THE MEETING-PLACE

OF

GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

Sir J. William Dawson, LL.D., RG.S.

"The name of Sir William Dawson on a titlepage is a guarantee
of two things: one, that the book is orthodox and thoroughly
evangelical; and the other, that the matter of it is first-class, accord-
ing to the highest scientific standard.'1

— THE ILLUSTRATED CHRISTIAN WEEKLY.

The Meeting-Place of Geology and History.

Illustrated. I2mo, cloth $1.25

Sir William Dawson's aim in this volume is aptly described
by the title. It is to fix with that measure of definiteness which
the best and latest research permits the period when human life
began on the earth, and to discuss from the geologic standpoint
the many questions of interest connected with this event. He
shows in how many different ways science confirms the teaching
.of Scripture in this department of knowledge.

Modern Ideas of Evolution as related to Revela-
tion and Science. Sixth Edition, Revised and
Enlarged. I2mo, cloth 1 .50

Carefully and thoroughly revised in the light of the criticism,
favorable and adverse, which the preceding five editions have
received.

" Dr. Dawson is himself a man of eminent judicial temper, a
widely read scholar, and a close, profound thinker, which makes
the blow he deals the Evolution hypothesis all the heavier. We
commend it to our readers as one of the most thorough and
searching books on the subject yet published." — The Christian
at Work.

The Chain of Life in Geological Time. A Sketch
of the Origin and Succession of Animals and Plants.
Illustrated. Third and Revised Edition. I2mo,
cloth 2.00

"The judicial style of the writer in argument is enlivened
by his ability to render science most attractive and popular. He
holds to the orthodox view of the ordered plan of the universe,
and yet considers without prejudice the alluring ideas prevalent
in modern scientific circles." — The Christian Advocate {N. Y.)

Egypt and Syria. Their Physical Features in Relation to
4{ Bible History. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.
V With many Illustrations. "By-Paths of Bible Knowl-
edge" Vol. VI. 1 2mo, cloth i .20

" This is one of the most interesting of the series to which it
belongs. It is the result of personal observation, and the work
of a practised geological observer." — The British Quarterly
Review.

THE MEETING-PLACE

OF

GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

j:1 w:

BY

SIR >' WILLIAM DAWSON, LL.D., F.R.S.

AUTHOR OF

'THE EARTH AND MAN," "MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION,"
OF LIFE IN GEOLOGICAL TIME," ETC.

"THE CHAIN

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO

The Religious Tract Society, London

Copyright, 1894

PREFACE

THE object of this little book is to give a clear and
accurate statement of facts bearing on the character
of the debatable ground intervening between the
later part of the geological record and the begin-
nings of sacred and secular history.

The subject is one as yet full of difficulty ; but
the materials for its treatment have been rapidly
accumulating, and it is hoped that it may prove
possible to render it more interesting and intelligible
than heretofore,

J. W. D

M79390

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. GENERAL NATURE OF THE SUBJECT . .11

II. THE WORLD BEFORE MAN 18

III. THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN ... 27

IV. THE PALANTHROPIC AGE 40

V. SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS OF THE PAL-
ANTHROPIC AGE 69

VI. END OF THE PALANTHROPIC AGE . . . 85

VII. THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE ... 94

VIII. THE PALANTHROPIC -AGE IN THE LIGHT OF

HISTORY 106

IX. THE DELUGE OF NOAH 121

X. SPECIAL QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE 151

XL THE PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC IN THE EAST 164

XII. THE NEANTHROPIC DISPERSION . . . . 183

XIII. SUMMARY OF RESULTS 210

INDEX ,,,,,,,,, 219

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

SECTION AT TRENTON, ON THE DELAWARE, SHOWING THE
RELATION OF THE STONE IMPLEMENTS TO THE GLACIAL (?)
GRAVELS (after Holmes) 32

CHIPPED QUARTZITES, MODERN AMERICAN (after Holmes) . 33

FLINT HACHE OF THE ANCIENT OR CHELLEAN TYPE,

AURILLAC (after Carthaillac) 41

CAVE OF GOYET, BELGIUM (Section after Dupont) . . 47

LANCE HEAD FORMED OF A FLINT FLAKE (CAVE OF Mou-
STIER). THE FLAT FACE SHOWS A BULB OF PERCUSSION
(after Falsan) 49

OUTLINE OF THE SKULL OF THE « OLD MAN OF CRO-
MAGNON ' (after Christy and Lartet) 54

THE FIRST SKELETON FOUND IN THE MENTONE CAVES

(after Riviere) 57

HANDLE OF A PIERCER, OR BODKIN, IN BONE, FROM LAU-
GERIE BASSE, IN FORM OF A DEER 59

FLINT FLAKE KNIFE, FOUND IN THE HAND OF THE ' GIANT*
SKELETON OF MENTONE (after Evans) . .; , • . 59

NEANDERTHAL SKULL — TWO OUTLINES : THE OUTER GIVING
THE MORE CORRECT FORM (from Science} ... 60

SKULL OF CANSTADT TYPE FOUND AT SPY, BELGIUM, BY
FRAIPONT AND LOHEST . oi

10 GEOLOGV AND HISTORY

PAGt

OUTLINE OP MAMMOTH, CARVED ON A PLATE OF IVORY,
FROM THE CAVE OF LA MADELEINE .... 68

TOOTH OF CAVE BEAR, WITH ENGRAVING OF A SEAL,
FROM A COLLAR FOUND AT SORDES, PYRENEES (after
-Carthaillac) 71

THE SKELETON OF LAUGERIE BASSE, DORDOGNE, SHOWING
THE POSITION OF THE PERFORATED SHELLS ON THE
LIMBS AND FOREHEAD (after Carthaillac) .... 79

SKULL FROM TRUCHERE, SHOWING A PECULIAR PALAN-
THROPIC TYPE ALLIED TO NEANTHROPic RACES (after

Quatrefages) . . . . . • - • . 82

FLINT FLAKES OF TWO TYPES, FROM PALANTHROPIC AND
NEANTHROPIC CAVES IN THE LEBANON . . . . 97

RESTORATION OF THE SEPULCHRAL CAVE OF FRONTAL,
BELGIUM (after Dupont) 99

CROMLECH AT FONTANACCIA, CORSICA (after De Mortillet) . 105

MAP SHOWING THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL RE-
LATIONS OF THE SITE OF EDEN, AS DESCRIBED IN
GENESIS . . %• • ' . ".^ . •-.»., .» - « - , . 117

MAP SHOWING LINES OF POSTDILUVIAN MIGRATIONS FROM
SHINAR, AS IN GENESIS x. " > . . • . . 185

HEAD ILLUSTRATING THE MOST ANCIENT TYPE OF CUSHITE
TURANIAN, FROM TEL-LOH (after de Sarzec). The cap is
perhaps an imitation of the antediluvian shell-caps, like that
of the ' Man of Mentone ' . 191

THE MEETING-PLACE

OF

GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

CHAPTER I

GENERAL NATURE OF THE SUBJECT

THE science of the earth and the history of man,
though cultivated by very different classes of
specialists and in very different ways, must have
their meeting-place. They must indeed not only
meet, but overlap and run abreast of each other
throughout nearly the whole time occupied by the
existence of man on the earth. The geologist, from
his point of view, studies all the stratified crust of
the earth, down to the mud deposited by last year's
river inundations. The historian, aided by the
archaeologist, has written and monumental evidence
carrying him back to the time of the earliest known
men, many thousands of years ago. Throughout all

ta GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

this interval the two records must have run more or
less parallel to each other, and must be in contact
along the whole line.

The geologist, ascending from the oldest and
lowest portions of the earth's crust, and dealing for
millions of years with physical forces and the in-
stinctive powers of animals alone, at length as he
approaches the surface finds himself in contact with
an entirely new agency, the free-will and conscious
action of man. It is true that at first the effects of
these are small, and the time in which they have been
-active is insignificant in comparison with that occu-
previous geological ages ; but they introduce

r tjuestrohs 'which constantly grow in importance,
down to those later times in which human agency
has so profoundly affected the surface of the earth
and its living inhabitants. Finally, the geologist is
obliged to have recourse to human observation and
testimony for his information respecting those modern
causes to which he has to appeal for the explanation
of former changes, and has to adduce effects produced
by human agency in illustration of, or in contrast
with, mutations in the pre-human periods.

The historian, on the other hand, finds, as he
passes backward into earlier ages, documentary
evidence failing him, and much of what he can obtain
becoming mythical, vague or uncertain, or difficult of
explanation by modern analogies, until at length he
is fain to have recourse to the pick-axe and spade,
and to endeavour to disinter from the earth the

GENERAL NATURE OF THE SUBJECT 13

scanty relics of primeval man, much as the geologist
searches in the bedded rocks for the fossils which
they contain. He has even learned to use for these
earliest ages the term prehistoric, and so practically
to transfer them to the domain of the archaeologist
and geologist.

It is evident, therefore, that if we seek for the
meeting-place of geology and history, we shall find
not a mere point or line of contact, but a series of
such points, and even a complicated splicing together
of different threads of investigation, which it may be
difficult to disentangle, and which the geological
specialist alone, or the historical specialist alone, may
be unable fully to understand. The object of this
little volume will be to unravel as many as possible
of these threads of contact, and to make their value
and meaning plain to the general reader, so that he
may not, on the one hand, blindly follow mere
assertions and speculations, or, on the other, fail to
appreciate ascertained and weighty facts relating to
this great and important matter of human origins.

This is the more necessary since, even in works
of some pretension, there are tendencies on the one
hand to overlook geological evidence in favour of
written records, or even of conjectural hypotheses,
and on the other to reject all early historical testi-
mony or tradition as valueless. We shall find that
neither of these extremes is conducive to accurate
conclusions. Researches of a geologico-historical
character necessarily also bring us in view of the

14 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

early history of our sacred books. This may be to
some extent an evil, as inviting the excitement of
religious controversy ; but on the other hand the fact
that the early history incorporated in the Bible goes
back to the introduction of man, and connects this
with the completion of the physical and organic
preparations for his advent, has many and important
uses. It would seem indeed that it is a great advan-
tage to our Christian civilisation that our sacred books
begin with a history of creation, giving an idea of
order and progress in the creative work. Whether
we regard the days of creation as literal days or days
of vision of a seer, or whether we hold them to be
days of God and His working, suitable to the Eternal
One and His mighty plan, and bearing the same
relation to Him that ordinary working days bear, to
us, we cannot escape the idea of an orderly work in
time. This, while it delivers the Bible reader from
the extravagant myths current among heathen
peoples, ancient and modern, predisposes him to
expect that something may be learned from nature
as to its beginning and progress. In like manner
the short statements in Genesis respecting the early
history of man have awakened curiosity as to human
origins, and have led us to search for further details
derivable from ancient monuments. The ordinary
Christian who believes his Bible is thus so far on his
way toward a rational geology and archaeology, and
cannot say with truth that he is absolutely ignorant
of the pre-human history of the earth. His notions,

GENERAL NATURE OF THE SUBJECT 15

it is true, may be imperfect, either by reason of the
brevity of the record to which he trusts, or of his own
imperfect knowledge of its contents, but they give to
historical and archaeological inquiry an interest and
importance which they could not otherwise possess.1

The earth has indeed, especially in our own time,
and under the impulse of Christian civilisation, made
wonderful revelations as to its early history, to which
we do well to take heed, as antidotes to some of the
speculations which are palmed upon a credulous world
as established truths. We have now very complete
data for tracing the earth from its original formless
or chaotic state through a number of formative
and preparatory stages up to its modern condition ;
but perhaps the parts of its history least clearly
known, especially to general readers, are those that
relate to the beginning and the end of the creative
work. The earlier stages are those most different
from our experience and whose monuments are most
obscure. The later stages on the other hand have
left fewer monuments, and these have been compli-
cated with modern changes under human influence.
Besides this, it is always difficult to piece together the
deductions from merely monumental evidence and

1 It is an interesting fact that the pecuniary means, the skill and
labour expended in research in the more ancient historic regions, have
to so large an extent been those of Christians interested in the Bible
history. Yet some litterateurs ; who have contributed nothing to these
results, attempt to distort and falsify them in the interest of an un-
historical and unscientific criticism, and even to taunt the Bible as
adverse to archaeological inquiry.

16 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

the statements of written or traditional history. There
would seem, however, to be now in our possession
sufficient facts to link the human period to those
which preceded it, and thereby to sweep away a large
amount of misconception and misrepresentation in
one department at least of the relations of natural
science with history.

I have called the subject with which we are to
deal the meeting-place of two sciences. In reality,
however, it might be embraced under the name
anthropology, the science of man, which covers both
his old prehistoric ages as revealed by geology and
archaeology, and the more modern world which is
still present, or of which we have written records.
The main point to be observed is that it is necessary
to place distinctly before our minds the fact that
we are studying a period in which, on the one hand,
we have to observe the precautions necessary in
geological investigation, and on the other to examine
the evidence of history and tradition. A failure either
on the one side or the other may lead to the gravest
errors.

In studying the subjects thus indicated it will be
necessary first to notice shortly the history of the
earth before the human period, and its condition
at the time of man's introduction. We may then
inquire as to the earliest known remains of man
preserved in the crust of the earth, and trace his
progress through the earlier part of the anthropic or
human period, in so far as it is revealed to us by the

GENERAL NATURE OF THE SUBJECT 17

relics of man and his works preserved in the earth.
We shall then be in a position to inquire as to the
form in which the same chain of events is presented
to us by history and tradition, and to discover the
leading points in which the two records agree or
appear to differ.

It may be necessary here to define a few terms.
The two latest of the great geological periods may be
termed respectively the pleistocene and the modern,
or anthropic, the latter being the human period or
age of man. The pleistocene includes what has been
called the glacial age, a period of exceptional cold
and of much subsidence and elevation of the land, in
the northern hemisphere at least. The modern, or
anthropic, is for our present purpose divisible into
two sections — the early modern, or palanthropic,
sometimes called quaternary, or post-glacial, and
which may coincide with the antediluvian period of
human history ; and the neanthropic, extending on-
ward to the present time.1

1 The terms ' Palaeolithic ' and ' Neolithic ' have been used for the
men of the Palanthropic and Neanthropic ages ; but these are objec-
tionable, as implying that these ages can be best distinguished by the
use of certain stone implements, which is not the fact. I have pre-
ferred, therefore, to call the earlier races of men palaocosmic, and the
later neocosmic^ where it may be necessary to refer to them as races ;
while the periods to which they belong are respectively the Palanthropic
and Neanthropic* By the use of these terms all ambiguity will be
avoided.

ttHWT"*'. ,f£te^^""*

(iUf^it***, 0r fr4/Litrt~>**+<~*-J I ' -

V / X I >V/ > .- *V7/> x»V">«C

1 3 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

CHAPTER II
THE WORLD BEFORE MAN

MAN is of recent introduction on the earth. For
millions of years the slow process of world-making
had been going on, with reference to physical struc-
ture and to the lower grades of living creatures.
Only within a few thousand years does our globe
seem to have been fitted for its highest tenant. The
evidence of this is to be found in any text-book of
geology. I propose here merely to present the his-
tory of the earth in a series of word-pictures, introduc-
tory to our special subject.

Our first picture may be that of a nebula, vast
and vaporous, containing the mixed and unconsoli-
dated materials of the sun and planets — a void and
desolate mass, slowly aggregating itself under the
influence of gravitation.

Our next may be that of an incandescent globe,
molten and glowing, and surrounded by a vast vapor-
ous envelope, but tending by degrees to a condition
in which it shall have a solid crust, on which the
greater part of the watery vapour suspended in its
atmosphere is to be condensed into a heated ocean.

THE WORLD BEFORE MAN 19

Our third picture may represent the world of
what geologists call the archaean, or eozoic period,
when the crust had been furrowed up into ridges of
land,, and corresponding but wider depressions occu-
pied by the sea. Into the latter the rains falling on
the land are carrying sediment derived from the
wasting rocks, though the waters are still warm and
the thinner parts of the crust are still welling out
rocky material, either molten or dissolved in heated
water. In this period there were probably low forms
of animal life in the waters and plants on the land,
though we know little of their exact nature.

A fourth picture may represent that great and
long-continued palaeozoic period in which the waters
swarmed with many forms of life, when fishes were
introduced into the sea, and when the land became
covered with dense forests of plants allied to the
modern club-mosses, ferns, mares'-tails and pines ;
while insects, scorpions and snails, and some of the
humbler forms of reptiles, found place on the land.

Returning after an interval, we should see a fifth
picture, that of the mesozoic world. This was the
age of reptiles, when animals of that class attained
their highest and most gigantic forms, and occupied
in the sea, on the land, and in the air the places now
held by the mammals and the birds ; while the con-
tinents were covered with a flora distinct alike from
that of the previous and succeeding periods, replaced,
however, as time went on by forests very like those
of the modern world. In this age the earliest mam-

B 2

20 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

mals or ordinary quadrupeds were introduced, few at
first, small and of low rank in their class. Birds also
made their appearance, and toward the close of the
period fishes of modern types swarmed for the first
time in the sea.

Lastly, we might see in the cenozoic, or tertiary
age, the newest of all, quadrupeds dominant on the
land and modern types of animal life in the sea. In
this period our continents finally assumed their present
forms. Toward its close and after many vicissitudes
of geography and climate, and several successive
dynasties of mammalian life, man and the land
animals now his contemporaries occupied the world,
and thus the cenozoic passes into the anthropic, or
modern period, called by some, but without good
reason, 'quaternary/ since it is in all respects a
proper continuation of the tertiary, or cenozoic.1

This last age of the world is so intimately con-
nected with man that it will be necessary to consider
it more in detail. More particularly we may en-
deavour to answer, if we can, the questions of order
and/time involved in man's late appearance.
^V No geologist would expect to find any remains oi
man or his works in the periods represented by our
five earlier pictures, because in these periods the
physical conditions necessary to man and the animals
nearest to him in structure do not appear to have

1 It will be seen that our six pictures are in some degree parallel
with the * days ' of creation. This is not an intentional reconciliation.
It merely expresses the fact of the case, whatever its significance.

THE WORLD BEFORE MAN 21

existed, and their places in nature were occupied by
lower types.

Nor for similar reasons would we expect to meet
with man in the earlier part of that last, or ceno-
zoic, period in which we still live ; and in point
of fact it is only in superficial deposits of the later
part of this last great period of the earth's history
that we actually meet with evidence of the existence
of the human species.

If there is based on this fact a question as to the
actual date of man's first appearance, the physical
considerations indicate about twenty millions of years
for the whole duration of the earth. Setting apart, say,
a fourth of this time for the early pre-geologic con-
dition of the world, the remainder may be roughly
estimated as five millions for the archaean, or eozoic,
six for the palaeozoic, three for the mesozoic, and one
for the cenozoic.1 Of the last, the later part, in
which there is a possibility of the existence of man,
will be limited to less than a quarter of a million ;
and within this the certainly known remains of man,
whether attributed as by some to the latest inter-
glacial period, or to the post-glacial — a mere question
of terms, and not of facts — cannot be older, according
to the best geological estimates, than from seven
thousand to ten thousand years. This, according to
our present knowledge, is the maximum date of the

1 The absolute length of these periods is, of course, a matter of
estimation ; but the relative lengths of the different ages may be re-
garded as a fair approximation, based on facts.

22 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

oldest traces of man, and probably these are nearer
in age to the smaller than to the larger number.

If the reader will take the trouble to draw on
paper a scale of twenty inches, each of these will
represent a million of years of the earth's history, and
the known duration of the human period may be
indicated by a thickish line at one end of the scale.
We may thus represent to the eye the recency of
man's appearance, so far as at present known to
science.

It may be said that all this is mere assertion. It
fairly represents, however, the conclusions reached on
the latest geological evidence, though this evidence
would demand for its full detail a larger space than
the whole of this little volume. References are given
below to works in which this evidence will be found.1

It may also be objected that if, as held by some
evolutionists, man was slowly developed from lower
animals, and if his earliest known remains are still
human in their characters, he must have had a vastly
longer history covering the periods of his gradual
change from, say, ape-like forms. This is admitted ;
but then we have as yet no good evidence that man
was so developed, and no remains of intermediate
forms are yet known to science. Even should some
animal, either recent or fossil, be discovered inter-
mediate in structure between man and the highest
apes, we should still require proof that it was the

1 Lyell's Students* Manual ; Dana's Manual ; Prestwich's Geology j
The Story of the Earth, by the author.

THE WORLD BEFORE MAN 23

ancestor of man, by the occurrence of connecting
forms, or otherwise. As the facts now stand, the
earliest known remains of man are still human, and
tell us nothing as to previous stages of development.
We must now glance a little more particularly at
what may be termed the more immediate antece-
dents of man. The latest great period of the earth's
geological history (the cenozoic) was ingeniously
subdivided by Lyell, on the ground of the percentages
of extinct and surviving species of marine shells con-
tained in its several beds. According to this me'thod,
which, with some modifications in detail, is still
accepted, the eocene age, or that of the dawn of the
recent, includes those formations in which the per-
centage of modern or still living species of marine
animals does not exceed three and a half, all the other
species found being extinct. The miocene (less re-
cent) includes beds in which the percentage of living
species does not exceed thirty-five. The pliocene
(more recent) includes beds in which the living forms
of marine life exceed thirty-five per cent, but there
is still a considerable proportion of extinct species.
Newer than this we have the pleistocene (most recent),
in which there are scarcely as many extinct species
as there are of recent in the eocene. Lastly, the
modern, of course, includes only the living species of
the modern seas. Other geologists, notably Dawkins
and Gandry, have arrived at similar results from a
consideration of the vertebrate animals of the land.
In the eocene we find numerous remains of mammals,

24 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

or ordinary land quadrupeds, but all are extinct, and
nearly all belong to extinct genera. In the miocene
there are many living genera, but no species that
survive to the present time. The pliocene begins to
show a few living species, and these are dominant in
the succeeding pleistocene.

