Journal Anthrop.

Inst._, February 1894. Kingsmill and Skertchly (_Nature_, November 10, 1892) report the Asiatic loess to be marine, and to extend far upward on the Caspian plain and the Pamirs, so that all Asia must have been submerged within a very recent period. See also _Fossil Man_, by the author, 1880.

Putting these facts together, we cannot doubt that the submergence at the close of the palanthropic age was very considerable, and that it was followed by a partial re-emergence. Further, there is no evidence of any serious fractures or folding of the crust taking place at the time, though it is possible that great lava ejections like some of those of Western America may belong to this period. It is therefore allowable to suppose that the cause of submergence may have been either depression of the land, or elevation of the bed of the ocean throwing its waters over the land, or possibly a combination of both. Movements of these kinds have recurred again and again in geological time. Their causes are mysterious, but their effects have been of the most stupendous character. Fortunately, they occur at rare intervals, and that to which we are now referring is the last of which we have any record, and differs from all others in having occurred at a time when man was widely spread over the world.

The geological chronometers already referred to inform us that the land of the northern hemisphere rose from the great pleistocene submergence about eight thousand to ten thousand years ago, and the second continental period with its forests and its teeming and widely-extended animal and human life, may have been established within two thousand years of that time, or say six thousand to eight thousand years ago. How long the second continental or palanthropic period continued intact we do not know, but we can scarcely allow it less than two thousand years.

Perhaps it was considerably longer. Now on historical evidence produced by Egypt, Chaldea, and other ancient countries in the Mediterranean region, we can trace the neanthropic age continuously back to, say, three thousand years B.C., or nearly five thousand years in all. Adding to this two thousand years for the palanthropic age, we are carried back to a time within one thousand years of the earliest we can a.s.sign on geological grounds to the termination of the great glacial period.

Therefore, unless we suppose the last continental subsidence to have begun some time before the close of the palanthropic age, and to have continued to some degree into the beginning of the neanthropic, we cannot a.s.sign to it a very long time. That it could not have been sudden in the sense of being instantaneous is evident, because in that case terrestrial denudation of a stupendous character must have ensued, and no animal life except that of mountain tops and elevated table-lands could have escaped its destructive effects, but that it was by no means secular or long-continued is certain.

Thus we seem shut up to the conclusion that the close of the palanthropic age was marked by great geological vicissitudes of the character of submergence, leading primarily to vast destruction of animal life, and secondarily to permanent changes both in geography and climate, under which new conditions the neanthropic age was inaugurated.

How this took place we have to inquire in the sequel. In the meantime we may merely remark that since the two princ.i.p.al races of primitive men known to us in Europe seem to have perished, we must infer that individuals of a third race beyond the limits of Europe were destined to survive, and again to replenish the earth in the new era, and that possibly these may be represented by the solitary Truchere skull. In the case of many of the more bulky and unwieldy animals inhabiting the plains the case was different. They perished, or if any survived the submergence they were unable to multiply under the new conditions.

Desperate attempts have been made in the interests of extreme uniformitarianism to discredit the abrupt change from palaeocosmic to neocosmic men. It has been supposed that the latter replaced the former as conquerors--a most unlikely theory, when their relative powers are considered. It has been conjectured that as the cold decreased the old races of men followed the reindeer to the north and became Arctic peoples. But why did they not rather attack the new animals, which in that case must have come in from the south? It has even been supposed that the Esquimaux may be their descendants; but they are quite different in physical characters, and have no nearer resemblance in their arts than other rude peoples. In opposition to all this we have not only the remarkable change in the races of men and in their animal a.s.sociates, but when we know that the whole geographical features of our continents have changed since the palanthropic age, and that not only are our continents reduced in size since the continental post-glacial period, but that there is evidence of re-elevation as well as subsidence, and this within a short period--say eight thousand years less the historic period on the one hand and the early palanthropic on the other--it seems impossible to doubt the greatness and suddenness of the physical break that divides the anthropic age into two distinct portions. All this may be held to be certainly known as geological fact, and it would be folly to overlook it in any discussions as to primitive man, or in any comparisons of the evidence afforded by his remains with that of early human history or tradition.