These several stages of the cenozoic were also
characterised by great vicissitudes of geography and
climate. In the early and middle portions of the
eocene, much of the land of the northern hemisphere
was under the sea or in the state of swamps and
marshes, and there seems to have been a very mild
and equable climate, insomuch that plants now
limited to warm temperate regions could flourish in
Greenland. It is further to be observed that regions
such as Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt, which are
known to us historically as among the earliest abodes
of man, were at this time under the ocean, as were
also rocks that now appear at great elevations in the
highest mountains of Europe and Asia. For example,
the limertones through which the Nile has cut its
valley are marine beds of eocene age, and beds of
the same period holding marine remains occur at an
elevation of 16,000 feet in the Himalayan region.

In the miocene the amount of land was somewhat
greater, though large areas of the continents were
still under the sea, and the climate was still mild, but
for reasons to be stated in the sequel it is not likely
that man inhabited the warm continents of this age.
The pliocene inaugurates what has been termed a

THE WORLD BEFORE MAN 25

continental period, when the land of the northern
hemisphere was higher and more extensive than at
present. It was also a time of great physical change,
when much erosion of valleys and sculpturing of the
surface of the land occurred, and when extensive earth
movements and ejections of igneous rock increased
the irregularity of the surface and gave greater variety
and beauty to the land. The pliocene was altogether
a most important period for giving the finishing
touches of physical geography, and in it several
modern species of land animals were introduced ; but
we have as yet, as we shall find in the sequel, no
certain evidence that man was a witness of the move-
ments and sculpturing of the earth's crust, so im-
portant in the preparation of his future home, though
statements to this effect have been made on grounds
which we shall have to consider.

In the course of the pliocene the previously high
temperature of the northern hemisphere was sensibly
lowered, and at its close the pleistocene period intro-
duced a cold and wintry climate, along with gradual
and unequal subsidence of the land, the whole pro-
ducing that most dismal of the geological ages, known
as the * glacial period.' At this time much of the
lower land of the continents was submerged and the
mountains became covered with snow and ice, leaving
space for vegetable and animal life only toward the
south and in a few favoured spots in the higher
latitudes. There is much difference of opinion
among geologists as to the extent, duration and

26 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

vicissitudes of this reign of ice, but there can be no
doubt that it destroyed much of the animal and
vegetable life of the pliocene, or obliged it to migrate
to the southward. In this period great deposits of
mud, sand and gravel were laid down, which prepared
the world for a new departure in the succeeding age.
This we may name the post-glacial, or early modern
period, and in it we have the most certain evidence
of the existence of man, though the geographical
arrangement of our continents and their animal in-
habitants were in many respects different from what
they now are. If geologists are right in the conclu-
sion already stated, that the close of the glacial
period is as recent as 7,000 years ago, this will give
us a narrow limit in time for the age of man, at
least under his present conditions.

While, however, there is an absolute consensus
of opinion among geologists as to the existence of
man at or about the close of the glacial age, in
the northern temperate regions at least, there are
some facts which have been supposed to indicate a
pre-glacial human period, or the advent of man even
as early as the middle of the cenozoic time. These
merit a short consideration.

CHAPTER III
THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN

IN the eocene, or earliest cenozoic, it is not pre-
tended by anyone that man existed, except inferen-
tial ly, on the ground that if the remains we know in
the earliest caves and gravels belong to men who
were developed from apes on the method of natural
selection, their ancestors must have existed, at least
in a semi-human form, in the eocene. But no such
precursors of man are yet known to us. It would
have been pleasant to believe that man arrived in
time to see the beautiful forests and to enjoy the mild
climate of the golden age of the miocene, and this
would have agreed with some human traditions ; but
the probabilities are against it, as we know no one
species of higher animal of the many found in the
miocene that has survived to our time. The privilege
of enjoying the forests of the miocene age seems to
have been reserved for some large and specialised
monkeys, which even Darwinians can scarcely claim
as probable ancestors of man.1 It would appear also
that owing to increasing refrigeration of climate these

1 Dryopithecus and Mesopithccus.

28 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

apes were either obliged to leave Europe for warmer
latitudes or became extinct in the succeeding pliocene.

There are, however, in France two localities, one in
the upper and the other in the middle miocene, which
have afforded what are supposed to be worked flints.1
The geological age of the deposits seems in both cases
beyond question, but doubts have been cast, and this
seemingly with some reason, on the artificial character
of the flint flakes, while in the case of some examples
which appear to be scrapers and borers, like those in
use long afterward by semi-civilised peoples for work-
ing in bone and skin, there are grave doubts whether
they actually came from the miocene beds. Lastly,
it has even been suggested that these flints may be
the handiwork of miocene apes, a suggestion not so
unreasonable as at first sight it appears, when taken
in connection with the working instincts of beavers
and other animals. Monkeys, however, seem to have
less of this gift as artificers than most other creatures.
On the whole, we must regard the existence of miocene
man as not proven, though, if it should prove to be a
fact, it may be useful to some of the scoffers of these
days to know that it would not be so irreconcilable
with the Biblical account of creation as they seem to
suppose. It might, however, prove a serious stum-
bling-block to orthodox Darwinians, and might raise
some difficulties respecting antediluvian genealogies.

In the pliocene of Europe there are alleged to be
instances of the occurrence of human bones. One of

1 Puy, Courny and Thenay.

THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN 29

these is that of the skull now in the museum of
Florence, supposed to have been found in the pliocene
of the Val d'Arno. It is, however, a skull of modern
type, and may have been brought down from the
surface by a landslip. But this explanation does not
seem to apply to the human remains found in lower
pliocene beds at Castelnedolo, near Brescia. They
include a nearly entire human skeleton, and are said
by good observers to have been imbedded in undis-
turbed pliocene beds. M. Quatrefages, who has
described them, and whose testimony should be con-
sidered as that of an expert, was satisfied that the
remains had not been interred, but were part of the
original deposit. Unfortunately the skull of the only
perfect skeleton is said to have been of fair propor-
tions and superior to those of the ruder types of post-
glacial men. This has cast a shade of suspicion on
the discovery, especially on the part of evolutionists,
who think it is not in accordance with theory that
man should retrograde between the pliocene and the
early modern period, instead of advancing. Still we
may ask, why not ? If men existed in the fine
climates of the miocene and early pliocene, why
should they not have been a noble race, suited to their
environment ; and when the cold of the glacial period
intervened, with its scarcity and hardships, might they
not have deteriorated, to be subsequently improved
when better conditions supervened? This would cer-
tainly not be contradictory to experience in the case
of varieties of other animals, however at variance

30 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

with a hypothetical idea of necessarily progressive
improvement. Let us hope that the existence of
European pliocene man will be established, and that
he will be found to have been not of low and bestial
type, but, as the discoveries above referred to if
genuine would indicate, a worthy progenitor of modern
races of men.

It still remains to inquire whether man may have
made his appearance at the close of the pliocene or
in the early stages of the pleistocene, before the full
development of the glacial conditions of that period.
Perhaps the most important indications of this kind
are those adduced by Dr. Mourlon, of the Geological
Survey of Belgium,1 from which it would appear that
worked flints and broken bones of animals occur in
deposits, the relations of which would indicate that
they belong either to the base of the pleistocene or
close of the pliocene. They are imbedded in sands
derived from eocene and pliocene beds, and supposed
to have been remanie by wind action. With the mo-
desty of a true man of science, Mourlon presents his
facts, and does not insist too strongly on the important
conclusion to which they seem to tend, but he has
certainly established the strongest case yet on record
for the existence of tertiary man. With this should,
however, be placed the facts adduced in a similar sense
by Prestwich in his paper on the worked flints of
Ightham.2

1 Bulletin de F Academic Royale de Belgique, 1889.

* Journal of the Geological Society ', London, May 1889.

THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN 31

Should this be established, the curious result will
follow that man must have been the witness of two
great continental subsidences, or deluges, that of the
early pleistocene and the early modern, the former
of which, and perhaps the latter also, must have been
accompanied with a great access of cold in the
northern hemisphere. It seems, however, more likely
that the facts will be found to admit of a different
explanation.

Every reader of the scientific journals of the
United States must be aware of the numerous finds
of ' palaeolithic ' implements in * glacial ' gravels,
indicating a far greater antiquity of man in Ame-
rica than on other grounds we have a right to
imagine. I have endeavoured to show, in a work
published several years ago,1 how much doubt on
geological grounds attaches to the reports of these
discoveries, and how uncertain is the reference of the
supposed implements to undisturbed glacial deposits,
and how much such of the * palaeoliths ' as appear to
be the work of man resemble the rougher tools and
rejectamenta of the modern Indians. But since the
publication of that work, so great a number of ' finds '
have been recorded, that despite their individual im-
probability, one was almost overwhelmed by the coin-
cidence of so many witnesses. Now the bubble seems
to have been effectually pricked by Mr. W. H. Holmesj
of the American Geological Survey, who has published

1 Fossil Man, London, 1880.

32 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

his observations in the American Journal of Anthropo-
logy and elsewhere.1

One of the most widely-known examples was that
of Trenton, on the Delaware, where there was a bed
of gravel alleged to be pleistocene, and which seemed
to contain enough of 'palaeolithic' implements to

SECTION AT TRENTON, ON THE DELAWARE, SHOWING THE RELA-
TION OF THE STONE IMPLEMENTS TO THE GLACIAL (?) GRAVELS

(after Holmes)

stock all the museums in the world. The evidence
of age was not satisfactory from a geological point
of view, and Holmes, with the aid of a deep exca-
vation made for a city sewer, has shown that the
supposed implements do not belong to the undis-
turbed gravel, but merely to a talus of loose debris

1 Science , November 1892 ; Journal of Geology, 1893.

34. GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

lying against it, and to which modern Indians
resorted to find material for implements, and left
behind them rejected or unfinished pieces. This
alleged discovery has therefore no geological or
anthropological significance. The same acute and
industrious observer has inquired into a number of
similar cases in different parts of the United States,
and finds all liable to objections on similar grounds,
except in a few cases in which the alleged implements
are probably not artificial. These observations not
only dispose, for the present at least, of palaeolithic
man in America, but they suggest the propriety of a
revision of the whole doctrine of ' palaeolithic ' and
* neolithic ' implements as held in Great Britain and
elsewhere. Such distinctions are often founded on
forms which may quite as well represent merely local
or temporary exigencies, or the debris of old work-
shops, as any difference of time or culture.

For the present, therefore, we may afford to pass
over with this slight notice the alleged occurrence of
miocene and pliocene man, and this the rather since,
if such men ever existed in the northern hemisphere,
the cold and submergence of the pleistocene must
have cut them off from their more modern successors
in such a way that man must practically have made
a new beginning at the close of the glacial age.

I do not refer here to the finds of skulls and
implements in the auriferous gravels of Western
America. Some of these, if genuine, might go back
to the pliocene age, but in so far a.s the evidence now

THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN 35

available indicates, they all belong to the modern
races of Indians, and, in one way or another, by
fraud or error, have had assigned to them a fabulous
antiquity.

There still seems reason to believe that remains
of man and his works exist in beds which are over-
laid by boulders and gravel, implying a cold climate.
These may indicate the last portion of the glacial
period proper, in which case the beds with human
remains may be called inter-glacial, or they may
indicate a partial relapse to the cold conditions occur-
ring after the glacial age had passed away, and in
the early part of the modern period. My own view
is, that it is most natural to draw the boundary line of
the pleistocene and anthropic or modern at the point
where the earliest certain evidences of man appear,
and that the anthropic age will be found to include
not only an early period of mild climate succeeding
the glacial age, but a little later a return of cold, not
comparable with that of the extreme glacial period,
but sufficient seriously to affect human interests, and
which almost immediately preceded those physical
changes which carried away palaeocosmic man, or the
man of the earliest period, and many of his com-
panion animals, and introduced the neanthropic or
later human age. We shall find facts bearing on this
in the sequel.

In the meantime, we may consider it as established
beyond cavil that man was already in Europe im-
mediately after the close of the glacial pc:;V\1 r>-d

36 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

was contemporary with the species of animals, many
of them large and formidable, which at that time
occupied the land. He must have entered on the
possession of a world more ample and richer in re-
sources than that which remains to us. The early
post-glacial age was, like the preceding pliocene, a
time of continental elevation, in which the dry land
spread itself widely over the now submerged margins
of the sea basins. In Europe, the British Islands were
connected with the mainland, and Ireland was united
to England. The Rhine flowed northward to the
Orkneys, through a wide plain probably wooded and
swarming with great quadrupeds, now extinct or
strange to Europe. The Thames and the Humber
were tributaries of the Rhine. The land of France
and Spain extended out to the hundred-fathom line.
The shallower parts of the Mediterranean were dry
land, and that sea was divided into two parts by land
connecting Italy with Africa. Possibly portions of
the shallower areas of the Atlantic were so elevated
as to connect Europe and America more closely than
at present.

Connected with this elevation of the continents
out of the sea was a great change of climate, whereby
the cold of the pleistocene age passed away and a
milder climate overspread the northern hemisphere,
while the newly-raised land and that vacated by snow
and ice became clothed with vegetation, and were
occupied by a rich quadrupedal fauna, including even
in the northern parts of Europe, Asia, and America,

THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN 37

species of elephant, rhinoceros, and other genera
now confined to the warmer climates. This new and
noble world was the rich heritage of primeval man.

Pictet has estimated the number of species of
mammals inhabiting Europe in the palanthropic
period at ninety-eight,1 of which only fifty-seven now
live there, the remainder being either wholly or locally
extinct — that is, they are either not now existing in
any part of the world, or are found only beyond the
limits of Central, Western, and Southern Europe.
The extinct species also include the largest and
noblest of all. It has been remarked that the
assemblage of palanthropic species in Europe and
Western Asia is so great and varied that with our
present experience we can scarcely imagine them
to have existed contemporaneously in the same
region. For example, the association of species of
elephant and rhinoceros, the musk-sheep, the reindeer,
the Cape hyena, and the hippopotamus seems to be
incongruous.

Various theories have been proposed to remove
the difficulty. Modern analogies will allow us to
believe in such astounding facts if we take into
account the probability of a warm climate, especially
in summer, along with a wooded state of the country
providing much shelter, and wide continental plains
affording facilities for seasonal migrations. There

1 Zittel, in a recent paper (1893), gives no species of mammals in
the pleistocene and early modern. Of these about twenty of the
largest and most important are extinct.

38 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

were no doubt also climatal changes in the course of
the age, which may have tended to the remarkable
mixture of animal types in its deposits. In connec-
tion with this there is now every reason to believe that
while, in its earlier part, the palanthropic age was
distinguished by a warm climate, in its later portion
a colder and more inclement atmosphere crept over
the northern hemisphere. As an illustration of this,
it is known that in the earlier part of the period a
noble species of elephant named Elephas antiquus,
and a rhinoceros (R. Merkii\ abounded in Europe ;
but as the age advanced these species disappeared,
and were replaced by the mammoth (E. primigenius)
and the woolly rhinoceros (R. tichorhinus\ animals
clothed like the musk-ox in dense wool and hair, and
evidently intended for a rigorous climate. With and
succeeding these last species, the reindeer becomes
characteristic and abundant. It is, as we shall see, a
point of much importance in what may be called the
prehistoric history of man, that he was introduced in
a period of genial temperature as well as of wide
continental extension, and survived to find his physi-
cal environment gradually becoming less favourable,
and the age ending in that great cataclysm which
swept so many species of animals and tribes of
men out of existence, and reduced the dry land of
our continents to its present comparatively limited
area.

I should, perhaps, have noticed here the worked
flints found so abundantly in some parts of the south

THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN 39

of England, which have long attracted the attention of
collectors, and have in some cases been referred to
glacial or pre-glacial times. I believe, however, they
are all really post-glacial, though in some cases be-
longing to the earliest portion of that period.1

We may close the present chapter by presenting
to the eye in a tabular form the series of events
included in the pleistocene and modern periods of
the great cenozoic time.

LATER CENOZOIC, OR TERTIARY PERIOD

(In Ascending Order, or from the Older to the Newer)
NEWER PLIOCENE.— A continental period of long duration,
elevated land, much erosion, much volcanic action.

PLEISTOCENE. — Irregular elevation and depression of the
land, ending in wide submergence with cold climate. Glaciers
on all mountains near to coasts and ice-drift over submerged
plains. Glacial period, with an inter-glacial mild period in the
middle and great submergence of the continents toward the
close.

ANTHROPIC. — Palanthropic, or post-glacial, in which the
land emerges and attains a very wide extension, and is inhabited
by a varied mammalian fauna. Man appears in Europe, Asia,
and North Africa. Terminated by a recurrence of cold and
great subsidence, deluging all the lower lands. Neanthropic. —
Area of continents smaller than in the previous period. Sur-
viving races of men and species of animals repeople the
world. Modern races of men and modern animals.

1 Prestwich on « Ightham Beds,' Journ. GeoL Soc., 1893 ; Daw-
kins, Journ. Anthrop. Soc.t 1894.

40 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

CHAPTER IV

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE1

WE have now to inquire more particularly what we
can learn as to the earliest men known to us, those
who appeared in Western Asia and Europe at the
close of the glacial period, when the cold had passed
away and a genial climate had succeeded, and when
the continents of the northern hemisphere had attained
to their largest dimensions, were clothed with a rich
vegetation and tenanted by an abundant mammalian
fauna, including many large and important creatures
now extinct.

We may first notice here a necessary limitation to
our knowledge. The dry land of this age was of
greater dimensions than at present. A large portion
of what then was land is consequently now under the
sea or deeply buried in alluvial deposits. Hence if
any men of this age lived near the borders of the
ocean, their remains must now be inaccessible, and
the relics which we find must be those of inland tribes

1 Called by some ' Palaeolithic,* from the use of implements like
hat figured on p. 41.

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE 41

or of those who were driven inland by the encroach-
ments of the waters. Our means of information are
thus limited, and we must be prepared to admit that
there may have been in this age great and populous
communities of which we can have no record, at least

FLINT HACHE OF .THE ANCIENT OR CHELLEAN TYPE, AURILLAC

(after Carthaillac)

of a geological character. Hence if we should find
remains of only rude races of men, we should not be
justified in assuming that all the peoples of the
palanthropic age were of this character, more espe-
cially if we can find any indications that the men

42 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

whose remains are accessible to us, though rude
themselves, may have belonged to more advanced
races.

The bones, implements and weapons, and debris
of the feasts of these primitive peoples are to be found
principally in caves of residence or of sepulture,1 and
in the alluvia deposited by rivers, and in a few cases
in rock fissures or marine gravels, into which remains
were drifted, or in which they were deposited by
water. Here, again, we have another limitation, for it
is possible that large populations may have lived on
plains or in forests in perishable structures, and, like
some modern savages, may have disposed of their
dead in such a way that their bones could not have
been preserved. In such cases we can hope to obtain,
and then very rarely, only stone implements and other
imperishable relics.

Notwithstanding these limitations, however, it is
wonderful that so much has been recovered from the
ground by the diligence of collectors, and that the
material thus obtained has proved so fertile in in-
formation respecting our long-perished ancestors.

1 Caverns, in relation to this subject, may be divided into those of
residence, in which early men have lived and have left therein the
debris of their food, the ashes and cinders of their fires, and imple-
ments, &c. ; those of sepulture, in which the bodies of the dead have
been deposited ; and those of inundation, into which the bodies of
anim'als or men have been drifted by floods. The same cave may,
however, exhibit these different conditions in the deposits on its succes-
sive floors. Thus men may have inhabited a cave for a time ; it may
next have been invaded by river floods depositing mud, and it may
subsequently have been used for burial.

THE PALANTHROP1C AGE 43

Supposing, then, that w£ search for remains of
palaeocosmic men in river alluvia, or in caves of
residence or burial, or in similar repositories, the
question next arises, by what means can we distinguish
their bones from those of later times? The following
criteria are available :

(1) The remains were in their present condition
at least as long ago as the date of the earliest history
or tradition. This evidence is of course of greatest
value in those regions in which history extends
farthest back. Thus the remains of early men in the
Lebanon caves, which we know date much farther
back than the arrival of the first Phoenicians and
Canaanites in Syria, are in a different position, in so
far as history is concerned, from those occurring in
countries whose written history goes back only a few
centuries.

(2) The deposits containing these remains may
underlie those holding relics of historic times, or may
indicate different physical conditions of the districts
in which they occur from those known within historic
periods. This is the case with some river beds, as
those of Crenelle, near Paris, and with the successive
deposits in old caves of residence.

(3) They may be accompanied by remains of
animals now extinct in the regions in question, and
whose disappearance and replacement by the modern
fauna implies great lapse of time and physical changes;
as, for instance, when we find that men have left re-
mains of their feasts holding bones of the extinct

44 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

woolly rhinoceros and his contemporaries, or in now
temperate climates, those of the reindeer.

(4) The remains themselves may indicate a race
or races of men and a condition of the arts of life"
different from any known in the region in historic
times, Thus we may have skulls and skeletons
indicating men racially distinct from any now extant,
and implements and weapons different from those in
use in the times of history or tradition.

We have now to consider what evidence of this
kind vindicates the assertion that man existed on our
continents in the second continental or post-glacial
age, or, -as others will have it, in the closing period 01
the glacial age, and was contemporary with the
mammoth and other great beasts now extinct. This
evidence, which has been accumulating with great
rapidity and relates to many parts of the northern
hemisphere, is too voluminous to be reproduced here.1
But a few examples of it may be given, more especially
from parts of the old world whose history extends
farthest back and where explorations have been most
extensive.

My first instance shall be one originally described
by Canon Tristram, and which I had an opportunity
to examine in 1884 — the caverns or rock shelters in
the face of the limestone cliff of the pass of Nahr-el-

1 Reference may be made to Christy and Lartet, Reliquiae Aqui-
tanica ; Quatrefages, Homme Fossile ; Dupont, UHomme pendant
les Ages de Pierre ; Catthaillac, La France Prehistorique ; Dawkins,
Cave Hunting and Early Man in Britain ; Fossil Men and Modern
Science in Bible Lands, by the author.

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE 45

Kelb, north of Beyrout At this place, in old caverns
partly cut away in the forming of the Roman road
round the cliff, there is a hard stalagmite, or modern
limestone, produced by the calcareous drippings from
the rock. This is filled with broken bones inter-
mixed with flint flakes suitable for use as knives or
spears or darts, and occasional fragments of charcoal.
The bones are those of large animals, and have been
broken for the extraction of the marrow ; and the
whole is evidently the remnants of the cuisine of
some primitive tribe of hunters, now cemented into
a somewhat hard stone by stalagmitic matter. The
bones are not those of the present animals of Syria,
but principally of an extinct species of rhinoceros
(R. tichorhinus), a species of bison, and other large
mammals which inhabited the region in the pleistocene
and post-glacial periods. It is farther known that
these animals had been extinct long before the early
Phoenicians penetrated into this country, perhaps
3000 B.C., and that the deposits existed in their
present state when the early Egyptian conquerors
passed this way, at least 1 500 B.C., on their march
to encounter the Hittites. It is also known that
the earliest historic aborigines of the Lebanon, cer-
tain rude tribes which seem to have existed there
before the migration of the Phoenicians, subsisted on
the modern animals of the district, and used flint
implements and weapons somewhat differing from
those of the earlier cave men of the region.1 What,

1 See the illustration on p. 97.

46 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

then, were these earlier cave men ? Certainly no
people known to history, unless those whom we know
as antediluvians.1

From the Lebanon we may pass to the west of
Europe, where in France and Belgium a vast number
of interesting relics of palseocosmic man have been
discovered, and have been scientifically examined.

We may take as an illustration the cave of Goyet,
on the cliffs bounding the ravine of the Samson, a
tributary of the Meuse. This cavern is about forty-
five feet above the present ordinary level of the river,
but in post-glacial times seems to have been invaded
by inundations, as it shows on its floor five distinct
ossiferous surfaces, separated by layers of river-mud.
These successive surfaces have been carefully ex-
amined by M. Dupont, and their contents noted.

On the lowest of these, or the first in order of age,
were found numerous skeletons and detached bones
of the cave lion and the cave bear ; the former a
possible ancestor of the lion of Western Asia, the
latter closely allied to the grizzly bear of North
America, but both entirely extinct in Europe. One
of the skeletons of the lion was of unusually large
size, and so complete that when set up it forms the
principal ornament of the cave collection in the
Brussels Museum.

The next surface, the second in order of time, had

1 For more detailed description see Modern Science in Bible Lands \
also Egypt and Syria, in the Bypaths of Bible Knowledge^ by the
author.

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE

47

a greater variety of animal remains. The lion had
disappeared, and instead hyenas haunted the cave,
and had dragged in animal bones to be gnawed.
These included remains of the cave bear, wolf,
rhinoceros, mammoth, wild horse, wapiti, Irish stag,
chamois, reindeer, wild ox, besides several smaller

CAVE OF GOYET, BELGIUM (section after Dupont)
i to 5, layers of clay deposited in the mammoth ages

anima-ls. The above animals are now all unknown
in the fauna of modern Europe, except the reindeer,
the chamois, and the wolf. But the most remarkable
discovery on this surface was that of a few human
bones, gnawed like the others by the hyenas. Man
was thus already in the country, and contemporary

48 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

with all these animals. How the hyena obtained his
bones, whether from some neglected corpse or from
some badly-constructed grave, will never be known ;
but the discovery introduces us to a tribe or family
of men coming as immigrants into a region already
stocked with many great quadrupeds. They probably
did not yet dwell in caves, which, at a later and
perhaps more inclement period, formed their homes.
Dupont concludes from the condition of the bones
that on both the older surfaces the cave bear was
the later tenant, and had replaced the lion on the first
and the hyena on the second.

The remaining surfaces introduce us to man as a
cave-dweller. On the oldest of them are found not
only abundance of debris of food, but worked flints
and bones, objects of ornament, and evidences of the
use of fire. The two higher layers show works of
art in more varied and improved forms, as if a
certain progress in the arts of life had taken place
during the occupancy of the cave. Among the
objects in the upper layers were red oxide of iron,
showing the use of colouring matter for the skin or
garments, bone needles, proving the manufacture of
clothing by sewing, bone points for darts, skilfully-
barbed bone harpoons, ornaments made of perforated
teeth of animals, and fragments of bone, and a
remarkable necklace of a hundred and twenty-four
silicified shells of the genus Turritella, looking like
spirals of agate, with a pendant made of another and
larger shell. These shells are not known to occur

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE

49

nearer to the cave than Rheims, in Champagne. It
is scarcely too much to say that this necklace
might be worn by any lady of the present day. A
certain amount of imitative art is also shown in the
carving of animal and plant forms and fancy devices

LANCE-HEAD FORMED OF A FLINT FLAKE (CAVE OF MOUSTIER.)

Similar to weapons found in the Goyet cave. The flat face

shows a bulb of percussion (after Falsan)

on pieces of reindeer antler, which may have served
for handles of weapons or implements. But objects
of much more elaborate design have been found in
caverns of this age in France. (See illustrations on
pp. 59 and 68.)

The food of these people, in so far as it was of an

50 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

animal nature, may be learned from the broken bones,
which show that here as elsewhere they carried into
their caves only the legs and skulls of the larger
animals they killed, leaving the carcases ; though it is
quite possible that, like North American hunting
Indians, they may have stripped off portions of flesh
from the back, and preserved the heart, liver, &c., which
would of course leave no remains.

Dupont gives lists of the animals in each layer.
Those in the lower of the anthropic layers consist of
twenty-three species of quadrupeds and some bones
of birds. Among the former were the mammoth, the
rhinoceros, two species of bear, the horse, the rein-
deer, two other species of deer and two bovine
animals. Even the lion, the hyena and the wolf
were eaten by these people. It is interesting to note
that the numerical preponderance was in favour of
the reindeer and the wild horse, though remains
were found indicating seven individuals of the mam-
moth, and four of the rhinoceros, as having fallen
a prey to the old hunters. In the highest bed the
number of species and the proportions of each one
are nearly the same, so that no material change in
the fauna had occurred during the occupancy of this
cave. It may also be noted that while Dupont calls
this a cave of the mammoth age, the French arch-
aeologists are in the habit of naming similar deposits
those of the reindeer age. The age of both animals
was in reality the same, except that in France the
reindeer seems to have survived the mammoth, and

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE 51

indeed we know this to be the fact from its continuing
in the forests of Germany till the Roman times.

This cave may serve as an example of the manner
in which the men of the palanthropic age make their
appearance. Let it be observed also that this is only
one instance selected from many giving similar tes-
timony, and that Dupont adduces evidence to show
that there may have been a contemporary plain-
dwelling people, of whom less is known than of the
troglodytes. Let it also be noted that there are other
caves in Belgium, to which we shall return later, which
show how the neocosmic men contemporary with the
present fauna succeeded the men of the mammoth
age.

We may now inquire as to the physical characters
of the men of this period. It may be stated in
answer to this question that two races of men are
known in the palanthropic age, both somewhat
different from any existing peoples, and known re-
spectively as the Canstadt and Cro-magnon races.
As the latter is the most important and best known,
we may take it first, though the former may locally
at least have been the older.

The valley of the little river Vezere, a tributary of
the Dordogne, in the south of France, abounding in
overhanging rock-shelters, seems to have been a
favourite abode of the men of the mammoth and
reindeer age. The rock-shelter of Cro-magnon ex-
plored by Lartet is one of these, and that of Laugerie
Basse is on the opposite side of the same stream.

D 2

52 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

The former is a shelter or hollow under an over-
hanging ledge of limestone, and excavated originally
by the action of .the weather on a softer bed. It
fronts the south-west, and, having originally been
about eight feet high and nearly twenty deep, must
have formed a comfortable shelter from rain or cold
or summer sun, and with a pleasant outlook from its
front. Being nearly fifty feet wide, it was capacious
enough to accommodate several families, and when
in use it no doubt had trees or shrubs in front, and
may have been further completed by stones, poles, or
bark placed across the opening. It seems, however,
in the first instance to have been used only at
intervals, and to have been left vacant for consider-
able portions of time. Perhaps it was visited only by
hunting or war-parties. But subsequently it was per-
manently occupied, and this for so long a time that
in some places a foot and a half of ashes and carbon-
aceous matter, with bones, implements, &c., was
accumulated. All of these, it may be remarked,
belong to the palanthropic age. By this time the
height of the cavern had been much diminished, and,
instead of clearing it out for future use, it was made
a place of burial, in which five individuals were
interred. Of these, three were men, one of great age,
the other two probably in the prime of life. The
fourth and fifth were a woman of about thirty or
forty years of age, and the remains of a foetus.

These bones, with others to be mentioned in con-
nection with them, unquestionably belong to some of

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE 53

the oldest human inhabitants known in Western
Europe. They have been most carefully examined
by several competent anatomists and archaeologists,
and the results have been published with excellent
figures in the Reltquia Aquitanictz, where will also be
found details of their characters and accompaniments,
among which last were about three hundred small
shells of different species pierced for stringing or attach-
ment to garments. These men are, therefore, of the
utmost interest for our present purpose, and I shall
try so to divest the descriptions of anatomical details
as to give a clear notion of their character. The
doubts at one time cast on the age of these skeletons
have been removed by the discovery of others at
Laugerie Basse, Mentone, &c. They are no doubt
palanthropic, though not of the earliest part of the
period. The ' Old Man of Cro-magnon ' was of
great stature, being nearly six feet high. More than
this, his bones show that he was of the strongest and
most athletic muscular development ; and the bones
of the limbs have the peculiar form which is charac-
teristic of athletic men habituated to rough walking,
climbing, and running ; for this is, I believe, the real
meaning of the enormous strength of the thigh-bone
and the flattened condition of the leg in this and
other old skeletons. It occurs to some extent,
though much less than in this old man, in American
skeletons. His skull presents all the characters of
advanced age, though the teeth had been worn down
to the sockets without being lost ; which, again, is a

54 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

character often observed in rude peoples of modern
times. The skull proper, or brain-case, is very long
—more so than in ordinary modern skulls — and this
length is accompanied with a great breadth ; so that
the brain was of greater size than in average modern
men, and the frontal region was largely and well

OUTLINE OF THE SKULL OF THE ' OLD MAN OF CRO-MAGNON '

(after Christy and Lartet)

developed. The face, however, presented very pecu-
liar characters. It was extremely broad, with project-
ing cheek-bones and heavy jaw, in this resembling
the coarse types of the American face, and the
eye-orbits were square and elongated laterally in
a manner peculiar to the skulls of this age. The
nose was large and prominent, and the jaws projected
somewhat forward. This man, therefore, had, as to

THE PALANTHROP1C AGE 55

his features, some resemblance to the harsher type of
American physiognomy, with overhanging brows,
small and transverse eyes, high cheek-bones, and
coarse mouth. He had not lived to so great an age
without some rubs, for his thigh-bone showed a de-
pression which must have resulted from a severe
wound — perhaps from the horn of some wild animal
or the spear of an enemy.

The woman presented similar characters of stature
and cranial form modified by her sex, and in form
and visage closely resembled her sisters of the
American wilderness in the pre-Columbian times.
If her hair and complexion were suitable, she would
have passed at once for an American-Indian woman,
but one of unusual size and development. Her head
bears sad testimony to the violence of her age and
people. She died from the effects of a blow from a
stone-headed pogamogan or spear, which has pene-
trated the right side of the forehead with so clean a
fracture as to indicate the extreme rapidity and force
of its blow. It is inferred from the condition of the
edges of this wound that she may have survived its
infliction for two weeks or more. If, as is most
likely, the wound was received in some sudden
attack by a hostile tribe, they must have been driven
off or have retired, leaving the wounded woman in
the hands of her friends to be tended for a time,
and then buried, either with other members of her
family or with others who had perished in the same
skirmish. Unless the wound was inflicted in sleep,

56 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

during a night attack, she must have fallen, not in
flight, but with her face to the foe, perhaps aiding the
resistance of her friends or shielding her little ones
from destruction. With the people of Cro-magnon,
as with the American Indians, the care of the
wounded was probably a sacred duty, not to be
neglected without incurring the greatest disgrace
and the vengeance of the guardian spirits of the
sufferers.

Unreasonable doubts have been cast on the burial
of the dead by palseocosmic men. The burial of men
of the Cro-magnon race at that place and at Laugerie
Basse and Mentone is established by the most un-
equivocal evidence ; and interments of men of the
Canstadt race have been found at Spy, in Belgium.
Of course, even if interment proper had not been
practised, there might have been cremation, as
among the Tasmanians, or burial on stages or in
huts, as among some American Indians. Still, that
interment was practised we know, and this carries
with it the certainty that our palaeocosmic men must
have had some simple ideas of religion.

The skulls of these people have been compared to
those of the modern Esthonians or Lithuanians ; but
on the authority of M. Quatrefages it is stated that,
while this applies to the probably later race of smaller
men found in some of the Belgian caves, it does not
apply so well to the people of Cro-magnon. Are,
then, these people the types of any ancient, or of the
most ancient, European race ? The answer is that

THE FIRST SKELETON FOUND IN THE MENTONE CAVES

(after Riviere)

58 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

they are types of the cave men of the mammoth
age in Europe. Another example is the remarkable
skeleton of Mentone, in the south of France, found
under circumstances equally suggestive of great anti-
quity. Dr. Riviere, in a memoir on this skeleton,
illustrated by two beautiful photographs, shows that
the characters of the skull and of the bones of the
limbs are similar to those of the Cro-magnon skeleton,
indicating a perfect identity of race, while the objects
found with the skeleton are similar in character.
I had an opportunity of verifying his description by
an examination of the skeleton in the Museum of the
Jardin des Plantes, in 1883 ; and more jecent dis-
coveries at Mentone have confirmed the conclusion
that this man really represents a race of giants, some
of them seven feet high, who inhabited Southern
Europe in the palanthropic age. A similar skeleton
found by Carthaillac, at Laugerie Basse, was buried
under a great thickness of accumulated debris of
cookery, as well as of large stones fallen from above.
This skeleton had its shell ornaments in place on the
forehead, arms, legs and feet, in a manner which
would induce the belief that they had been attached
to a head-dress, sleeves, leggings, and shoes or mo-
casins. (See illustration on p. 79.)

The ornaments of Cro-magnon were perforated
shells from the Atlantic and pieces of ivory. Those
at Mentone were perforated Neritince from the Medi-
terranean and canine teeth of the deer. In both
cases there was evidence that these ancient people

60 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

painted themselves with red oxide of iron, and used
bodkins of bone, and long and beautifully-formed
flint knives, perhaps for dividing their food, or perhaps
for sacrificial purposes. Skulls found at Clichy and
Crenelle in 1868 and 1869 are described by Professor
Broca and M. Fleurens as of the same general type,
and the remains found at Gibraltar and in the cave
of Paviland, in England, seem also to have belonged
to this race. The celebrated Engis skull from one of

NEANDERTHAL SKOLL-TVVO OUTLI.NES : THE OUTER

GIVING THE MORE CORRECT FORM (from Science)

the Belgian caves, which is believed to have belonged
to a contemporary of the mammoth, is also of this
type, though less massive than that of Cro-magnon ;
and lastly, even the somewhat degraded Neanderthal
skull, found in a cave near Diisseldorf, though, like
those of Clichy, Canstadt, Spy and Gibraltar, inferior
in frontal development, is referable to the same pe-
culiar long-headed style of man, in so far as can be
judged from the portion that remains, though cer-
tainly to a ruder and more degraded variety, com-

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE 61

monly known as the Canstadt man as distinguished
from the Engis or Cro-magnon.

Let it be observed, then, that these skulls are
probably the oldest known in the world, and they are
all referable to two varieties of one race of men ; and
let us ask what they tell as to the position and
character of palanthropic man. The testimony is
here fortunately well-nigh unanimous. All anatomists

SKULL OF CANSTADT TYPE FOUND AT SPY, BELGIUM,
BY FRAIPONT AND LOHEST

and archaeologists admit the high and human cha-
racter of the Engis and even the Neanderthal skulls.
Broca, who has carefully studied the Cro-magnon
skulls, has the following general conclusions : * The
great volume of the brain, the development of
the frontal region, the fine elliptical profile of
the anterior portion of the skull, and the orthogna-
thous form of the upper facial region, are incontest-
ably evidences of superiority, which are met with
usually only in the civilised races. On the other

62 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

hand, the great breadth of face, the alveolar progna-
thism, the enormous development of the ascending
ramus of the lower jaw, the extent and roughness of
the muscular insertions, especially of the masticatory
muscles, give rise to the idea of a violent and brutal
race/

He adds that this apparent antithesis, seen also
in the limbs as well as in the skull, accords with the
evidence furnished by the associated weapons and
implements of a rude hunter-life, and at the same
time of no mean degree of taste and skill in carving
and other arts. He might have added that this is
the antithesis seen in the American tribes, among
whom art and taste of various kinds, and much that
is high and spiritual even in thought, coexisted with
barbarous modes of life and intense ferocity and
cruelty. The god and the devil were combined in
these races, but there was nothing of the mere
brute.

Riviere remarks, with expressions of surprise, the
same contradictory points in the Mentone skeleton :
its grand development of brain-case and high facial
angle — even higher apparently than in most of
these ancient skulls — combined with other characters
which indicate a low type and barbarous modes of
life.

Another point which strikes us in reading the
descriptions of these skeletons is the indication
which they seem to present of an extreme longevity.
The massive proportions of the body, the great

THE PALANJHROPIC AGE 63

development of the muscular processes, the extreme
wearing of the teeth among a people who pre-
dominantly lived on flesh and not on grain, the
obliteration of the sutures of the skull, along with
indications of slow ossification of the ends of the long
bones, point in this direction, and seem to indicate a
slow maturity and great length of life in this most
primitive race.

The picture would be incomplete did we not add
that Quatrefages has described a single skull, that of
Truchere, from deposits of this age, which shows
that these gigantic men were contemporaneous with
a feebler race of smaller stature and with different
cranial characters, and inhabiting in all likelihood a
more eastern region.

It is further significant that there is evidence to
show that the larger and stronger race was that which
prevailed in Europe at the time of its greatest elevation
above the sea and greatest horizontal extent, and
when its fauna included many large quadrupeds now
extinct. This race of giants was thus in the posses-
sion of a greater continental area than that now
existing, and had to contend with gigantic brute
rivals for the possession of the world. It is also not
improbable that this early race became extinct in
Europe in consequence of the physical changes which
occurred in connection with the subsidence that
reduced the land to its present limits, and that the
feebler race which succeeded came in as the appro-
priate accompaniment of a diminished land-surface

64 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

and a less genial climate in the early historic period.
The older races are those usually classed as palaeolithic,
and are supposed to antedate the period of polished
stone ; but this may, to some extent, be a prejudice
of collectors, who have arrived at a foregone conclu-
sion as to distinctions of this kind. Judging from
the great cranial capacity of the older race and the
small number of their skeletons found, it might be fair
to suppose that they represent rude outlying tribes
belonging to nations which elsewhere had attained
to greater population and culture.

Lastly, all of these old European races were
Turanian, Mongolian, or American in their head-forms
and features, as well as in their habits, implements,
and arts. In other words, their nearest affinities were
with races of men which in the modern world are the
oldest and most widely distributed.

The reader, reflecting on what he has learned
from history, may be disposed here to ask, Must
we suppose Adam to have been one of these
Turanian men, like the ' Old Man of Cro-magnon ' ? In
answer, I would say that there is no good reason to
regard the first man as having resembled a Greek
Apollo or an Adonis. He was probably of sterner
and more muscular mould. But he was probably
more akin to the more delicate and refined race
represented by the solitary skull of Truchere, while
the gigantic palaeocosmic men of the European caves
are more likely to have been representatives of
that terrible and powerful race who filled the ante-

THE PALANTHROP1C AGE 65

diluvian world with violence, and who reappear in
postdiluvian times as the Anakim and traditional
giants, who constitute a feature in the early history of
so many countries. Perhaps nothing is more curious
in the revelations as to the most ancient cave men
than that they confirm the old belief that there were
'giants in those days.' At the same time we must
bear in mind that the more diminutive race which
survived must have existed previously in some part of
the world, and must have furnished the survivors of
the succeeding subsidence (see illustration on p. 82).