But if man was a witness of and sufferer in this great catastrophe, and if any men survived it, did they preserve no tradition or memory of such a stupendous event? We may imagine this to be possible. The survivors may have belonged to the rudest and most isolated of the races of men, and may have had no means of knowing the extent of the disaster or of preserving its memory. On the other hand, they may have attained to a sufficient degree of culture to have had some means of perpetuating the memory of great events. If so, we may imagine that the great diluvial cataclysm which separates the human or anthropic period into two parts may have left an indelible mark in the history or tradition of mankind.

We shall inquire into this in the sequel, but must first consider what geological monuments remain of the early neanthropic age in Europe.[27]

[27] A valuable paper by Dawkins 'On the relation of the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic Period,' reaches me when correcting the proof of this volume. (Reprint from _Journal of Anthropological Society_, February 1894.)

In the meantime I may remark that, if we take the Canstadt people to represent the ruder tribes of the antediluvian Cainites, the feebler folk of Truchere to represent the Sethites, and the giant race of Cro-magnon and Mentone as the equivalent of the 'mighty men' or Nephelim of Genesis who arose from the mixture of the two original stocks, we shall have a somewhat exact parallel between the men of the caves and gravels and those we have so long been familiar with in the Book of Genesis.

CHAPTER VII

THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE

There has been much confusion among anthropologists respecting the distinction of this from the preceding age. The Cro-magnon race has been cla.s.sed as neanthropic, and has been confounded with a very dissimilar people which succeeded it after an interval of some duration. The gap between the disappearance of the earlier race and the arrival of the newer has thus been overlooked, and no account has been taken of the great intervening faunal and geographical changes. This has arisen from neglecting or being unable to appreciate the geological part of the evidence; and the somewhat lamentable result has been that it is difficult for the ordinary reader to arrive at any certainty, in the midst of conflicting statements all based on imperfect data. In these circ.u.mstances it will be well to begin this chapter with some examples of the relations of these different races.

At Grenelle, near Paris, on the river Seine, there is a succession of old inundation beds of that river, extending from the oldest part of the anthropic to modern times, and furnishing what may be regarded as a chronological series for Northern France, as many human remains have been from time to time deposited on this old eddy of the Seine and buried under newer acc.u.mulations. Belgrand has shown that in the lowest gravels of this deposit the long-headed Canstadt man is alone found.

Immediately above this occur remains of the Cro-magnon type, and these are a.s.sociated with and overlain by beds holding large stones or erratic blocks, a monument perhaps of the physical disturbances closing the palanthropic age. Above these the next remains are those of a race of men of smaller stature and with less elongated heads, which we shall find belong to the neanthropic age. Here, as Quatref.a.ges points out, we have a distinct stratigraphical succession, which accords with that in other localities.

If we now turn to England we may select from other examples the Cresswell caves, so carefully explored by Dawkins and Mello, and in which we have well-ascertained evidence from fossils as well as from superposition. Without going into the details as to the several chambers and pa.s.sages in these caverns, we find as the result of the whole the following succession in ascending order:

1. White calcareous sand, a deposit from water, but with no animal remains.

2. Stiff red clay with blocks of limestone, and in places underlaid by a ferruginous sand. These beds, of which the red clay is the princ.i.p.al, contain bones of rhinoceros leptorhinus, hippopotamus, bison, bear, hyena and fox, but no human remains. Dawkins, however, shows that in other caves farther south some rude flint implements show that man had already appeared in England, though he may not have made his way as far north as Yorkshire.

3. Above this lies a stratum of red sandy cave earth, in which occur the bones of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, the horse, the bison, the bear, and the hyena, but the leptorhine rhinoceros is gone. The bones are gnawed by hyenas, and there are rude quartzite implements.

Over this, and representing the later part of the palanthropic age, corresponding to some of the French, Belgian, and Lebanon caves, are an upper cave earth and breccia, rich in 'palaeolithic' flint implements and bones of the animals of the mammoth age.