And now let us pause for a moment to picture
these so-called palaeolithic men. What could the ' Old
Man of Cro-magnon ' have told us, had we been able
to sit by his hearth and listen understandingly to his
speech ? — which, if we may judge from the form of
his palate-bones, must have resembled more that of
the Americans or Mongolians than of any modern
European people. He had, no doubt, travelled far,
for to his stalwart limbs a long journey through
forests and over plains and mountains would be a
mere pastime. He may have bestridden the wild
horse, which seems to have abounded at the time in
France, and he may have launched his canoe on the
waters of the Atlantic. His experience and memory
might extend back a century or more, and his tradi-
tional lore might go back to the times of the first
mother of our race. Did he live in that wide post-
pliocene continent which extended westward through
Ireland ? Did he know and had he visited the more

£

66 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

cultuerd naitons that lived in the great plains of the
Mediterranean Valley-, or on that nameless river which
flowed through the land now covered by the German
Ocean ? Had he visited or seen from afar the great
island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could almost see
in the sunset sky the islands of the blest ? Could he
have told us of the huge animals of the antediluvian
world, and of the feats of the men of renown who
contended with these animal giants ? We can but
conjecture all this. But, mute though they may be
as to the details of their lives, the man of Cro-magnon
and his contemporaries are eloquent of one great
truth, in which they coincide with the Americans and
with the primitive men of all the early ages. They
tell us that primitive man had the same high cerebral
organisation which he possesses now, and, we may
infer, the same high intellectual and moral nature,
fitting him for communion with God and headship
over the lower world. They indicate also, like the
mound-builders, who preceded the North American
Indian, that man's earlier state was the best — that he
had been a high and noble creature before he became
a savage. It is not conceivable that their high
development of brain and mind could have sponta-
neously engrafted itself on a mere brutal and savage
life. These gifts must be remnants of a noble
organisation degraded by moral evil. They thus
justify the tradition of a Golden and Edenic Age,
and mutely protest against the philosophy of progres-
sive development as applied to man, while they bear

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE 67

witness to the similarity in all important characters of
the oldest prehistoric men with that variety of our
species which is at the present day at once the most
widely extended and the most primitive in its manners
and usages.1

1 Perhaps no feature of this early human age is more remark-
able than its artistic productions. Recent testimony, more especially
that of the very careful explorers of the depcsits at Spy, in Belgium,
seems to show existence of the potter's art, though this until lately
was denied. These people ornamented their clothing with pearly and
coloured shells, and made beautiful necklaces. We have already
noticed that found in the cave of Goyet. At Sordes, in the Pyrenees,
in a very old interment of this period, there was a necklace of forty-
three teeth of the cave lion and cave bear, carved wi'h figures of
animals (see p. 71). The handle of a piercer, represented on p. 59,
is a marvel of skilful adaptation of an animal form to produce a handle
fitted to be firmly and conveniently grasped by the human hand. The
figure of the mammoth on p. 68 shows how a few bold lines may
produce a vigorous and truthful sketch ; and multitudes of such carvings
and drawings have been found in France as well as in Germany and
Belgium. Even the chipping of flint is an art requiring much skill to
produce the fine knives, spears, &c., so commonly found, and there is
evidence that these were fitted into strong and probably artistic handles.
All this and much more testifies to the fact that our palaeocosmic men
were no mean artists as well as artificers.

£2

CHAPTER V

SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS OF THE
PALANTHROPIC AGE

WHILE all geologists and archaeologists are agreed
in the existence of the men contemporary with the
mammoth and reindeer in Europe, and in the fact of
two or even three races of men having existed in that
period, various opinions are entertained as to the
succession of events and the chronological classifi-
cation of the remains. Mortillet, whose arrangement
has been usually adopted in France, recognises a
period of chipped stone or palaeolithic period, corre-
sponding to the palanthropic age, and a period of
polished stone, corresponding to the neanthropic age.
Within the former he believes that it is possible to
separate different ages,1 from the character of the
implements and other remains. The first two are
characterised by the presence of two elephants, the
mammoth and another species (E. antiquus\ the next
two by the mammoth associated with the cave bear

1 Respectively the Achulienne, Chellienne, Mousterienne, Solou-
triennc, and Magdalenienne.

70 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

and reindeer, the last by the nearly entire pre-
dominance of the reindeer. Dupont is content in
Belgium to recognise a mammoth age and a reindeer
age, but the latter perhaps includes some deposits
which are properly neanthropic.

Carthaillac places the whole palanthropic age as
quaternary, properly so-called, which he separates
from the tertiary on the one hand and the modern
on the other, and divides his quaternary into two
stages, the first characterised by E. antiquus and
Mortillet's Chellean men, the second by the mammoth
and reindeer — the earlier of these two periods being
warm and moist, the latter cold and dry. The table
appended to this chapter is modified from those of
Carthaillac. Dawkins, while admitting a similar two-
fold division, calls the earlier men those of the river
gravels, the latter those of the caves.

This twofold division of the palanthropic age
requires some consideration. In the first place, there
is reason to believe that the Canstadt race locally
preceded that of Cro-magnon. I say locally, for no
one supposes that they are distinct species, and as
varietal forms they may have originated from a
common intermediate ancestor, or the humbler race
may be the earlier, and the higher race an improvement
on it, or the lower race may have been a degraded
type of the higher. Probably also there was a third,
the Truchere race, and the Cro-magnon race may
have been a half-breed or metis progeny.

Again, there was an undoubted change of fauna

SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS 71

within the palanthropic age, and this dependent on
or accompanied by a change of climate. The earlier
elephant of the period (E. antiquus) and its companion
animals are believed to have been suited to a warm
climate, and to have entered Europe from the south-
east. With, or immediately after, them came man,
and this conclusion harmonises with human phy-
siology, for we know that man must have originated
in a warm climate, and must in the first place have
been a feeder on fruits and grains or other nutritious

TOOTH OF CAVE BEAR, WITH ENGRAVING OF A SEAL, FROM A

COLLAR FOUND AT SORDES, PYRENEES (after Carthaillac)

vegetable products. In this early stage he would
be nearly destitute of implements and weapons. But
in the succeeding cold period, one tribe after another
might be obliged to resort to hunting habits, to the
use of fire and of clothing, and of natural and arti-
ficial shelter. Hence the peculiarities of the cave
men, who, while they advanced in art, may have also
advanced in ferocity and warlike habits, under the
pressure of necessity and competition. Hence also
their association more and more closely with such

72 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

animals as the reindeer, the hairy mammoth, and the
woolly rhinoceros, while the previous species had
migrated to the south or perished. Thus it would
appear that the men of the mammoth age may not be
really the most primitive men, but a derivative from
them under pressure of a severe climate. This possi-
bility may be summed up as follows. If the early
part of the post-glacial or palanthropic era was
characterised by a milder climate than its later period,
this may have had much to do with the change in
implements and weapons. The earliest men probably
subsisted merely on natural fruits and other vegetable
productions. To secure these in a mild climate they
would require no implements, except perhaps to dig
for roots or to crack nuts. If they migrated into a
colder climate, or if the climate became more severe,
they might be obliged to become hunters and fisher-
men, and would invent new implements and weapons,
not because they had advanced in civilisation, but, as
Lamech has it in Genesis, * because of the ground
which the Lord had cursed,' and which would no
longer yield food to them. At the same time they
might contend with one another for the most sheltered
and productive stations, and so war might further
stimulate that very questionable advance in civilisa-
tion which consists in the improvement of weapons of
destruction. We have much to learn as to these
matters ; but we must, if we have any regard to phy-
siology and to natural probability, start from the idea
that the most primitive men were frugivorous and

SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS 73

fitted for a mild climate. In this case we should
expect that these earliest men would leave behind
them scarcely any weapons or implements except
of the simplest kind, and that their apparent pro-
gress in the arts of war and the chase might in
reality be evidence, up to a certain point at least, of
increasing barbarism. Primitive as well as modern
men present in these respects strange paradoxes.

We have to inquire in the sequel as to the cause
of- the final disappearance of the palaeocosmic men,
and as to the question whether history is cognisant of
any such human period as that which has occupied us
in this chapter, or whether, as has sometimes been
assumed, it is altogether prehistoric.

On the subject of the correlation of the French
and Belgian discoveries as to primitive man, a most
interesting and important communication was made
by Dupont to the Geological Society of Belgium in
I892.1 The veteran explorer of the Belgian caves
addresses himself in this paper to a careful comparison
of the geological relations, animal remains and human
relics in these caves, and in the gravels and ' quater-
nary ' clays associated with them. He arrives at the
conclusion, which I had already stated,2 that these
deposits are contemporaneous and show similar
stages, but that the mammoth age properly so-called,
in which the primitive people fed on the mam-

1 Bulletin de la Societt Beige de Gtologie, Janvier 1893. This paper
should be studied by all interested in the subject.

2 Fossil Men.

74 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

moth and its companion the woolly rhinoceros, ex-
tended to a later date in Belgium than in France,
so that the mammoth age of Dupont and the rein-
deer age of the French archaeologists overlap one
another. He notes in connection with this that there
is evidence of the continued existence of the mammoth
in the so-called reindeer age of France, in the dis-
covery in caves of that period of plates of ivory with
the portrait of the mammoth engraved on them. It
would therefore appear either that the mammoth
earlier became extinct or rare in France, perhaps on
account of climatal changes, or perhaps because of
destruction by man, or that the habits of the French
populations changed in such a way as to cause them
to confine themselves to smaller game. In either
case, we now find that the whole palanthropic age is
one period. On the other hand, Dupont agrees with
Mortillet that there is a hiatus, physical, palaeonto.
logical and anthropological, between the so-called
palaeolithic and neolithic periods, that is, between the
palanthropic and neanthropic ages.

Dupont holds that the plain-dwellers (Pediono-
mytes, as he calls them) were the earliest known men,
corresponding to the oldest gravel remains of Dawkins
and Prestwich, and points out that their implements
are in size and form, though not in material and finish,
allied to those of the polished stone age, which
might thus be regarded as an improved continuation
or revival of this first period. This might be read to
mean, as above maintained, that the earliest men were

SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS 75

peaceful and perhaps in part agricultural, that they
were succeeded by lawless, powerful, artistic and
savage peoples, and when the latter were swept away
that a remnant of the primitive stock repossessed the
land. If this proves to be the net result, it will
correspond exactly with our old historical beliefs.

I was struck in reading this paper with a remark
of Dupont on the unprogressive character of the men
of the mammoth age, who seem to have made so little
advance in the arts of life during the period of their
occupation of Europe. Perhaps he makes too great
an estimate of the length of their residence, or does
not sufficiently consider how long men about their
stage of civilisation have remained at the same point
in the historic period. Nor does he consider the
possibility of the cave men belonging to ruder tribes
of a race which may have inhabited better if more
perishable residences elsewhere. In any case, all
experience shows that to such a people any great
advance in the arts could come only by missionary
influence from abroad, or by the appearance of some
great inventive genius among themselves ; and no
good fortune of this kind seems to have happened to
the Canstadt or Cro-magnon men, or if it did, they
rejected their opportunity, as so many others have
since done.

Still, perhaps, we need not pity them too much.
They lived in a young and fresh condition of the
earth, enjoyed a vigorous health, and were gifted with
rare strength and energy. They were bountifully

76 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

provided for by nature as to food and clothing, were
in slavery to no man, lived in families bound together
by ties of affection, and were free to migrate over vast
territories according to the exigencies of the seasons.
They had some taste in dress and ornaments, and no
doubt enjoyed their clever carvings on bone and ivory
as much as any modern lovers of art their most
finished treasures. A Cro-magnon ' brave,' tall, mus-
cular and graceful in movement, clad in well-dressed
skins, ornamented with polished shells and ivory pen-
dants, with a pearly shell helmet, probably decked
with feathers, and armed with his flint-headed lance
and skull-cracker of reindeer antler handsomely
carved, must have been a somewhat noble savage, and
he must have rejoiced in the chase of the mammoth,
the rhinoceros, the bison, and the wild horse and
reindeer, and in launching his curiously-constructed
harpoons against the salmon and other larger fish that
haunted the rivers.

Nor was he destitute of higher hopes. He laid
his dead reverently in the bosom of mother earth,
with such things as had been pleasant or useful in life,
and his rudimentary bible, or ' book of the dead/ must
have at least included the idea — 'This corruptible
shall put on incorruption, this mortal immortality.1
That is the meaning of such funeral gifts in every
part of the world, and has always been so, as far as we
can learn. But the belief in immortality implies also
a belief in a God or gods. For if there is a spiritual
world for the dead, there must be a Power to care for

SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS 77

them there. Whether these beliefs were originally
implanted in him when God breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life, or were taught to him by special
revelation, we do not know, but they were there as a
foundation on which he could, with the aid of his
sense of right and wrong, build a happy and harmless
life. That he did not always do so we have some sad
evidence, to be gathered even from his bones ; and
the testimony of tradition is that his great sin was
that of inhuman violence, and it was for this that he
was swept away by the Flood, and replaced by men of
more peaceful mould, whom but for that catastrophe
he would soon have annihilated.

Carthaillac l devotes a chapter to the mortuary
customs of the men of the quaternary (palanthropic)
age. He shows that the statement sometimes made
that these men did not care for the dead is entirely
incorrect, though he believes that we know com-
paratively little of their burials, owing to the circum-
stance that only those in caverns were likely to be
preserved or discovered. The discoveries at Spy, in
Belgium, show that even the Canstadt race, the lowest
in development, and probably in art, interred the
bodies of their dead, while a large number of inter-
ments of the Cro-magnon race are known. He calls
attention to the fact that in all of these the body lies
on its side. The hands are brought up to the head
or neck, and the knees are bent, sometimes slightly,
sometimes very strongly, so as to give the body a

1 Hommc Prehistorique.

78 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

crouching posture (p. 79). The idea seems to have
been to place the body in the attitude of sleep or
of rest. The deceased was arrayed in the gar-
ments and ornaments worn during life, and not in-
frequently a quantity of red oxide of iron was buried
with, or has been scattered over, the body. Flint
knives and lances seem often to have been placed with
the dead. It is needless to say that all this recalls
the burial customs of many rude tribes of men up to
modern times.

There is some reason to believe that occasionally,
at least, the flesh has been partially removed from
the bones before interment. This reminds us of the
custom of some American tribes, who were in the
habit of disinterring the dead after a temporary burial,
carefully cleaning the bones, and then placing them
Wrapped in skins in their tribal ossuaries. It would
seem, however, that the primitive men when they
removed the flesh did so in a recent state. Perhaps
this practice was resorted to only when the body had
to be kept for some time, or carried some distance for
interment. If the body was disembowelled and the
remaining flesh and ligaments dried, it would be
reduced very nearly to the condition of the imperfect
mummies of the Guanches of the Canaries and of the
Peruvians. Thus we may suppose that we have here
a rudimentary condition of the art of the embalmer.

Some questions still remain as to the races of men
actually known to us in the palanthropic age. It
has already been explained that in the earliest part of

SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS

79

this period, that characterised by the presence of the
Elephas antiquus in Europe, there are evidences of
the existence of man, and this in a more genial

THE SKELETON OF LAUGERIE BASSE, DORDOGNE, SHOWING
THE POSITION OF THE PERFORATED SHELLS ON THE LIMBS

AND FOREHEAD (after Carthaillac)

climate than that prevailing later. Of these men we
have no certain osseous remains. Should these be
found, we may anticipate that their characters would

8o GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

be peculiar, and would indicate a frugivorous rather
than a carnivorous mode of life, and less of rude
power than that evidenced by the Canstadt and Cro-
magnon races.

Of the latter, though both are of the same faunal
period, and therefore geologically contemporaneous,
the former, the lower of the two in point of physical
development, is apparently in Western Europe the
older, and represents the earlier part of the mammoth
age, when the climate had become cooler and Elephas
primigenius had succeeded to E. antiquus. The Cro-
magnon race, beginning in this period, goes on to the
close of the mammoth age, which, as already stated,
coincides with the reindeer age of the French arch-
aeologists. This Cro-magnon race I am disposed to
regard as a mixed or half- breed tribe, produced by the
union of the Canstadt peoples with the higher race
already hinted at. This last may possibly be repre-
sented by a few skulls more resembling those of the
men of the neanthropic age, which are occasionally
found in the burials of the Cro-magnon people, and
of which that found at Truchere has been already
referred to.

We have thus traces of two primitive or ante-
diluvian races, one probably mild and subsisting on
vegetable food, and another fierce, rude and car-
nivorous, perhaps a product of degeneracy of the
former; and a third, or mixed race, of greater physical
power and energy than either of the others. This is
of course merely a hypothetical reading of the facts,

SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS 81

but it is by no means improbable, and would, as we
shall see, bring them into close relation with the
teachings of history and tradition as to the antediluvian
age.

The most careful and elaborate studies of these
several types have been made by MM. Quatrefages
and Hamy. The former sums up the races of fossil
or * quaternary' men as six in number, viz. : (i) The
Canstadt ; (2) the Cro-magnon ; (3) the mesito-
cephalic race of Furfooz ; (4) the sub-brachycephalic
race of Furfooz ; (5) the race of Grenelle ; (6) the
race of Truchere. Of these only three (namely, Nos. I,
2, and 6) properly belong to the palanthropic age.
The races of Furfooz ' and of the upper beds of
Grenelle are neanthropic, because they are found
with the animal remains of that age, and they
resemble in cranial characters the neanthropic
peoples.

The Canstadt and Cro-magnon races resemble
each other in being long-headed or dolichocephalic,
and in having strong and coarsely-made facial bones,
but the Canstadt race has a comparatively low fore-
head with strong superciliary arches, and round eye-
sockets. The Cro-magnon race has a brain-case of
more than ordinary capacity, a more elevated fore-
head, and eye-sockets singularly elongated horizon-
tally. Broca has measured the cubic contents of the
Cro-magnon skull, and gives as the result 1,590 cubic
centimetres, or 1 19 centimetres more than the average

1 Noticed later, in Chapter VII.

F

82 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

of 125 modern Parisian skulls. The Canstadt men
were of moderate stature, but strongly built and

SKULL FROM TRUCHERE, SHOWING A PECULIAR PALANTHROPIC

TYPE ALLIED TO NEANTHROPic RACES (after Quatrefages)

muscular. The Cro-magnon race was of great stature,
some skeletons approaching to seven feet in height,

SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS 83

and affording evidence of immense muscular develop-
ment.

The race of Truchere is represented by only a
single skull ; but Quatrefages vouches for it as be-
longing to the age of the mammoth. It is a well-
formed brachycephalic cranium of unusually great
internal capacity, and would be regarded anywhere
as indicating a race of high and refined cerebral
endowment. If really of the mammoth age, it may
have belonged to a straggler or captive from a higher
and more cultured tribe, introduced accidentally into
a sepulchre of the Cro-magnon period. It connects
itself with the speculation in the preceding pages
as to the existence of such a race. This skull
resembles, as we should expect, the type of the
neanthropic men who spread over the earth at the
beginning of that later age.

v a

84

GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

fall

•s9j

ir3 t) CO

IN

l||

SlS 3

it!!!

aiil

..
l

oiii •§.!

> ^=O 4) rt

w

•aj

O pt

•§'§,

T5 e«

ss

u ^

-"11

<u rt ^J o

w

E

II

11

h

2°!
I-

Later cenozoic

CHAPTER VI

END OF THE PALANTHKOPIC AGE

THE palarithropic age came to a tragic end, and is
somewhat definitely separated from that which suc-
ceeded it. This appears from several considerations
which are too often overlooked by writers who have a
prejudice in favour of everything passing imperceptibly
and by slow degrees into that by which it is followed
— an exaggerated uniformitarianism beyond that of
Lyell, but in harmony with the hypothesis of Darwin,
to which many anthropologists appear to tie them-
selves hopelessly.

Three facts are here specially important. The
Canstadt and Cro-magnon races are physically
different from any modern races, and give place at
the close of this age to peoples as distinct from them
as any now existing, and who, on the other hand,
while separated from the palaeocosmic men preceding
them, are linked with the races of modern times. It
is no doubt true that occasional and abnormal
human skulls may to this day be seen on living men
which are more or less of the Canstadt or Cro-magnon

86 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

type. These are good evidences of the unity of man
through all the ages, but no race exists having all
the peculiarities of these ancient peoples, which thus
belong not to a distinct species but to a distinct racial
variety of man.

Secondly, at the close of the palanthropic age we
find a great change in land animals — a number of
important species hunted by early man having dis-
appeared, <an<i -the more meagre modern fauna having
come in at once. 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 increas-
ing 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 dtbris of the
glacial period and holding the remains of post-glacial
animals. These are widely spread over the whole

END OF THE PALANTHROPIC AGE $7

northern hemisphere, and ascend in some districts to
high levels. An interesting illustration has recently
been given by Dr. Nuesch and M. Boule, in the
deposits under a rock-shelter at Schweizersbild, near
Schaffhausen.1 These show an overlying deposit
with * neolithic ' implements and bones of recent
animals, a bed of rubble and loam destitute of human
remains, and below this a bed containing bone imple-
ments, 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.

Were these changes sudden or gradual? Ex-
perience 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

1 Nouvelles archives des Missions t &c. voL iii. Noticed in

Natural Science, 1893.

8S GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

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 de-
pressions 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 dimen-
sions of the present lands. Besides this we find on
the surface of the land modern raised beaches, depo-
sits 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.1 In short, no geological fact can be better
established than the post-glacial subsidence.

J Prestwich, 'Evidence of Submergence of Western Europe,' Trans.
Royal Society^ 1893 ; * Possible Cause for the Origin of the Tradition of
the Flood,' Trans, Viet, fnsf., 1894; Dawkin^, 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

END OF THE PALANTHROPIC AGE 89

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 ot
Western America may belong to this period. It is
therefore allowable to suppose that the cause of sub-
mergence 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

Caspian plain and the Pamirs, so that all Asia must have been sub-
merged within a very recent period. See also Fossil Man, by the
author, 1880.

90 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

years of that time, or say six thousand to eight
thousand years ago. How long the second conti-
nental 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 assign on geological grounds to
the termination of the great glacial period. There-
fore, 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 assign to it a very long time. That it could
not have been sudden in the sense of being instan-
taneous 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 sub-
mergence, leading primarily to vast destruction of

END OF THE PALANTHROP1C AGE 91

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 principal 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 sur-
vived 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

92 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

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 associates,
but when we know that the whole geographical fea-
tures of our continents have changed since the palan-
thropic 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 com-
parisons 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

END OF THE PALANTHROP1C AGE 93

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.1

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.

1 A valuable paper by Dawkins ' On the relation of the Palaeo-
lithic to the Neolithic Period,' reaches me when correcting the proof
of this volume. (Reprint from Journal of Anthropological Society^
February 1894.)

94 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

CHAPTER VII

THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE

THERE has been much confusion among anthro-
pologists respecting the distinction of this from the
preceding age. The Cro-magnon race has been
classed 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 neglect-
ing 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
circumstances it will be well to begin this chapter with
some examples of the relations of these different
races.

At Crenelle, near Paris, on the river Seine, there is
a succession of old inundation beds of that river, ex-

THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE 95

tending 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 accumulations. 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 associated 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 Quatrefages 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 ex-
plored 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 passages in these caverns,
we find as the result of the whole the following suc-
cession 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,

96 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

of which the red clay is the principal, 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 bean
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 * palaeo-
lithic ' 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 suc-
cession 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

THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE

97

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.

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

G

98 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

caverns, and has carefully noted the mode of occur-
rence 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 ne-
anthropic 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.

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,1 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 shells, 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 multitude of bones of animals,
of the modern species of the country. The people

1 Sometimes with angular stones — argile h blocaiix.

THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE

99

who used this cave as a sepulchre had evidently
arrived in Belgium after the palaeocosmic men and

RESTORATION OF THE SEPULCHRAL CAVE OF FRONTAL, BELGIUM
(after Dupont)

i. and 2. Gravel and clay of mammoth age. 3. Surface of modern accumulation 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 mammoth were not only extinct, but their remains
were buried in muddy deposits ; though the reindeer

G 2

ioo GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

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
tney 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 charac-
teristic 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.

Similar illustrations 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 palan-
thropic and neanthropic ages. In such a case also it
is to be observed that a few decided, positive facts

THE EARLY KEANTtiROPTC AGE IQI

are of more value than any number of examples in
which, from local circumstances, the' succession* itfayv
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 passed away abruptly and have
left no certain successors, those who succeeded them
pass 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 palaeo-
cosmic 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

102 GEQIfOGY AND HISTORY

'general VieW'm'* finding that the small, fine-featured
. ; ;i^ierii\^ho^su;ccce.v:led 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 primi-
tive people whose bones are yet unknown, and who
inhabited Europe in the early mild period preceding
the mammoth age. Neither is there anything ano-
malous 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 popula-
tion increased and men became hunters and fisher-
men, and wandered widely over the world, a large-
boned, coarse-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 coarser
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

THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE 103

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 ex-
plained. 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 pro-
ceed 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 Greenwcll and Taylor 1 :

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 passages ; some of these are as much as

1 Greenwell, British Barrows ; Taylor, Orgin of the Aryans.

104 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

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 Corsi-
cans, 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, sup-

THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE

105

posed 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 Belgse, and the ancestors
of the so-called Celtic populations of the British
Islands.

CROMLECH AT FONTANACCIA, CORSICA (after De Mortillet)

io6 GEOLOGY A AD HISTORY

CHAPTER VIII

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE IN THE LIGHT OF
HISTORY

THE time was when the earlier books of the He-
brew Scriptures stood almost alone in their notices
of the creation and antediluvian times, and when
critics could quietly take for granted that they were
altogether mythical. This state of things has now
passed away from the minds of the better informed,
and it may be profitable before proceeding farther to
glance for a moment at some of the recent corrobora-
tions, if they may be so called, of the Bible history
from altogether unexpected quarters.

In the first place, there can now be no doubt that
the order of creation, as revealed to the author of
the first chapter of Genesis, corresponds with the
results of astronomical and geological research in a
manner which cannot be accidental.1 This old docu-
ment thus stands in the position of a prophecy which
has been fulfilled in its details. Besides this, the dis-

1 For evidence of this I may be permitted to refer to my work,
The Origin of the World,

EARL Y HISTOR Y lo?

covery of the similar though not identical Chaldean
creation tablets throws a remarkable and interesting
side-light on the whole question. The Chaldean
tablets are unquestionably very ancient, and borrowed
from still older documents from which they are alleged
to have been copied. But they and the Genesis
narrative are independent of each other. Neither can
have been copied from the other. Thus there must
have been a still more ancient common source of the
narrative, and, as I have elsewhere urged,1 the greater
simplicity and monotheistic character of the Hebrew
document entitle it to the palm of the higher anti-
quity.

With reference to the antediluvian age and the
Deluge, while the Bible is here only in accord with
almost universal tradition, and this in reference to an
event which if it occurred at all must have fixed itself
in the memory of the survivors, it is in remarkable
accordance with very ancient Chaldean writings
commemorative of the same event. Some principal
points of this accordance are the following. The
Chaldean account implies that the anger of the gods,
or some of them, against an evil race of men was the
cause of the catastrophe. It gives it a universal
character, so far as the sphere of observation extended.
It represents the survivors as saved in a ship or ark.
It represents Hasisadra, its Noah, as sending out
birds to ascertain the subsidence of the waters. In

1 Modern Science in Bible Lands.

ro8 GEOLOGY AMD HISTORY

all these points and many others the Chaldean
account agrees with the Biblical in representing ante-
diluvian men, or some of them, as civilised, possessing
domestic animals, and competent to construct large
ships.

When we leave the Deluge and come to the post-
diluvian or neanthropic period, similar coincidences
occur. The foundation of a primitive Cushite or
Akkadian kingdom in the Euphratean valley, the
dispersion of men according to their families and their
languages, the early kingdoms contemporary with
Abraham, mentioned in the narrative of his campaign
to recover the captives taken from the cities of the
plain, the extremely early use of the arrow-headed
characters in Asia, of the hieroglyphic writing in
Egypt, and of a proto- Phoenician or early Hebrew
alphabet among the Mineans of ancient Arabia,
tend at once to vindicate the Bible history, and to
show how at a very early period this history may have
been rendered permanent in written documents. On
all these grounds scientific archaeologists are begin-
ning to attach more value than formerly to the Hebrew
annals, and to recognise them as true historical
accounts of the times to which they relate.

It may seem rash to make such a statement at a
time when it is well known that many divines of
repute avow themselves as believers in the theory that
the earlier Biblical books are of comparatively late
composition. But Science will have her way in a
matter of this kind, whatever literature or criticism

EARLY HISTORY 109

may say, and she is beginning strongly to lift her
voice against the destructive criticism of the Penta-
teuch. In a recent article, Professor Sayce, one of
the best-informed experts in these subjects, uses the
following language :

* Naturally, the " higher criticism " is disinclined to
see its assumptions swept away along with the con-
clusions which are based upon them, and to sit humbly
at the feet of the newer science. At first, the results
of Egyptian or Assyrian research were ignored ; then
they were reluctantly admitted, so far as they did not
clash with the preconceived opinions of the " higher "
critics. It was urged, unfortunately with too much
justice, that the decipherers were not, as a rule, trained
critics, and that in the enthusiasm of research they
often announced discoveries which proved to be false
or only partially correct. But it must be remembered,
on the other side, that this charge applies with equal
force to all progressive studies, not excluding the
" higher criticism " itself.

' The time is now come for confronting the con-
clusions of the " higher criticism/' so far as it applies
to the books of the Old Testament, with the ascertained
results of modern Oriental research. The amount of
certain knowledge now possessed by the Egyptologist
and Assyriologist would be surprising to those who
are not specialists in these branches of study, while
the discovery of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets has poured
a flood of light upon the ancient world, which is at
once startling and revolutionary. As in the case of

I io GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

Greek history, so too in that of Israelitish history, the
period of critical demolition is at an end, and it is
time for the archaeologist to reconstruct the fallen
edifice.

'But theveryword "reconstruct" implies thatwhat
is built again will not be exactly that which existed
before. It implies that the work of the " higher
criticism " has not been in vain ; on the contrary, the
work it has performed has been a very needful and
important one, and in its own sphere has helped us
to the discovery of the truth. Egyptian or Assyrian
research has not corroborated every historical state-
ment which we find in the Old Testament, any more
than classical archaeology has corroborated every
statement which we find in the Greek writers ; what
it has done has been to show that the extreme
scepticism of modern criticism is not justified, that the
materials on which the history of Israel has been based
may, and probably do, go back to an early date, and
that much which the " higher " critics have declared to
be mythical and impossible was really possible and
true.'

In point of fact a much stronger position might
be held in favour of Genesis, and we shall find in
comparing it with the monuments of the palanthropic
and early neanthropic ages that its statements vin-
dicate themselves as derived from original contem-
porary documents, which were under no obligations
to the literature or philosophy of those later times, to
which they have been relcgited by some of the critics.

EARLY HISTORY in

Let us inquire a little more in detail into the
general features of these early historic notices.

For the purposes of this inquiry we may content
ourselves with the consideration of the ancient
Hebrew documents incorporated in the Book of
Genesis, and the remains which have been preserved
of the old Chaldean literature. Both of these re-
present an antediluvian period of long duration.1
Both refer the primitive seats of population to the
Euphratean region of Western Asia. Both terminate
the antediluvian age with a great diluvial catastrophe.
These are sufficient points of general agreement to
make it probable that both originated in one funda-
mental history, or at least were based on attempts to
describe the same events. Otherwise there are great
differences. The Chaldean accounts have a prolix
iteration, which makes it probable that they were
prepared for popular and liturgic use, and may not
fairly represent the original documents in possession
of the priestly class. They also naturally introduce
all the personnel of the Chaldean pantheon, and as
this must have been a thing of gradual growth it
gives them an air of recency, though we know that
they are very old. The Hebrew version, on the
other hand, is monotheistic, and has an aspect of severe
simplicity in striking contrast to the florid and popu-
lar Chaldean version.

1 Hommel has proved (Journal of the Society of Biblical Archao-
logy, 1893), what has always been suspected, that the ten patriarchs of
Berosus are the same with those of the Sethite line in Genesis.

ii2 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

We may first notice what history can tell of the
palanthropic age, supposing this to be the same with
that historically known as antediluvian. The account
of creation in the first chapter of Genesis is altogether
general, and has no local colouring. It evidently
refers to the whole history of the making of the
earth. The second chapter, on the other hand, begins
at verse 4 the special history of man, and opens with
a picture which is not, as some have rashly supposed,
a repetition of the previous general account of
creation, and still less contradictory to it, but a state-
ment that immediately before the introduction of
man the earth had been in a desolate and compara-
tively untenanted state, that state to which we know
it had been reduced by the glacial cold and sub-
mergence.

Thus the two accounts of the creation of man,
that in which he appears in his chronological position
in the general development, and that in which he
takes a first place, as introductory to his special
history, are not contradictory, but complementary to
each other ; and the latter refers wholly to man and
the creatures contemporary with him in the palan-
thropic age. It is in accordance with this, and no
doubt intended by the editor to mark this distinc-
tion, that the name Elohim is used in the general
narrative, and Jehovah Elohim in the special one.
The failure of so many critics to notice this distinc-
tion, which must have been so plain to the primitive
historian himself, is a marked illustration of the

EARLY HISTORY 113

blindness of certain nineteenth-century savants, so
full of their own special knowledge, yet so careless
of science and common sense.

It would even seem that this distinction appeared
in the Chaldean Genesis as well ; for fragments of
what has been called a second Chaldean Genesis have
been found which seem to correspond with the state-
ments of the second chapter of Genesis.

The following is an extract from this second
Chaldean or Akkadian Genesis as translated by
Pinches : l

1 The glorious house, the house of the gods, in a
glorious place had not been made ;

2 A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not
been created ;

3 A brick had not been laid, a beam had not been
shaped ;

4 A house had not been built, a city had not been
constructed ;

5 A city had not been made, a foundation had not
been made glorious ;

6 Niffer had not been built, fe-kura had not been con-
structed ;

7 Erech had not been built, 6-ana had not bee'h con-
structed ;

8 The Abyss had not been made, 6-ridu had not been
constructed ;

9 (As for) the glorious house, the house of the gods,
its seat had not been made —

10 The whole of the lands were sea.

1 Expository Times, December 1892

H4 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

This may be supposed to correspond with the Hebrew
verses following :

And no plant of the field was yet in the earth.

And no herb of the field had yet sprung up.

For Jahveh Elohim had not caused it to rain on the
earth.

And there was not a man to till (irrigate) the ground.

And there went up a vapour from the earth, and watered
the surface of the ground.

This is the Hebrew idea of the condition of the
great Mesopotamian plain after the pleistocene sub-
mergence, and before the appearance of man. The
Chaldean version refers to the same region, but is
more elaborate and artificial, and brings in the his-
toric cities of a later time. This difference alone
would induce us to suppose that the Hebrew record
may be a better guide for our present comparison.

The Hebrew writer in the first place gives us to
understand that a period of comparative desolation
preceded the appearance of man, a great winter of
destruction preparatory to a returning spring. He
then proceeds to localise primeval man by placing
him in Eden, the Idinu of the Chaldean accounts*
which we also recognise by the geographical indica-
tions of the Euphrates and Tigris as its rivers, with
two companion streams which can scarcely be other
than the Karun and the Kerkhat. Thus the Bible
and the Chaldean account agree in their locality for
the advent of man, for Idinu was the ancient name of
the plain of Babylonia. It has been objected to this

EARLY HISTORY 115

locality that much of this region is low and swampy,
and has only recently become land by the encroach-
ment of the rivers on the head of the Persian Gulf.
But if our Biblical authority really refers to palan-
thropic man, we must bear in mind that in the post-
glacial period the continents were higher than now,
and the Babylonian plain must have been a dry and
elevated district, in all probaoility forest-clad. We
must also bear in mind that Eden was a region of
country, and that the ' garden ' or selected spot ' east-
ward in Eden ' may have been some rich wooded
island surrounded by the river streams, and producing
all fruits pleasant to the taste and good for food. In
any case the modern objections to the site are based
on entire ignorance of its geological history, and only
serve to show how much better informed the ancient
writer was as to antediluvian geography than his
modern critics.1

It is scarcely necessary to say that this Biblical
environment of primitive man corresponds with the
requirements of the case. In a genial climate and
sheltered position, and supplied with abundance of
food, the first men would have the conditions neces-
sary for comfortable existence and for multiplying in
numbers.

We have also in the description of one of the
rivers of Eden a hint as to a few of the wants of
early man beyond mere food and shelter. We are

1 See, for full discussion of this, Modern Science in Bible Lands, by
the author.

H 2

ii6 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

told that the district traversed by this river produced
gold, bedolach, and the shoham stone. I have else-
where shown that this river must be the Karun,
draining the Luristan mountains, and that the pro-
ductions indicated must have been ' native gold and
silver, wampum beads, and jade and similar stones
suitable for implements.' l Thus we have here a
picture which may well represent the origin and early
condition of our palaeocosmic men. But the parallel
does not end here.

According to the history, man falls, and is ex-
pelled from Eden, is clothed with skins, and becomes
an eater of animal food. Next we find murderous
violence, and a consequent separation of the primitive
people into two tribes, one of which migrates to a
distance from the other and adopts different modes
of life. Finally, we have a mixture of the two races,
leading to a powerful and terrible race of half-breeds,
or metis, who filled the earth with violence.2

In one point only have we reason to doubt
whether this old history fairly represents the palan-
thropic age. It notes the invention of musical
instruments, -the use of metals, the domestication of
animals as already existing in the antediluvian
period. Of these we have little or no archaeological
evidence. The only musical instrument of this
period known is a whistle made of one of the bones
of a deer's foot, and capable of sounding a tetrachord

1 Modern Science in Bible Lands.
9 Genesis vi. 1-6.

MAP SHOWING THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS
OF THE SITE OF EDEN AS DESCRIBED IN GENESIS

ii8 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

or four notes, and we have no certain evidence of
metals or domesticated animals. We must bear in
mind that there may have been more civilised races
than those of the Cro-magnon type, and that the
latter evince an artistic skill which if it had any scope
for development may have led to great results. The
native metals must have been known to man from
the first, though they must have been rare or only
locally common ; and many semi-barbarous nations
of later times show us that it is only a short step
from the knowledge of native metals to the art of
metallurgy, in so far as it consists in treating those
ores that in weight and metallic lustre most resemble
the metals themselves. It is also deserving of notice
that no other hypothesis than that of antediluvian
civilisation can account for the fact that in the dawn
of postdiluvian history we find the dwellers by the
Euphrates and the Nile already practising so many
of the arts of civilised life. In connection with this
we may place the early dawn of literature. Without
insisting on the documents which the Chaldean Noah,
Hasisadra, is said to have hid at Sippara before the
Deluge, we have the known fact that in the earliest
dawn of postdiluvian history the art of writing was
known in Chaldea and in Egypt. This at once
testifies to antediluvian culture, and shows that the
means existed to record important events.

There is, perhaps, no one of the vagaries now
current under the much abused name of evolution
more opposed to facts, whether physical or historical

EARL* HISTORY 119

than the notion that, because 3000 years B.C.
we have evidence of an advanced civilisation
in Chaldea and in Egypt, this must have been
preceded by a long and uninterrupted progress
through many thousands of years from a savage
state. Two facts alone are sufficient to show the
folly of such a supposition. First, the intervention
of that great physical catastrophe which separates
the palanthropic and neanthropic periods ; and
secondly, the testimony of history in favour of the
arts of civilisation originating with great inventors,
and not by any slow and gradual process of evolution.
According to all history, sacred and profane, many
such inventors existed even in the palanthropic and
early neanthropic ages, and transmitted their arts
in an advanced state to later times. The Book of
Genesis testifies to this in its notices of Tubal Cain
and Jubal ; and the monuments of Chaldea and
Egypt show that metallurgy, sculpture, and archi-
tecture were as far advanced at the very dawn of
history as in any later period. It is true that Genesis
represents its early inventors as mere men, albeit
'sons of God/ while they often appear as gods or
demi-gods in the early history of the heathen nations ;
but the fact remains that then, as now, the rare
appearance of God-given inventive genius is the sole
cause of the greater advances in art and civilisation.
Spontaneous development may produce socialistic
trades' unions or Chinese stagnation, but great gifts,
whether of prophecy, of song, of scientific insight,

120 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

or of inventive power, are the inspiration of the
Almighty.

We have in the closing part of the Bible story
of the antediluvian age even an intimation of the
deterioration of climate and means of subsistence
towards the end of the period. Lamech, we are told,
named his son Noah — rest or comfort — in the hope
that by his means he should be comforted, because of
the ground which the Lord had cursed. That curse
provoked by the sons of man he may have recognised
as fulfilled in the gradual deterioration of the climate
toward the close of the palanthropic age. There are
here surely some curious coincidences which might be
followed farther, did space permit.

We now come to the close of the whole in the
Deluge ; and as this has been made in our own time
the subject of much discussion, and as it contains
within itself the whole kernel of the subject, it merits
a separate treatment

CHAPTER IX

THE DELUGE OF NOAH

To the older men of this generation, who have
followed the changes of scientific and historical
opinion, the story of the Deluge, old though it is,
has passed through a variety of phases like the
changes of a kaleidoscope, and which may afford an
instructive illustration of the modifications of belief
in other, and some of them to us more important,
matters, whether of history or of religion, which have
presented themselves in like varied aspects, and may
be variously viewed in the future.

As children we listened with awe and wonder to
the story of the wicked antediluvians, and of their
terrible fate and the salvation of righteous Noah, and
received a deep and abiding impression of the
enormity of moral evil and of the just retribution
of the Great Ruler of the Universe. A little later,
though the idea that all the fossil remains im-
bedded in the rocks are memorials of the Deluge
had passed away from the minds of the better

122 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

informed, we read with interest the wonderful reve-
lations of the bone-caves described by Buckland,
and felt that the antediluvian age had become a
scientific reality. But later still all this seemed to
pass away like a dream. Under the guidance of
Lyell we learned that even the caves and gravels must
be of greater age than the historical Deluge, and
that the remains of men and animals contained in
them must have belonged to far-off aeons, antedating
perhaps even the Biblical creation of man, while the
historical Deluge, if it ever occurred, must have been
an affair so small and local that it had left no traces
on the rocks of the earth. At the same time Biblical
critics were busy with the narrative itself, showing
that it could be decomposed into different documents,
that it bore traces of a very recent origin, that it was
unhistorical, and to be relegated to the same category
with the fairy-tales of our infancy. Again, however,
the kaleidoscope turns, and the later researches of
geology into the physical and human history of the
more recent deposits of the earth's crust, the dis-
coveries of ancient Assyrian or Chaldean records of
the Deluge, and the comparison of these with the
ancient history of other nations, rehabilitate the old
story ; and as we study the new facts respecting the
so-called palaeolithic and neolithic men, the clay
tablets recovered from the libraries of Nineveh by
George Smith, the calculations of Prestwich and
others respecting the recency of the glacial period,
and the historical gatherings of Lenormant, we find

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 123

ourselves drifting back to the faith of our childhood,
or may congratulate ourselves on having adhered to
it all along, even when the current of opinion tended
strongly to turn us away.

In illustration of the present aspects of the
question I make two extracts, one from Lenormant's
Beginnings of History ', another from a recent work of
my own.

' We are/ says Lenormant, * in a position to affirm
that the account of the Deluge is a universal tradition
in all branches of the human family, with the sole
exception of the black race, and a tradition every-
where so exact and so concordant cannot possibly be
referred to an imaginary myth. No religious or cosmo-
gonic myth possesses this character of universality.
It must necessarily be the reminiscence of an actual
and terrible event, which made so powerful an im-
pression upon the imaginations of the first parents
of our species that their descendants could never
forget it. This cataclysm took place near the
primitive cradle of mankind, and previous to the
separation of the families from whom the principal
races were to descend, for it would be altogether
contrary to probability and to the laws of sound
criticism to admit that local phenomena exactly
similar in character could have been reproduced at
so many different points on the globe as would
enable one to explain these universal traditions, or
that these traditions should always have assumed an
dientical form, combined with circumstances which

124 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

need not necessarily have suggested themselves to
the mind in such a connection.' l

On the geological side, the following may be
accepted as a summary of facts : 2

' If the earliest men were those of the river
gravels and caves, men of the mammoth age or of
the palaeolithic or palaeocosmic period, we can form
some definite ideas as to their possible antiquity.
They colonised the continents immediately after the
elevation of the land from the great subsidence
which closed the pleistocene or glacial period, or in
what has been called the " continental " period of the
post-glacial age, because the new lands then raised
out of the sea exceeded in extent those which we
now have. We have some measures of the date of
this great continental elevation. Many years ago,
Sir Charles Lyell used the recession of the Falls of
Niagara as a chronometer, estimating their cutting
power as equal to one foot per annum. He calcu-
lated the beginning of the process, which dates from
the post-glacial elevation, to be about thirty thousand
years ago. More recent surveys have shown that the
rate is three times as great as that estimated by
Lyell, and also that a considerable part of the gorge
was merely cleaned out by the river since the pleis-
tocene age. In this way the age of the Niagara
gorge becomes reduced to perhaps seven or eight
thousand years. Other indications of similar bearing

1 Les Origines de FHistoire. Brown's translation.

* Modern Science in Bible Lands, 1888, pp. 244, 245, 251, 252.