4. Above this, in the surface soil and disturbed portions of the underlying beds, are remains of the neanthropic period, including twelve species of modern animals, but with no trace of the great extinct quadrupeds. Connected with these were human skulls of the same type found in the ancient burial barrows of England, and belonging to races still extant. The Cresswell caves give no bones of palaeocosmic men, but they very well show the succession of the early period of mild climate, the later severe climate, the extinction of the old animals contemporary with the earliest men, and the final succession of modern men and animals to the now insular Britain, which, in the times represented by the beds one, two, and three above mentioned, was a part of the mainland of Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLINT FLAKES OF TWO TYPES FROM PALANTHROPIC AND NEANTHROPIC CAVES IN THE LEBANON]

But perhaps the most interesting views of the succession of early men and the gap between the palanthropic and neanthropic periods are presented by the Belgian caves explored by Schmerling and Dupont. The latter has excavated more than sixty caverns, and has carefully noted the mode of occurrence of their contents, collecting at the same time a vast number of bones and implements, now admirably arranged in the museum of Brussels. In Belgium the earlier anthropic period has been characterised as that of the mammoth. The beginning of the neanthropic is still a reindeer age, though that animal was apparently becoming rare. It existed, as we know, in Central Europe till the time of Caesar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RESTORATION OF THE SEPULCHRAL CAVE OF FRONTAL, BELGIUM

(after Dupont)

1. and 2. Gravel and clay of mammoth age. 3. Surface of modern acc.u.mulation of angular stones and clay. (D) Slab closing the sepulchre.

(S) Platform for funeral feasts. (F) Hearth. (R) Rock forming the walls of the cavern.]

The caves of Furfooz, and especially that of Frontal, are among the most instructive. Dupont has found that in many caves the older remains of the mammoth age are contained in or covered by a diluvial or inundation mud,[28] which seems to be the closing deposit of this age. Now in the Frontal cave this mud remained undisturbed and extended out into a platform in front of the cave. The cave itself had been used as a place of burial, and as many as sixteen skeletons were found in it, with flint implements, perforated sh.e.l.ls, flat pieces of sandstone with sketches of figures scratched on them, and an earthen vase. All these lay above the original palanthropic mud floor, and belonged to new tribes which probably knew nothing of their predecessors, whose bones were covered by the inundation mud below. On the platform in front of the cave was a hearth with the ashes of funeral feasts, and around this were found a mult.i.tude of bones of animals, of the modern species of the country. The people who used this cave as a sepulchre had evidently arrived in Belgium after the palaeocosmic men and the mammoth were not only extinct, but their remains were buried in muddy deposits; though the reindeer and even the wild horse still existed, and the time was long before the dawn of any authentic history in that part of the world. These men have somewhat shorter heads than the old Cro-magnon race, and they are of smaller stature, and with finer and more delicate features. In these respects they resemble the men of the dolmens and long barrows of France and England, and the existing Auvergnats and Basques, and also the Lapps of the far north. Dupont observes that their materials for implements and ornaments came almost entirely from regions to the southward, and hence he infers commerce with tribes in that direction and the existence of enemies in the north. I should rather infer that the men of Frontal had immigrated into Belgium from the south, and that they were a small and poor outlying tribe of a greater people living south of them. Dupont also remarks on their evident care of the dead, a characteristic of the early neocosmic men, their belief in a future life, and the absence of warlike weapons, whence he infers that they were a mild and pacific race--a conclusion which makes against the idea entertained by some, that they may have displaced the formidable palaeocosmic men by conquest.

[28] Sometimes with angular stones--_argile a blocaux_.

Similar ill.u.s.trations are afforded by the caves and rock-shelters of France, Switzerland, and Syria, and have convinced many of the ablest archaeologists of the existence of a decided break between the palanthropic and neanthropic ages. In such a case also it is to be observed that a few decided, positive facts are of more value than any number of examples in which, from local circ.u.mstances, the succession may be obscure or uncertain.

The above examples relate to the men of the older neanthropic age, the men of the so-called neolithic or polished stone age of archaeologists.

These men can be shown to be identical with the oldest populations of postdiluvian Europe, peoples whose descendants exist to-day in many parts of Western Europe, though they have been more or less displaced or mixed with later intrusive races. These people have gone on without any physical cataclysm, or change of fauna, or geographical or climatal changes of any magnitude, into the ages of bronze and iron and of the modern civilisation. Thus, while the palaeocosmic men pa.s.sed away abruptly and have left no certain successors, those who succeeded them pa.s.s on without a break into the existing populations of the world.

We must, however, here guard ourselves from a misconception which has apparently unconsciously deceived many writers on this subject. It by no means follows from the facts insisted on above that there are no direct links of connection between palaeocosmic and neocosmic men. The ancestors of the latter must have existed through the palanthropic period, and wherever they were living they may have had the same characters which distinguish them at a later time, and which persist to this day. There would therefore be nothing contradictory to our general view in finding that the small, fine-featured men who succeeded the giants of the olden time were in some more genial parts of the world extant from the first.

Nay, it may even appear that they were similar to the Truchere race, and that still more primitive people whose bones are yet unknown, and who inhabited Europe in the early mild period preceding the mammoth age.

Neither is there anything anomalous in the occasional reappearance of characters similar to those even of the Canstadt race at the present time, not because any modern men are direct descendants of this race, but because under certain conditions these characters tend to be reproduced. Let us put the case conjecturally as follows:

The original men who peopled the northern continents after the first glacial period were of small stature, agile, and well formed, with mild and pleasing countenance and heads of the medium (mesitocephalic) type.

They were dwellers in a warm climate and subsisted on fruits. As population increased and men became hunters and fishermen, and wandered widely over the world, a large-boned, coa.r.s.e-featured, and savage type of man arose, such as we find in the older caves and gravels, and weapons of kinds not needed in primitive times were invented. In this state of affairs, when the coa.r.s.er and stronger races had made themselves masters of the world, and had perhaps partially intermixed with the older and more peaceful peoples, a great diluvial catastrophe occurred, which swept away the greater part of men. The survivors were of the old and unmodified stock, and it was they who repeopled the new world, finding possibly here and there some survivors of the former population, or themselves locally relapsing into a similar state. In this case all the seeming paradoxes and contradictions which have perplexed archaeologists would be easily explained. We might even find occasional captives of the primitive small race among the interments of the old giants, and we might find new races of superior physical power arising in the new world and again intruding on the feebler race.

In closing our notice of this period we may proceed to connect it with actual history in the British Islands. When the Romans invaded Britain they found in it two races of men physically very distinct, one of them the aborigines, who had made their way to the island as its first population after the close of the mammoth age, the others apparently a later intrusion. They are known to English antiquaries from their modes of burial as the men of the long and the round barrows or funeral mounds. The first of these are beyond doubt the kinsmen of our little men of the Trou de Frontal, in Belgium. They are thus described by Greenwell and Taylor[29]:

[29] Greenwell, _British Barrows_; Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans_.

They were of feeble build, short stature, dark complexion, and somewhat long skull. They buried their dead in long barrows or mounds with interior chambers and pa.s.sages; some of these are as much as 400 feet in length, and resemble artificial caves; and there can be no doubt that, as in Belgium, they buried their dead in caves when these were accessible; and the laborious construction of the long barrows when caves failed is an indication of the great importance they attached to the secure and decent sepulture of the dead. No trace of metal is found in their barrows, and but little pottery, but it is believed that they had at a very early time domesticated sheep and cattle and practised agriculture. These people are now identified with the people of the south and west of England, called by the Romans Silures. They were the builders of the cromlechs, dolmens, and other megalithic structures so common in various parts of the old continent. Their type survives to this day in the small dark people of parts of Wales and the south and west of Ireland, and in parts of the Hebrides. Their physical characters connect them with the primitive populations of the hills of Central France, with the Basques of the Pyrenees, the Corsicans, the Berbers of Africa, and the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the term Iberian has been applied to the whole group. Their language was originally not Aryan, but Turanian. They represent not merely a new race still surviving, but a distinct advance in practical civilisation over that of the peoples of the palanthropic age, in Europe at least.

At the time of the Roman conquest this primitive race had been replaced in the east of England and south of Scotland by a wholly different people, supposed to be identical with the Celtae of the Romans. They were tall, muscular, with broader and shorter heads, fair complexion, and light-coloured hair. They buried their dead in round barrows or mounds, and seem at a very early period to have possessed bronze, and so to have introduced what has been termed the bronze age into Britain. At the time of the Roman invasion, however, they already possessed iron weapons. These people were Aryan in speech, allied to the Gauls and Belgae, and the ancestors of the so-called Celtic populations of the British Islands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROMLECH AT FONTANACCIA, CORSICA (after De Mortillet)]