THE DELUGE OF NOAff 125

are found both in Europe and America, and lead to
the belief that it is physically impossible that man
could have colonised the northern hemisphere at an
earlier date. These facts render necessary an entire
revision of the calculations based on the growth of
stalagmite in caves, and other uncertain data which
have been held to indicate a greater lapse of time.

' If we identify the antediluvians of Genesis with
the oldest men known to geological and archaeo-
logical science, the parallelism is somewhat marked
in physical characteristics and habits of life, and also
in their apparently sudden and tragical disappearance
from Europe and Western Asia, along with several
of the large mammalia which were their contem-
poraries. If the Deluge is to be accepted as his-
torical, and if a similar great break interrupts the
geological history of man, separating extinct races
from those which still survive, why may we not
correlate the two? If the Deluge was misused in
the early history of geology, by employing it to
account for changes which took place long before the
advent of man, this should not cause us to neglect
its legitimate uses, with reference to the early human
period. It is evident that if this correlation be ac-
cepted as probable, it must modify many views now
held as to the antiquity of man. In that case the
modern gravels and silts, spread over the plateaus
between the river valleys, will be accounted for, not
by any greater overflow of the existing streams, but by
the abnormal action of currents of water diluvial in

126 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

their character. Further, since the historical Deluge
must have been of very limited duration, the physical
changes separating the deposits containing the re-
, mains of palaeocosmic men from those of later date
would in like manner be accounted for, not by the
slow processes imagined by extreme uniformitarians,
but by causes of a more abrupt and cataclysmic
character.' l

We may proceed to inquire as to whether the
position which we have now reached is likely to be
permanent, or may represent merely one shifting
phase of opinion. For this purpose we may formu-
late these conclusions in a few general statements,
merely referring to the evidence on which they arc-
based, as any complete discussion of this would
necessarily be impossible within the limits of this
work. We may first summarise the present position
of the matter as indicated by historical and scientific
research, altogether independently of the Bible.2

i. The recent discovery of the Chaldean deluge
tablets has again directed attention to the statements
of Berosus respecting the Babylonian tradition of a
great flood, and these statements are found to be
borne out in the main by the contents of the tablets.
There is thus a twofold testimony as to the occurrence
of a deluge in that Babylonian plain which the Old

1 See also Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood, and papers by
Professor Prestwich in Journal GeoL Society and Trans. Royal Society
and by Andrews, Winchell, and others in America.

2 See articles by the author in The Contemporary Review, Decem-
ber 1889, and in The Magazine of Christian Literature, October 1890

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 127

Testament history represents as the earliest seat of
antediluvian man. As Lenormant has well shown,
the tradition exists in the ancient literature of India,
Persia, Phoenicia, Phrygia, and Greece, and can be
recognised in the traditions of Northern and Western
Europe and of America, while the Egyptians had a
similar account of the destruction of men, but ap-
parently not by water, though their idea of a sub-
merged continent of Atlantis probably had reference
to the antediluvian world. Thus we find this story
widely spread over the earth, and possessed by mem-
bers of all the leading divisions of mankind. This does
not necessarily prove the universality of the Deluge,
though every distinct people naturally refers it to its
own country. It shows, however, the existence of
some very early common source of the tradition, and
the variations are not more than were to have been
expected in the different channels of transmission.

2. Parallel with this historical evidence lies the
result of geological and archaeological research,
which has revealed to us the remains and works
of prehistoric men, racially distinct from those of
modern times, and who inhabited the earth at a
period when its animal population was to a great
extent distinct from that at present existing, and
when its physical condition was also in many
respects different. Thus in Europe and Asia, and
to some extent also in America, we have evidence
that the present races of men were preceded by
others which have passed away, and this at the same

128 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

time with many important species of land animals,
once the contemporaries of man, but now known
only as fossils. These ancient men are those called
by geologists later pleistocene, or post-glacial, or the
men of the cave and gravel deposits, or of the
age of the mammoth, and who have been designated
by archaeologists palaeolithic men, or, more properly,
palaeocosmic men, since the character of their stone
implements is only one not very important feature
of their history, and implements of the palaeolithic
type have been used in all periods, and indeed are
still used in some places.

3. The prevalence among geologists of an ex-
aggerated and unreasonable uniformitarianism, which
refused to allow sufficient prominence to sudden
cataclysms arising from the slow accumulation of
natural forces, and which was a natural reaction
from the convulsive geology of an earlier period, has
caused the idea to be generally entertained that the
age of palaeocosmic men was of vast duration, and
passed only by slow gradations and a gradual tran-
sition into the new conditions of the modern period.
This view long was, and still is, an obstacle to any
rational correlation of the geological and traditional
history of man. Recently, however, new views have
been forced on geologists, and have led many of the
most sagacious observers and reasoners to see that
the palanthropic period is much nearer to us than we
had imagined. The arguments for this I have re-
ferred to in previous pages, and need not reiterate

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 129

them here. A few leading points may, however, be
noted. One of these is the small amount of physical
or organic change which has occurred since the close
of the palanthropic period. Another is the more
rapid rate of erosion and deposition by rivers in
the modern period than had previously been sup-
posed. Another is the striking fact that a large
number of mammals, like the mammoth and woolly
rhinoceros, seem to have perished simultaneously
with the paLneocosmic men, and this by some sudden
catastrophe.1 It has also been shown by Pictet and
Dawkins that all the extant mammals of Europe
already existed in the post-glacial age, but along
with many others now altogether or locally extinct
Thus there seems to have been the removal over the
whole northern hemisphere of a number of the
largest mammals, while a selected number survived
and no additions were made. Again, while at one
time it was supposed that the remains of palaeocosmic
man and his contemporaries were confined to caverns
and river alluvia, it is now known that they occur
also on high plateaus and water-sheds, in beds of
gravel and silt which must have been deposited there
under conditions of submergence and somewhat
active current drift, perhaps in some cases aided by
floating ice.2 Lastly, while, as must naturally be the
case, in some places the remains of ancient and more

1 Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood.

2 Prestwich on deposits at Ightham, Kent, Journal Geological
Society, May 1889.

I

130 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

modern men are mixed, or seem to pass into each
other, in others, as in the Swiss, Belgian and Lebanon
caves and in the superficial deposits, there is a dis-
tinct separation, implying an interval accompanied by
physical change between the time of the earlier
and later men.

Such considerations as these, the force of which
is most strongly felt by those best acquainted with
the methods of investigation employed by geologists
and archaeologists, are forcing us to conclude : (i)
That there are indicated in the latest geological
formations two distinct human periods,^an earlier and
a later, characterised by differences of faunae and of
physical conditions, as well as by distinct races of
men. (2) That these two periods are separated by
a somewhat rapid physical change of the nature
of submergence, or by a series of changes locally
sudden and generally not long-continued. (3) That
it is not improbable that this greatest of all revolu-
tions in human affairs may be the same that has so
impressed itself on the memory of the survivors as to
form the basis of all the traditions and historical
accounts of the Deluge.

This being the state of the case, it becomes
expedient to review our ideas of the ancient Hebrew
records, from which our early, and perhaps crude,
impressions of this event were derived, and to
ascertain how much of our notions of the Deluge
of Genesis may be fairly deduced from the record
itself, and how much may be due to more or less

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 131

correct interpretations, or to our own fancy. In con-
nection with this we may also be able to obtain some
guidance as to the value to be attached to the
Hebrew document as a veritable and primitive record
of the great catastrophe.

The key to the understanding of the early human
history of Genesis lies in the story of the fall of man,
and its sequel in the murder of Abel by his brother
Cain, the beginning of that reign of violence which
endures even to this day. From this arose the first
division of the human race into hostile clans cr tribes,
the races of Cain and Seth, on which hinges the
history, characteristics and fate of antediluvian man ;
and, as we shall see in the sequel, from this arose
profound differences in religious beliefs, which have
tinged the theology and superstitions of all subse-
quent times. Of course, in making this statement I
refer to the history given in Genesis, without special
reference to its intrinsic truth or credibility, but
merely in relation to its interpretation in harmony
with its own statements.

It is further evident that this tragic event must
have occurred in that Tigro-Euphratean region which
was the Biblical site of Eden,1 and that while the
Sethite race presumably occupied the original home
of Adam, and adhered to that form of religion which
is expressed in the worship of Jahveh, the coming
Redeemer and the expected ' Seed of the Woman/ the
other race spread itself more widely, probably attained

1 Modem Science in Bible Lands t chap. iv.

12

132 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

to a higher civilisation, in so far as art is concerned.
in some of its divisions, and sank to a deeper bar-
barism in others, while it retained the original wor-
ship of God the Creator (Elohim). Hence the
Sethite race is designated as the sons of Adam (Beni
ha Adam), the true and legitimate children of the
first man, and the Cainites as Beni Elohim, or sons
of God.1 The mixture of these races produced the
godless, heaven-defying Nephelim, the Titans of the
Old Testament, whose wickedness brought on the
diluvial catastrophe. These half-breeds of the ante-
diluvian time were in all probability the best deve-
loped, physically and perhaps mentally, of the men
of their period ; and but for the Deluge they might
have become masters of the world.

This question of different races and religions
before the Flood is, however, deserving of a little
farther elucidation. The names Elohim and Jahveh
are used conjointly throughout the Book of Genesis
except in its first chapter, and their mode of occur-
rence cannot be explained merely on the theory of
two documents pieced together by an editor. It has
a deeper significance than this, and one which indi-
cates a radical diversity between Elohists and Jahvists
even in this early period. In the earliest part of the
human history, as distinguished from the general
record of creation, the two names are united in the

1 That this is the true meaning of the expressions in Genesis vi. I
cannot doubt. See discussion of the subject in the work cited in
previous note.

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 133

compound Jahveh-Elohim, but immediately after the
fall Eve is represented as attributing to, or identifying
with, Jahveh alone the birth of her eldest son — ' I
have produced a man, the Jahveh,' and which may
mean that she supposed Cain to be the promised
manifestation of God as the Redeemer. Accordingly
Cain and Abel are represented as offering sacrifice to
Jahveh, and yet it is said in a verse which must be a
part of the same document, that it was not till the
time of Enos, a grandson of Adam, that men began
to invoke the name of Jahveh. It would seem also
that this invocation of Jahveh was peculiar to the
Sethites, and that the Cainites were still worshippers
of Elohim, the God of nature and creation, a fact
which perhaps has relation to the so-called physical
religion of some ancient peoples. Hence their title
of Beni ha Elohim. Thus the division between the
Cainite and Sethite races early became accentuated
by a sectarian distinction as well. We may imagine
that the Cainites, worshipping God as Creator, and
ignoring that doctrine of a Redeemer which seemed
confined to the rival race of Seth, were the deists of
their time, and held a position which might, accord-
ing to culture and circumstances, degenerate into a
polytheistic nature-worship, or harden into an absolute
materialism. On the other hand, the Sethites, recog-
nised by the author of Genesis as the orthodox de-
scendants of Adam, and invoking Jahveh, held to the
promise of a coming Saviour, and to a deliverance from
the effects of the Fall to be achieved by His means.

134 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

It is clear that, from the point of view of the
author of Genesis, the chosen seed of Seth should
have maintained their separation from a wicked
world. Their failure to do this involves them in the
wrath of Jahveh and renders the destruction of man-
kind necessary, and in this the whole Godhead under
its combined aspects of Elohim and Jahveh takes
a part. A similar view has caused the Chaldean
narrator to invoke the aid of all the gods in his
pantheon to effect the destruction of man.

These considerations farther throw light on the
double character of the Deluge narrative in Genesis,
which has induced those ingenious scholars who
occupy themselves with analysis or disintegration
of the Pentateuch to affirm two narratives, one
Elohist and one Jahvist.1 Whatever value may
attach to this hypothesis, it is evident that if the
history is thus made up of two documents it gains
in value, since this would imply that the editor had
at his disposal two chronicles embodying the obser-
vations of two narrators, possibly of different sects,
if these differences were perpetuated in the post-
diluvian world ; and farther, that he is enabled to
affirm that the catastrophe affected both the great
races of men. It farther would imply that these
early documents were used by the writer to produce
his combined narrative almost without change of

1 See, for a very clear statement of these views, Professor Green
hi Hebraica, January 1889 along with Dr. Harper's rhumt of the
Pentateuchal criticism in the previous number.

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 135

diction, so that they remain in their original form of
the alleged testimony of eye-witness.es, a peculiarity
which attaches also to the Chaldean version, as this
purports to be in the form given by Hasisadra, the
Chaldean Noah, himself.1

Let us now inquire into the physical aspects of
the Deluge, as they are said to have presented them-
selves to the ancient witness or witnesses to whom
we owe the Biblical account of the catastrophe, and
endeavour to ascertain if they have any agreement
with the conditions of the great post-glacial Deluge
of geology. Let it be observed here that we are
dealing not with prehistoric events but with a
written history, supposed by some to have been
compiled from two contemporary documents, and
corroborated by the testimony of the ancient Chal-
dean tablets copied by the scribes of Assurbanipal,
apparently from different originals, preserved in very
ancient Chaldean temples.

The preparation of an ark or ship, and the
accommodation therein, not only of Noah and his
family, but of a certain number of animals, is a
feature in which most Deluge narratives agree.
This implies a considerable advance in the arts of
construction and navigation, but not more than we

1 Translation of G. Smith and others. With reference to the
preservation of this and the Hebrew narrative in writing, we should
bear in mind that writing was an art well known in Chaldea and
Egypt immediately after the Deluge, or at least between 2000 and
3000 B.C., and that the Chaldean narrator speaks of documents hidden
by Noah at Sippara before the Deluge.

136 GEOLOGY AND HI 'STORY

have a right to infer from the perfection of these arts
in early postdiluvian times, when it can scarcely be
supposed that the new communities of men had fully
regained the position of their ancestors before the
destruction caused by the great Flood. Lenormant,
however, remarks here :

'The Biblical narrative bears the stamp of an
inland nation, ignorant of things appertaining to
navigation. In Genesis the name of the ark, Tebah,
signifies " chest," and not " vessel " ; and there is
nothing said about launching the ark on the water ;
no mention either of the sea, or of navigation, or any
pilot. In the Epopee of Uruk, on the other hand,
everything indicates that it was composed among
a maritime people ; each circumstance reflects the
manners and customs of the dwellers on the shores
of the Persian Gulf. Hasisadra goes on board a
vessel, distinctly alluded to by its appropriate appel-
lation ; this ship is launched, and makes a trial-trip
to test it : all its chinks are calked with bitumen,
and it is placed under the charge of a pilot.'

This remark, which I find made by other com-
mentators as well, suggests, it seems to me, somewhat
different conclusions. The Hebrews when settled,
either in Egypt or in Canaan, were near to the sea-
coast, and familiar with boats and with the ships of
the Phoenicians. If, therefore, they persisted in
calling Noah's ark a ' chest/ it must have been from
unwillingness to change an old history derived from
their Chaldean or Mesopotamian ancestors, or be-

THE DELUGE OF NOAM 137

cause they continued to regard the ark as rather a
great box than a ship properly so called. On the
other hand, it is likely that the particulars in the
Chaldean account came from later manipulation of
the narrative, after commerce and navigation on the
Euphrates and Persian Gulf had become familiar to
the Chaldeans. Thus in this as in other respects the
Hebrew narrative is the more primitive of the two,
and is consistent with the necessity of Divine instruc-
tions to Noah, which, if he had been familiar with
navigation, would not have been necessary.1

As in the Chaldean version, the Biblical history
begins with the specification of the ark. On this
(Elohist) portion it is only necessary to say that the
dimensions of the ark are large and well adapted to
stowage rather than to speed, and that within it was
strengthened by three decks and by a number of
bulkheads, or partitions, separating the rooms or
berths into which it was divided. Without, it was
protected and rendered tight by coats of resinous or
asphaltic varnish (copher), and it was built of the
lightest and most durable kind of wood (gopher
or cypress). Only two openings are mentioned, a
hatch or window above, and a port or door in
the side. There is no mention of any masts, rigging,
or other means of propulsion or steerage. The
Chaldean history differs in introducing a steersman,

1 See also the evidence of an inland position of the writers in the
record of creation in Genesis i., as stated in my work cited in previous
note.

138 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

thus implying the means of propulsion as in an
actual ship.

Noah is instructed, in addition to his own family,
to provide for animals, two of every kind ; but these
very general terms are afterwards limited by the
words iiph, bemah, and remesh, which define birds,
cattle, and small quadrupeds as those specially
intended. Noah's ark was not a menagerie, but
rather like a cattle-ship, capable perhaps of accom-
modating as many animals as one of those steamers
which now transfer to England the animal produce
of Western fields and prairies. The animals por-
trayed on the ancient monuments of Egypt and
Assyria, however, inform us that, in early post-
diluvial times, and therefore probably also in the
time of Noah, a greater variety of animals were
under the control of man than is the case in any one
country at present.1 In the passage referring to the
embarkation, only the cattle and fowls are mentioned,
but seven pairs are to be taken of the clean species
which could be used as food.2 The embarkation
having been completed on the very day when the
Deluge commenced, we have next the narrative of
the Flood itself. Here it is noteworthy that God

1 Houghton, Natural History of the Ancients, and Transactions oj
the Society of Biblical Archeology ; also representations of tame ante-
lopes, &c., on Egyptian monuments.

2 This has been considered a later addition ; but the practice of all
primitive peoples has sanctioned the distinction of clean and unclean
beasts, which is merely defined in the Mosaic law, not instituted for
the first time.

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 139

(Elohim) makes the arrangements, and Jahveh shuts
the voyagers in.

The first note that our witness enters in his ' log'
relates to his impressions of the causes of the cata-
strophe, which was not effected supernaturally, but by
natural causes. These are the ' breaking up of the
fountains of the great deep ' and the ' opening of the
windows of heaven.' These expressions must be
interpreted in accordance with the use of similar
terms in the account of creation in Genesis i., the
more so that this statement is a portion regarded by
the composite theory as Elohistic. On this principle
of interpretation, the great deep is that universal
ocean which prevailed before the elevation of the dry
land, and the breaking up of its fountains is the
removal of that restriction placed upon it when its
waters were gathered together into one place. In
other words, the meaning is the invasion of the land
by the ocean. In like manner, the windows of heaven,
the cloudy reservoirs of t\e atmospheric expanse, or
possibly waterspouts, or even volcanic eruptions, and
not necessarily identical with the great rain extend-
ing for forty days, as stated in the following clause.
The Chaldean record adds the phenomena of thunder
and tempest, but omits the great deep ; an indication
that it is an independent account, and by a less in-
formed or less intelligent narrator. It is worthy of note
that our narrator has no idea of any river inundation
in the case.

At this stage we are brought into the presence of

140 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

the question : Is the Deluge represented as a miracu-
lous or a merely natural phenomenon ? Yet, from
a scientific point of view, this question has not the
significance usually attributed to it. True miracles
are not, and cannot be, contraventions or violations of
God's natural laws. They are merely unusual opera-
tions of natural powers under their proper laws, but
employed by the Almighty for effecting spiritual
ends. Thus, naturally, they are under the laws of
the material world, but, spiritually, they belong to a
higher sphere. In the present case, according to the
narrative in Genesis, the Flood was physically as much
a natural phenomenon as the earthquakes at Ischia,
or the eruption of Krakatoa. It was a miraculous or
spiritual intervention only in so far as it was related
to the destruction of an ungodly race, and as it was
announced beforehand by a prophet. Had the ap-
proaching eruption of Krakatoa been intended as a
judgment on the wicked, and had it been revealed to
anyone who had taken pains to warn his countrymen
and then to provide for his own safety, this would
have given to that eruption as much of a miraculous
character as the Bible attaches to the Deluge. In the
New Testament, where we have more definite infor-
mation as to miracles, they are usually called ' powers '
and ' signs,' less prominence being given to the mere
wonder which is implied in the term ' miracle.'
Under the aspect of powers, they imply that the
Creator can do many things beyond our power and
comprehension, just as in a lesser way a civilised

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 141

man, from his greater knowledge of natural laws and
command over natural energies, can do much that is
incomprehensible to a savage ; and in this direction
science teaches us that, given an omnipotent God,
the field of miracle is infinite. As signs, on the other
hand, such displays of power connect themselves with
the moral and spiritual world, and become teachers of
higher truths and proofs of Divine interference. The
true position of miracles as signs is remarkably
brought out in that argument of Christ, in which He
says, ' If ye believe not My words, believe Me for the
works' sake.' It is as if a civilised visitor to some
barbarous land, who had been describing to an in-
credulous audience the wonders of his own country,
were to exhibit to them a watch or a microscope, and
then to appeal to them that these were things just as
mysterious and incredible as those of which he had
been speaking.

Returning to the Deluge, we may observe that
such an invasion of the great deep is paralleled by
many of which geology presents to us the evidence,
and that our knowledge of nature enables us to con-
ceive of the possibility of greater miracles of physical
change than any on record, such as, for instance, the
explosion of the earth itself into an infinity of particles,
the final extinction of the solar heat, or the accession
to this heat of such additional fierceness as to burn
up the attendant planets. All this might take place
without any interference with God's laws, but merely
by correlations and adjustments of them, as much

142 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

within His power as the turning on or stopping of
a machine is in the power of a human engineer.
Further, such acts of Divine power may be related to
moral and spiritual things, just as easily as any out-
ward action resulting from our own will may be
determined by moral considerations. The time is
past when any rational objection can be made on the
part of science to the so-called miracles of the Bible.

To return to the passengers in the ark. This
must have been built on high ground, or the progress
of the Deluge must have been slow, for forty days
elapsed before the waters reached the ship and floated
it. It is not unlikely that the ark was built on rising
ground, for here supplies of timber would be nearer.
It has puzzled some simple antiquarians to find dug-
out canoes of prehistoric date on the tops of hills ;
but they did not reflect that the maker of a canoe
would construct his vessel where the suitable wood
could be found, since it would be much easier to carry
the finished canoe to the shore than to drag thither
the solid log out of which it was to be fashioned. So
Noah would naturally build his ark where the wood
he required could be procured most easily. The
Chaldean narrator seems to have overlooked this
simple consideration, for he mentions a launching and
trial-trip of the ship, a sure mark that he is a later
authority than the writer in Genesis.

The inmates of the ark now felt that it was moving
on the waters, a new and dread sensation which must
have deeply impressed their minds, and they soon

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 143

became aware that the ark not merely floated, but
' went/ or made progress in some definite direction.
Remark the simple yet significant notes — 'The ark
was lift up from the earth/ and ' the ark went upon
the face of the waters.' The direction of driftage is
not stated, but it is a fair inference, from the probable
place of departure in Chaldea and that of final
grounding of the ark, that it was northward or inland,
which would indicate that the chief supply of water
was from the Indian Ocean, and that it was flowing
inward toward the great sunken plain of interior
Asia, which, however, the ark did not reach, but
grounded in the hilly region known to the Hebrews as
Ararat, to the Chaldeans as Nisr. A curious state-
ment is made here (Elohist) as to the depth of the
water being fifteen cubits. Even in a flat country so
small a depth would not cover the rising grounds ; but
this is obviously not the meaning of the narrator, but
something much more sensible and practical. It is
not unlikely that the measure stated was the water-
draught of the loaded ark, and that as the voyagers
felt it rise and fall on the waves, they may have
experienced some anxiety lest it should strike and go
to pieces. It was no small part of the providential
arrangement in their case that in the track of the ark
everything was submerged more than fifteen cubits
before they reached it. Hence this note, which is at
the same time one of the criteria of the simple
veracity of the history. The only other remark in
this part of the narrative relates to the entire sub-

144 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

mergence of the whole country within sight, and the
consequent destruction of animal life ; and here the
enumeration covers all land animals, and the terms
used are thus more general than those applied to the
animals preserved in the ark. The Deluge culminated,
in so far as our narrator observed, in one hundred
and fifty days.

His next experience is of a gale of wind, accom-
panied or followed by cessation of the rain and of the
inflow of the oceanic waters.1 The waters then de-
creased, not regularly, but by an intermittent process,
' going and returning ' ; but whether this was a tidal
phenomenon or of the nature of earthquake waves we
have no information. At length the ark grounded,
apparently on high ground or in thick weather, for
no land was visible ; but at length, after two months,
neighbouring hill-tops were seen.

The incident of sending out birds to test the
recession of the waters deserves notice, because of its
apparently trivial nature, because it appears with
variations in the Chaldean account, and because it
has been treated in a remarkably unscientific manner
by some critics. It indicates the uncertainty which
would arise in the mind of the patriarch because of
the fluctuating decrease of the waters, and possibly
also a misty condition of the air preventing a distinct
view of distant objects. The birds selected for the
purpose were singularly appropriate. The raven is

1 Genesis viii. 1,2:' And Elohim made a wind to pass over the
earth, and the waters abated,' &c.

V.

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 145

by habit a wanderer, and remarkable for power of
flight and clearness of distant vision. So long, there-
fore, as it made the ark its headquarters, * going and
returning ' l from its search for food, it might be
inferred that no habitable land was accessible. The
dove, sent out immediately after the raven,2 is of a
different habit. It could not act as a scavenger of
the waters and go and return, but could leave only if
it found land covered with vegetation. As a domesti-
cated bird also, it would naturally come back to be
taken into the ark. Hence it was sent forth at
intervals of seven days, returning with an olive leaf
when it found tree tops above the water, and remain-
ing away when it found food and shelter. The
Chaldean account adds a third bird, the swallow — a
perfectly useless addition, since this bird, if taken into
the ark at all, would from its habits of life be incapable
of affording any information. This addition is a
mark of interpolation in the Chaldean version, and
proceeded perhaps from the sacred character attached
by popular superstition to the swallow, or from the
familiar habits of the bird suggesting to some later
editor its appropriateness. Singularly enough, the
usually judicious Schrader, probably from deficient
knowledge of the habits of birds, fails to appreciate
all this, and after a long discussion prefers the

1 Margin of Authorised Version; less fully, * to and fro 'in the
text.

2 There is no reason to suppose, as some have done, a hiatus here
in the narrative.

K

146 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

Babylonian legend for reasons of a most unscientific
character, actually condemning the perfectly natural
and clear Biblical story as artificial and due to a recent
emendation. He says : ' When the story passed over
to the Hebrews, the name of the swallow has dis-
appeared/ and 'it is only from the Babylonian
narrative that the selection of the different birds
becomes clear/ This little disquisition of Schrader
is, indeed, one of the most amusing instances of that
inversion of sound criticism which results when un-
scientific commentators tamper with the plain state-
ments of truthful and observant witnesses.

The uncertainty indicated by the mission of the
birds seems to have continued from the first day of
the tenth to the first day of the first month, when
Noah at length ventured to remove the covering of
the ark and inspect the condition of the surrounding
country, now abandoned by the waters, but not
thoroughly dried for some time longer. Still, so timid
was the patriarch that he did not dare without a
special command to leave his place of safety. I am
aware that if the two alleged documents are arbitrarily
separated it is possible to see here some apparent
contradiction in dates ; but this is not necessary if
we leave them in their original relation.1

It will be observed that a narrative such as that
summarised above bears unmistakably stamped upon
it the characteristics of the testimony of an eye-witness.
By whomsoever reduced to writing and finally edited,

* See Green, Hebraicat l.c»

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 147

it must, if genuine, have come down nearly in its
present form from the time of the catastrophe which
it relates. It follows that the narrator leaves no place
for the current questions as to the universality of the
Deluge. It was universal so far as his experience
extended, but that is all. He is not responsible for
what occurred beyond the limits of his observation
and beyond the fact that man, so far as known to
him, perished. If, therefore, as some have held,1
Balaam in his prophecy refers to Cainite populations
as extant in his time, or if Moses declines to trace
to any of the postdiluvian patriarchs the Rephaim,
Emim, Zuzim and other prehistoric peoples of Pales-
tine, we may infer, without any contradiction of our
narrative, that there were surviving antediluvians
other than the Noachidse, whatever improbability
may attach to this on other grounds, and more
especially from the now ascertained extension of
the post-glacial submergence over nearly all parts of
the northern hemisphere.

Let it also be noticed that beyond the prophetic
intimation to Noah, and the one expression, Jahveh
* shut him in,' which may refer merely to providential
care, there is, as already remarked, nothing miraculous,
in the popular sense of that term ; and that mythical
elements, such as those introduced into the Babylonian
narrative, are altogether absent. The story relates to
plain matters of fact, which, if they happened at all,
any one might observe, and for the proof of which

1 Motais, Deluge Biblique.

K 2

148 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

any ordinary testimony would be sufficient It may
be profitable, however, to revert here to the probable
relation of this narrative to the geological facts
already adverted to, and also its bearing on the
mythical and polytheistic additions which we find
in the Deluge stories of heathen nations.

Regarding the Biblical Deluge as a record of a
submergence of a vast region of Eur-Asia and
Northern Africa, at least, while no similar cata-
strophe has been recorded subsequently, it is un-
questionable that submergences equally important
have occurred again and again in the geological
history of our continents, and have been equally
destructive of animal life. It is true that most of
these are believed to have been of more slow and
gradual character than that recorded in Genesis, but
in the case of many of them this is a very uncertain
inference from the analogy of modern changes ; and
it is certain that the post-glacial submergence, which
closed the era of palaeocosmic man and his com-
panion animals, must have been one of the most
transient on record. On the other hand, we need
not limit the entire duration of the Noachic sub-
mergence to the single year whose record has been
preserved to us. Local subsidence may have been
in progress throughout the later antediluvian age,
and the experience of the narrator in Genesis may
have related only to its culmination in the central
district of human residence. Finally, if man was
really a witness of this last great continental sub-

THE DELUGE OF NOAH 149

mergence, we cannot be too thankful that there were
so intelligent witnesses to preserve the record of the
event for our information.

It is needless, then, to enter into further details,
though these are sufficient to fill volumes if desired,
in proof of the remarkable convergence of history and
geological discovery on the great Flood, which now
constitutes one of the most remarkable illustrations
of the points of contact of science proceeding on its
own methods of investigation and Divine revelation,
preserving the records of ancient events otherwise
ost or buried under accretions of myth and fancy.
I have already endeavoured to show that the earliest
race of palaeocosmic men, that of Canstadt, very fairly
corresponds with what may have been the character
istics of the ruder tribes of Cainites, and that if we
regard the Truchere skull as representing the Sethite
people, we may suppose the Cro-magnon race to re-
present the giants, or Nephelim,who sprung from the
union of the two pure types. I have also referred to
the possibility that the Truchere race, so little known
to us as yet, may have been a prot- Iberian people,
possessing even before the Flood domestic animals,
agriculture, and some of the arts of life, corresponding
to what we find in the earliest postdiluvian nations.
This is, indeed, implied in the fact that the postdilu-
vian nations present themselves to us at once with a
somewhat advanced condition of the arts, especially
in Chaldea and in Egypt. Such possibilities may serve
to suggest to speculative archaeologists that they

150 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

cannot safely assume that all antediluvian or palaeo-
lithic tribes were barbarous or semi-brutal, or that
there was a continuous development of humanity with-
out any diluvial catastrophe. It is also somewhat
rash to carry back the chronology of Egyptians and
Babylonians to times when, as we know on physical
evidence, the Valley of the Nile was an arm of the
sea, and the plain of the Euphrates an extension
of the Persian Gulf. It is fortunate for the Bible
that such assumptions are not required by its
history.

CHAPTER X

SPECIAL QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE

IN studying the literature relating to the Deluge, we
are constantly met by questions as to its so-called
' universality.' Was it a local or universal Deluge
and if universal in what sense so ? This is a point
in which neglect or ignorance of the necessary
physical conditions has led to the strangest miscon-
ceptions.

It is obvious that there are four senses in which a
catastrophe like the Deluge of Noah may be affirmed
or denied to have been universal.

I. It may have been universal in the sense of
being a deep stratum of water covering the whole
globe, both land and sea. Such universality could
not have been in the mind of the writer, and probably
has been claimed knowingly by no writer in modern
times. Halley in the last century understood the
conditions of such universality, though he seems to
have supposed that the impact of a comet might
supply the necessary water. Owen has directed
attention to the fact that such a deluge might be as

152 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

fatal to the inhabitants of the waters as to those of
the land. In any case, such universality would
demand an enormous supply of water from some
extra-terrestrial source.

2. The Deluge . may have been universal in the
sense of being a submersion of the whole of the land,
either by subsidence or by elevation of the ocean
bed. Such a state of things may have existed in
primitive geological ages before our continents were
elevated, but we have no scientific evidence of its
recurrence at any later time, though large portions of
the continents have been again and again submerged.
The writers of Genesis i. arid of Psalm civ. seem to
have known of no such total submergence since
the elevation of the first dry land, and nothing of
this kind is expressed or certainly implied in the
Deluge story.

3. The Deluge may have been universal in so
far as man, its chief object, and certain animals useful
or necessary to him, are concerned. This kind of
universality would seem to have been before the
mind of the writer when he says that ' Noah only,
and they who were with him in the ark, remained
alive.5 1

4. The Deluge may have been universal in so far
is the area and observation and information of the
narrator extended. The story is evidently told in
the form of a narrative derived from eye-witnesses,
and this form seems even to have been chosen or

1 Genesis vii. 23.

QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE 153

retained purposely to avoid any question of uni-
versality of the first and second kinds referred to
above. The same form of narrative is preserved in
the Chaldean legend. This fact is not affected by
the doctrine held by some of the schools of disin-
tegrators, that the narrative is divisible into two
documents, respectively 'Jahvistic' and * Elohistic.'
I have elsewhere l shown that there is a very different
reason for the use of these two name? of God. But
if there were two original witnesses whose statements
were put together by an editor, this surely does not
invalidate their testimony or deprive them of the
right to have it understood as they intended.

It is thus evident that the whole question of
' universality ' is little more than a mere useless logo-
machy, having no direct relation to the facts or to the
credibility of the narrative.

There are also in connection with this question of
universality certain scientific and historical facts
already referred to which we may again summarise
here, and which are essential to the understanding of
the question. Nothing is more certainly known in
geology than that at the close of the later tertiary
or pleistocene age the continents of the northern
hemisphere stood higher and spread their borders
more widely than at present. In this period also
they were tenanted by a very grand and varied
mammalian fauna, and it is in this continental age of-
the later pleistocene or early modern time that we

1 Modern Science in Bible Lands, chap. iv.

154 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

find the first unequivocal evidence of man as existing
on various parts of the continents. At the close of
this period occurred changes, whether sudden or
gradual we do not know, though they could not have
occupied a very long time, which led to the extinc-
tion of the earliest races of men and many con-
temporaneous animals. That these changes were in
part, at least, of the nature of submergence we learn
from the fact that our present continents are more
sunken or less elevated out of the water, and also
from the deposit of superficial gravels and other
detritus more recent than the pleistocene over their
surfaces. We are thus shut up by geological facts to
the belief in a Deluge geologically modern and prac-
tically universal.

One other objection to the Deluge narrative
perhaps deserves a word of comment — that urged
against the statement of the gradual disappearance
of the waters. The extraordinary difficulty is raised
respecting this, that the water must have rushed sea-
ward in a furious torrent. The objection is based
apparently on the idea that the foundation for the
original narrative was a river inundation in the
Mesopotamian plain. This cannot be admitted ; but
if it were, the objection would not apply. River
inundations, whether of the Nile or Euphrates, sub-
side inch by inch, not after the manner of mountain
torrents. Thus this objection is another instance of
difficulties gratuitously imported into the history.

In point of fact the narrator represents the

QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE 155

Deluge as prevailing for a whole year, which would
be impossible in the case of a river inundation. He
attributes it in part, at least, to the * great deep '-
that is, the ocean ; and he represents the ark as
drifting inland or toward the north. Such conditions
can be satisfied only by the supposition of a sub-
sidence of the land similar in kind, at least, to the
great post-glacial flood of geology. Partial subsidences
of this kind, local but very extreme, have occurred
even in later times, as, for instance, in the Runn of
Cutch, the delta of the Mississippi, and the delta of
the Nile ; and if the objectors are determined to
make the Deluge of Noah very local and more recent
than the post-glacial flood, it would be more rational
to refer to subsidences like those just mentioned, and
of which they will find examples in Lyell's Prin-
ciples and other geological books. It is, however,
decidedly more probable that Noah's flood is identical
with that which destroyed the men of the mammoth
age, the palaeocosmic or ' palaeolithic ' men ; * and in
that case the recession of the waters would probably
be gradual, but intermittent, * going and returning/
as our ancient narrator has it ; but there need not
have been any violent debacle.

It is also to be noted that a submergence of the
land and consequent deluge may be cataclysmic or
tranquil, according to local circumstances, and that it
may have been locally sudden, while for the whole
world it was gradual and of longer duration. Such

1 Modern Science in Bible Lands> chaps, iii. and iv.

156 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

differences must belong to all great submergences,
which may in one place produce great disturbance
and very coarse deposits, in another may be quiet
and deposit the finest silt. Even the flood of a river
or the action of a tide admits of variations of this
kind. In narrow channels the great tides of the
Bay of Fundy rush as torrents ; in wide bays they
creep in imperceptibly.

The traditions and Biblical history of the Deluge
not only furnish important material for connecting
the geological ages with the period of human history,
and for enabling us to realise the fact that early man
was a witness of some of the later physical and vital
vicissitudes that have passed over the earth, but may
be correlated with other ancient traditions which
seem at first sight to have no immediate relation
to it.

As an example, I may refer to the well-known
Egyptian fable of Atlantis, which may be a remi-
niscence of early man in the second continental
period, and which we may, perhaps, even connect
with the Mexican tradition of civilisation reaching
America from the East1

Plato has handed down to us a circumstantial
tradition, derived from Egypt, of a great Atlantic
continent west of Europe, once thickly peopled, and
the seat of an empire that was dominant over the
Mediterranean regions. This continent, or island,

1 It is, perhaps, only an accident that Atl is the Mexican word
for water.

QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE 157

was called Atlantis, and it had been submerged with
all its people in prehistoric times. This tradition
may have reference to certain geological facts of the
early modern period already referred to. If the
Egyptian tradition really extended back to the ante-
diluvian period, we can readily understand their
belief in the continent of Atlantis. We have already
ascertained the great extension in that period of the
land of Western Europe, and there may have been
outlying insular tracts in the Atlantic now quite
unknown to us. These lands may well have sustained
nations of the gigantic Cro-magnon race, ' men of
renown,' who, when their westward progress was
stayed by the ocean, and they were checked in the
north by the increasing cold, may have turned their
arms against the dwellers on the Mediterranean
coasts, perhaps in the age immediately preceding
the Deluge. We know little as yet of the history of
those Horshesu, or children of Horus, who are said
to have preceded the historic period in Egypt.
There must have been Egyptian literature about
these people, and should this be recovered we shall
probably learn more of Atlantis. In the meantime
we may, at least, bring the tradition of that perished
continent into harmony with geology and history.
I may add that we need not consider the above view
as at variance with that of those archaeologists who,
like the late Sir D. Wilson,1 suppose the tradition of
Atlantis to have been founded on vague intimations
1 The Lost Atlantis, 1892.

1 58 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

of the existence of America, since any such intima-
tions which reached the civilised nations of Southern
Europe or Africa would naturally be considered as
an indication that some part of the lost Atlantis still
continued to exist.

In still another direction does the deluge story
connect itself with physical probabilities. If we
examine the Atlantic map representing the soundings
of the Challenger expedition, we shall find evidence
not only of that extension of land in temperate
Western Europe which may have originated the
story of Atlantis, but other dispositions of land,
especially in the extreme north and south, which
may have influenced antediluvian climate. We have
reason to believe that in the second continental
period, that of palaeocosmic man, Baffin's Bay may
have been greatly narrowed and Behring's Straits
entirely closed, while large tracts of land existed
around Iceland and west of Norway. There would
thus be almost continuous land connection around
the north pole, permitting easy extension of man
and of hardy animals. There would also be much
less access of ice to the North Atlantic.

At the same time in another region there was
probably a land connection from Florida to South
America by the Bahamas, and the equatorial current
may have been more powerfully deflected northward
than now. The effect would be to produce around
the North Atlantic, and especially on the eastern
side, a golden age of genial climate, fitted to early

QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE 159

man, but destined as time went on and geographical
changes proceeded, preparatory to the great diluvial
subsidence, to fade away into the cool and damp
climate of the later post-glacial or antediluvian
period. This again would lead to migrations, wars,
and fierce struggles for existence among the human
populations— a time of anarchy and violence pre-
ceding the final catastrophe.

Much collateral evidence in substantiation of these
probabilities can be collected from the distribution of
marine life l and the changes of level, even on the
American coast. They conjure up before us strange
visions of the prehistoric past, and of the vicissitudes
of which man himself has been witness, and of
which, whether through memory and tradition or the
revelation of God, he has continued to retain some
written records which, long dim and uncertain, are
now beginning to be put into relation with physical
facts ascertained by modern scientific observation.

We have already seen how the Deluge story and
the fate of the antediluvians have interwoven them-
selves with the myths and superstitions of the Old
World. The six great gods of the Egyptian pantheon
represent the creative days, and the * Sons of Horus '
the antediluvians. So we have the ten patriarchs or
kings of the old Chaldeans corresponding to those of
Genesis, and the heaven-defying Titans of the old
mythologies representing the giants before the Flood.
Perhaps, however, no illustration of this is more
1 See The Ice Age in Canada, by the author. Montreal : 1893.

i6o GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

patent or more touching than that well-known one
of Ishtar, the Astarte of the Syrians, the Artemis of
the Greeks, and who has been identified with the
chief female divinity of many other ancient nations*
even with that Diana whom 'all Asia and the
inhabited world worshippeth.'

The Chaldean deluge tablets for the first time
introduce her to us as an antediluvian goddess, and
inform us that she is the deified mother of men, the
same with the Biblical Isha, or Eve. In the crisis of
the Deluge we are told, * Ishtar spoke like a little
child, the great goddess pronounced her discourse.
Behold how mankind has returned to clay. I am
the mother who brought forth men> and like the fishes
they fill the sea. The gods because of the angels of
the abyss are weeping with me.' Ishtar is thus the
mother of men, herself deified and gone into the
heavens, but even there mourning over her hapless
children. She may be a star-goddess, or the moon
may be her emblem ; but for all that she appears in
this old legend as a deified human mother, -with a
mother's heart yearning over the progeny that had
sprung from her womb, and had been nourished in
her breast. It was this, more than her crescent or
starry diadem, that commended her worship to her
children. Her representative in Genesis, the first
mother, Isha, or Eve, is no goddess, but a woman.
Yet is she the emblem of life and the mother of a
promised Redeemer of humanity, who is to undo the
results of sin and to restore the Paradise of God

QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE 161

bruising the head of the great serpent who, in the
Chaldean as in the Hebrew story, represents the
power of evil. Ishtar has been represented as the
bride of the god Tammuz, the Adonis l of the Greeks,
and whose worship was one of the idolatries that led
the women of Israel astray, ' weeping for Tammuz ' ; 2
but it now appears that, according to the oldest
doctrine, she is his mother,3 and he was a ' keeper
of sheep/ dwelling in Eden, or Idinu, and murdered
by his brother Adar, who is also a god, and more
especially the god of war. In short, the story of
Ishtar, Tammuz, and Adar, the parent of so many
myths, is merely the familiar one of Cain and Abel.
Hence the belief that the murder of Tammuz was
connected with the Deluge, and henge the annual
lamentation of the women for Tammuz when the
spring inundations swelled and reddened the waters
of the streams — a rite possibly even antediluvian,
and commemorative of the mourning of the first
mother for her slain son, to rescue whom it was
fabled that she even descended into Hades.

Oppert regards the legend of Tammuz and Ishtar
as a solar myth, and supposes that the story of Cain
and Abel was based on it. But a family history of
crime and sorrow is a much more real and probable
thing as a basis for tradition than a solar myth, and
naturalists at least will be disposed to invert the
theory, and to believe that the simple Bible story was

1 From the Semitic title ' Adonai,' my Lord.

2 Ezekiel viii. 14. 3 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures.

L

162 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

the foundation of all the varied cults and superstitions
that clustered round Ishtar and Tammuz, as well as
personages like Osiris and Isis, who seem to have
been later avatars, or revivals of the same tale.

It would be easy to show that the deluge story has
intimate connections with other ancient myths and
superstitions, as well as with the results of modern
archaeology and geology. But were this all, our
inquiry, however interesting and curious, would have
little practical value. It has two important bearings
on the present time. Christianity bases itself, its
founder Himself being witness, on the early chapters
of Genesis, as history and prophecy, and the treat-
ment which these ancient and inspired records have
met with in modern times at the hands of destruc-
tive criticism is doing its worst in aid of the anti-
Christian tendencies of our time. To remove the
doubts that have been cast on these old records is
therefore a clear gain to the highest interests of
humanity, and if theology and philology are unable
to secure this benefit, natural science may well step
forward to lend its aid. Another connection with
present interests depends on the fact that, while
superstitions akin to that which deified the mother of
the promised seed, and introduced the world-wide
cults of Astarte and Aphrodite, still reign over great
masses of men, absolute materialism and desperate
struggle for existence among men and nations are
growing and extending themselves as never before
since the antediluvian times, and are provoking a

QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE 163

like signal and direful vengeance. In the midst of
all this, Christians look forward to the second coming
of Jesus Christ to destroy the powers of evil and to
inaugurate a better time ; and it was He who said,
' As it came to pass in the days of Noah, even so
shall it be in the days of the Son of Man.' Let us
remember the old story of the flood of Noah lest those
days come on us unawares.

i 2

i64 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

CHAPTER XI

THE PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC IN THE EAST

THE term prehistoric was first used by my friend Sir
Daniel Wilson in his Prehistoric Annals of Scotland.
It was intended to express 'the whole period dis-
closed to us by archaeological evidence as distin-
guished from what is known by written records/ As
Wilson himself reminds us, the term has no definite
chronological significance, since historic records, pro-
perly so-called, extend back in different places to
very different times. With reference, for example,
to the Chaldean and Hebrew peoples, if we take
their written records as history, this extends back
to the Deluge at least. Written history in Egypt
reaches to at least 3000 years B.C., while in Britain
it extends no farther than to the landing of Julius
Caesar, and in America to the first voyage of Colum-
bus. In Palestine we possess written records back
to the time of Abraham, but these relate mainly to
the Hebrew people. Of the populations which pre-
ceded the Abrahamic immigration, those * Canaanites
who were already in the land,' we have little history

THE PREHISTORIC EAST 165

before the Exodus, except the remarkable letters
recently unearthed at Tel-el-Amarna, in Egypt. In
Egypt we have very early records of the dwellers on
the Nile, but of the Arabian and African peoples,
whom they called Pun and Kesh, and the Asiatic
peoples, whom they knew as Cheta and Hyksos, we
have till lately known little more than their names
and the representations of them on Egyptian monu-
ments. In both countries there may be unsounded
depths of unwritten history before the first Egyptian
dynasty, and before the Abrahamic clan crossed the
Jordan.

What, then, in Egypt and Palestine may be re-
garded as prehistoric? I would answer — (i) The
geographical and other conditions of these countries
immediately before the advent of man. (2) The
evidence which they afford of the existence, habits,
and history of man in periods altogether antecedent
to any written history, except such notes as we have
in the Bible and elsewhere as to the so-called ante-
diluvian world. (3) The facts gleaned by archaeo-
logical evidence as to tribes known to us by no
records of their own, but only by occasional notices
in the history or monuments of other peoples. In
Egypt and Palestine such peoples as the Hyksos, the
Anakim, the Amalekites, the Hittites, and Amorites
are of this kind, though contemporary with historic
peoples.

Prehistoric annals may thus, in these countries,
embrace a wide scope, and may introduce us to un-

166 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

expected facts and questions respecting primitive
humanity. I propose in the present chapter to direct
attention to some points which may be regarded
as definitely ascertained in so far as archaeological
evidence can give any certainty, though I cannot
pretend, in so limited a space, to enter into details as
to their evidence.

Before proceeding, I may refer by way of illustra-
tion to another instance brought into very promi-
nent relief by the publication of Schuchardt's work
on Schliemann's excavations. We all know how
shadowy and unreal to our youthful minds were the
Homeric stories of the heroic age of Greece, and our
faith and certainty were not increased when we read
in the works of learned German critics that the
Homeric poems were composite productions of an
age much later than that to which they were sup-
posed to belong, and that their events were rather
myths than history. How completely has all this
been changed by the discoveries of Schliemann and
his followers ! Now we can stand on the very
threshold over which Priam and Hector walked.
We can see the jewels that may have adorned Helen
or Andromache. We can see double-handled cups
like that of old Nestor, and can recognise the inlaid
work of the shield of Achilles, and can walk in the
halls of Agamemnon. Thus the old Homeric heroes
become real men, as those of our time, and we can
understand their political and commercial relations
with other old peoples before quite as shadowy.

THE PREHISTORIC EAST 167

Recent discoveries in Egypt take us still farther
back. We now find that the * Hanebu/ who invaded
Egypt in the days of the Hebrew patriarchs, were
prehistoric Greeks, already civilised, and probably
possessing letters ages before the date of the Trojan
War. So it is with the Bible history, when we see
the contemporary pictures of the Egyptian slaves
toiling at their bricks, or when we stand in the
presence of the mummy of Rameses II. and know
that we look on the face of the Pharaoh who en-
slaved the Hebrews, and from whose presence Moses
fled.

Such discoveries give reality to history, and
similar discoveries are daily carrying us back to old
events, and to nations of whom there was no history
whatever, and are making them like our daily friends
and companions. A notable case is that of the
children of Heth, known to us only incidentally by
a few members of the nation who came in contact
with the early Hebrews. Suddenly we found that
these people were the great and formidable Kheta,
or Khatti, who contended on equal terms with the
Egyptians and Assyrians for the empire of Western
Asia ; and when we began to look for their remains,
there appeared, one after another, stone monuments,
seals, and engraved objects, recording their form and
their greatness, till the tables have quite been turned,
and there is danger that we may attach too much im-
portance to their agency in times of which we have
scarcely any written history. Thus, just as the

168 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

quarry and the mine reveal to us the fossil remains
of animals and plants great in their time, but long
since passed away, so do the spade and pick of the
excavator constantly turn up for us the bones and
the works of a fossil and prehistoric humanity.

Egypt may be said to have no prehistoric period
and our task with it will be limited to showing that
its written history scarcely goes back as far as many
Egyptologists suppose and confidently affirm, and
that beyond this it has as yet afforded nothing.
Egypt, in short, old though it seems, is really a new
country. When its priests, according to Plato, taunted
Solon with the newness of the Greeks and referred to
the old western empire of Atlantis, they were probably
trading on traditions of antediluvian times, which had
no more relation to the actual history of the Egyptian
people than to that of the Greeks.

The limestones and sandstones which bound the
Nile valley, sometimes rising in precipitous cliffs
from the bank of the stream, sometimes receding for
many miles beyond the edge of the green alluvial
plain, are rocks formed in cretaceous and early tertiary
times under the sea, when all Northern Africa and
Western Asia were beneath the ocean. When raised
from the sea-bed to form land, they were variously
bent and fractured, and the Nile valley occupies a
rift or fault, which, lying between the hard ridges of
the Arabian hills on the east and the more gentle
elevations of the Nubian desert on the west, afforded
an outlet for the waters of interior Africa and for the

THE PREHISTORIC MAST 169

great floods which in the rainy season pour down from
the mountains of Abyssinia.

This outlet has been available and has been in
process of erosion by running water from a period
long anterior to the advent of man, and with this
early prehuman history belonging to the miocene
and pliocene periods of geology we have no need to
meddle, except to state that it was closed by a great
subsidence, that of the pleistocene or glacial period,
when the land of North Africa and Western Asia
was depressed several hundred feet, when Africa was
separated from Asia, when the Nile valley was an
arm of the sea, and when sea-shells were deposited on
the rising grounds of Lower Egypt at a height of two
hundred feet or more.1 Such raised beaches are found
not only in the Nile valley but on the shores of the
Red Sea, and, as we shall see, along the coast of
Palestine ; but, so far as known, no remains of man
have been found in connection with them. This
great depression must, however, geologically speaking,
have been not much earlier than the advent of man,
since m many parts of the world we find human re-
mains in deposits of the next succeeding era.

This next period, that known to geologists as the
post-glacial or early modern, was characterised by
an entire change of physical conditions. The con-
tinents of the northern hemisphere were higher and

1 Hull, Geology of Palestine and adjacent Districts, Palestine
Exploration Fund. Dawson, Modern Science in Bible Lands, p. 311
and Appendix. References will be found in these works to the labours
of Fraas, Schweinfurth, and others.

170 GEOLOGY AND HTSTORY

wider than now. The details of this we have already
considered, and have seen that at this time the
Mediterranean was divided into two basins, and a
broad fringe of low land, now submerged, lay around
its eastern end. This was the age of those early
palaeolithic or palseocosmic men whose remains are
found in the caverns and gravels of Europe and Asia.
What was the condition of Egypt at this time ? The
Nile must have been flowing in its valley ; but there
was probably a waterfall or cataract at Silsilis in
Upper Egypt, and rapids lower down, and the alluvial
plain was much less extensive than now and forest-
clad, while the river seems to have been unable to
reach the Mediterranean and to have turned abruptly
eastward, discharging into a lake where the Isthmus
of Suez now is, and probably running thence into the
Red Sea, so that at this time the waters of the Nile
approached very near to those of the Jordan, a fact
which accounts for that similarity of their modern
fauna which has been remarked by so many naturalists.
I have myself collected in the deposits of this old
lake, near Ismailia, fresh-water shells of kinds now
living in the Upper Nile. If at this time men visited
the Nile valley, they must have been only a few bold
hunters in search of game, and having their permanent
homes on the Mediterranean plains now submerged.

If they left any remains we should find these in
caverns or rock shelters, or in the old gravels belonging
to this period which here and there project through
the alluvial plain. At one of these places, Jebel

THE PREHISTORIC EAST iji

Assart, near Thebes, General Pitt-Rivers has satisfied
himself of the occurrence of flint chips which may
have been of human workmanship ; l but after a day's
collecting at the spot, I failed to convince myself
that the numerous flint flakes in the gravel were
other than accidental fragments. If they really are
flint knives they are older than the period we are
now considering, and must be much older than the
first dynasty of the Egyptian historic kings.2 These
gravels were indeed, in early Egyptian times, so
consolidated that tombs were excavated in them.
Independently of this case, I know of no trustworthy
evidence of the residence of the earliest men in Egypt
Yet we know that at this time rude hunting tribes
had spread themselves over Western Asia, and over
Europe as far as the Atlantic, and were slaying the
mammoth, the hairy rhinoceros, the wild horse, and
other animals now extinct. They were the so-called
4 palaeolithic ' or historically antediluvian men, be-
longing, like the animals they hunted, to extinct
races, quite dissimilar physically from the historical
Egyptians. And yet in a recent review of the late
Miss Edwards's charming work, Pharaohs, Fellahs^
and Explorers, she was taken to task by an eminent
Egyptologist for statements similar to the above.
On the evidence of two additional finds of flint
implements on the surface, he affirms the existence

1 Journal of Archceo 7ogical Society, 188 1. Haynes's Journal of tht
American Academy of Sciences.

2 Dawson, Egypt and Syria, p. 149.

17* GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

of man in Egypt at a time when 'the Arabian
deserts were covered with verdure and intersected
by numerous streams/ that is, geologically speaking,
in the early pleistocene or pliocene period, or even
in the miocene !

Singularly enough, therefore, Egypt is to the
prehistoric annalist not an old country — less old
indeed than France and England, in both of which
we find evidence of the residence of the palaeolithic
cave men of the mammoth age. Thus, when we go
beyond local history into the prehistoric past, our
judgment as to the relative age of countries may be
strangely reversed.

It is true that in Egypt, as in most other coun-
tries, flint flakes, or other worked flints, are common
on the surface and in the superficial soil ; but there is
no good evidence that they did not belong to historic
times. A vivid light has been thrown on this point
by Petrie's discovery, in debris attributed to the age
of the twelfth dynasty, or approximately that of the
Hebrew patriarchs, of a wooden sickle of the ordi-
nary shape, but armed with flint flakes serrated at
their edges,1 though the handle is beautifully curved
in such a manner as to give a better and more con-
venient hold than with those now in use. This
primitive implement presents to us the Egyptian
farmer of that age reaping his fields of wheat and
barley with implements similar to those of the palaeo-
cosmic men. No doubt, at the same time, he used a

1 Kahun and Garob, Egyptian Exploration Fund publications.

THE PREHISTORIC EAST 173

harrow armed with rude flints, and may have used
flint flakes for cutting wood or for pointing his
arrows. Yet he was a member of a civilised and
highly-organised nation, which could execute great
works of canalisation and embankment, and could
construct tombs and temples that have not since
been surpassed. Can we doubt that the common
people in Palestine and other neighbouring countries
were equally in the flint age, or be surprised that,
somewhat later, Joshua used flint knives to circum-
cise the Israelites ? l How remarkable are these links
of connection between early Eastern civilisation and
the stone age ! and they relate to mere flakes, such
as if found separately might be styled * palaeolithic.'

In accordance with all this, when we examine the
tenants of the oldest Egyptian tombs, who are known
to us by their sculptured statues and their carved and
painted portraits, we find them to be the same with
the Egyptians of historic times, and not very dis-
similar from the modern Copts, and we also find that
their arts and civilisation were not very unlike those
of comparatively late date.

There are, however, some points in which the early
condition of even historic Egypt was different from
the present or from anything recorded in written
history.

I have elsewhere endeavoured, with the aid of my
friend Dr. Schweinfurth, to restore the appearance of
the Nile valley when first visited by man in the post-

1 Joshua v. 2, marginal reading.

174 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

diluvial period. It was then probably densely wooded
with forests similar to those in the modern Soudan,
and must have swarmed with animal life in the air, on
the land, and in the water, including many formidable
and dangerous beasts. On the other hand, to a people
derived from the Euphratean plains and accustomed
to irrigation, it must have seemed a very garden of
the Lord in its fertility and resources.

There is good reason to credit the Egyptian tradi-
tions that the first colonists crossed over from Southern
Arabia by the Red Sea from that land of Pun to which
the Egyptians attributed their theology, and settled
in the neighbourhood of Abydos, and that they made
their way thence to the northward, at a time when
the delta was yet a mere swamp,1 and when they had
slowly to extend their cultivation in Lower Egypt by
dikes and canals. If we ask when the first immi-
grants arrived, we are met by the most extravagantly
varied estimates, derived mainly from attempts to
deduce a chronology from the dynastic lists of
Egyptian kings. That these are very uncertain, and
in part duplicated, is now generally understood, but
still there is a tendency to ask for a time far exceed-
ing that for which we have any good warrant in
authentic history elsewhere. Herodotus estimated
the time necessary for the deposition of the mud of
the delta at 20,000 years ; but if we assume that
this deposit has been formed since the land approxi-
mately attained to its present level, allowing for

1 Herodotus, Book II. chap. 15.

THE PREHISTORIC EAST 175

some subsidence in the delta in consequence of the
weight of sediment, and estimating the average rate
of deposition at one-fifteenth of an inch per annum,
which is as low an amount as can probably be
assumed, we shall have numbers ranging from 5,300
to about 7,000 years for the lapse of time since the
delta was a bay of the Mediterranean.

It is true that the recent borings in the delta,
under the officers of the British Engineers, have
shown a great depth in some places without reaching
the original bottom of the old bay. Some geologists
have accordingly inferred from this a much greater
age for the deposit than that above stated,1 and in
this they are in one respect justified ; but they have
to bear in mind that only the upper part of the
material belongs to the modern period. A vast thick-
ness is due to the pleistocene and pliocene ages, when
the Nile was cutting out its valley and depositing the
excavated material in the sea at its mouth. A careful
examination of the borings proves by their composi-
tion that this is actually the case.2 Geologists who
have been guided by these facts in their estimates of
time have been taunted as affirming that a great
diluvial catastrophe occurred while quiet government
and civilised life were going on in Egypt. The
evidence for this early date of Egyptian colonisation
of the Nile valley is, as everyone knows, doubtful,

1 Judid, Report to Royal Society, 1885.

2 Modern Science in Bible Lands, where evidence of similar dates
fa other countries is stated.

i?6 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

and it might be retorted that archaeologists represent
the Egyptian government as dating from a period
when the Nile valley was an inland district, and
when the centres of human population must have
been, principally at least, on lands now submerged.

As an example of the fanciful way in which this
subject is sometimes treated, I may cite the fabulous
antiquity attributed to the great sphinx of Gizeh.
We are told that it is the most ancient monument in
Egypt, antedating the pyramids, and belonging to the
time of the mystic * Horshesu,' or people of Horus, of
Egyptian tradition. In one sense this is true, since
the sphinx is merely an undisturbed mass of the
eocene limestone of the plateau. But its form must
have been given to it after the surrounding limestone
was quarried away by the builders of the pyramids,
and consequently long after the founding of Mem-
phis by the first Egyptian king Mena. The sphinx
is, in short, a block of stone left by the quarry men,
and probably shaped by them as an appropriate
monument to the workmen who died while the
neighbouring pyiamids were being built. A similar
monument, of immensely greater antiquity from a
geological point of view, exists near Montreal, in a
huge boulder of Laurentian gneiss, placed on a
pedestal by the workmen employed on the Victoria
Bridge, in memory of immigrants who died of ship
fever in the years when the bridge was being built.

It follows from all this that the monumental his-
tory of Egypt, extending to about 3000 years B.C.,

THE PREHISTORIC EAST 177

gives us the whole story of the country, unless
some chance memorial of a population belonging to
the post-glacial age should in future be found. There
are, however, things in Egypt which illustrate pre-
historic times in other countries, and some of these
have lately thrown a new and strange light on the
early history of Palestine, and especially on the Bible
history.

One of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty,
whose historical position was probably between the
time of Joseph and that of Moses, Amunoph III., is
believed to have married an Asiatic wife, and under
her influence, he and his successor, Amunoph IV., or
Khu en-Aten, seem to have swerved from the old
polytheism of Egypt, and introduced a new worship,
that of Aten,. a god visibly represented by the disk
of the sun, and, therefore, in some sense identical
with Ra, the chief god of Egypt ; but there was
something in this new worship offensive to the priests
of Ra. Perhaps it was regarded as a Semitic or
Asiatic innovation, or led to the introduction of un-
popular Semitic priests and officers. Amunoph IV.
consequently abandoned the royal residence at
Thebes, and established a new capital at a place
now called Tel-el-Amarna, almost at the boundary
of Upper and Lower Egypt, and from this place he
ruled not only Egypt but a vast region in Western
Asia, which had been subjected to the Egyptian
government in the re'gn of the third Amunoph.
From these subject districts, extending from the

M

1 78 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

frontiers of Egypt to xAsia Minor on the north, and
to the Euphrates on the east, came great numbers of
despatches to the Pharaoh, and these were written
not on papyrus or skin, but on tablets of clay har-
dened by baking, and the writing was not that of
Egypt, but the arrow-head script of Chaldea, which
seems at this time to have been the current writing
throughout Western Asia.1

The scribes of the Egyptian king read these docu-
ments, answered them as directed by their master,
docketed them, and laid them up for reference ; and,
strange to say, a few years ago, Arabs, digging in
the old mounds, brought them to light, and we have
before us, translated into English, a great number
of letters, written from cities of Palestine and its
vicinity about a hundred years before the Exodus,
and giving us word-pictures of the politics and con-
flicts of the Canaanites and Hittites and other
peoples, long before Joshua came in contact with
them. Among other things in this correspondence,
we find remarkable confirmation of the sacred and
political influence of Jerusalem, which the Bible pre-
sents to us in the widely separated stories of Mel-
chisedec, king of Salem, in the time of Abraham,

1 It is possible, however, that it may really have been a language
of diplomacy merely, and may have been used by the Semitic agents
of Amunoph as a cipher to communicate with the Egyptian court,
and which could not be read by messengers or enemies acquainted
only with Hittite or Egyptian hieroglyphics or with the Phoenician
characters. For a similar case see 2 Kings xviii. 26.

THE PREHISTORIC EAST 179.

and of the suzerainty of Adonizedec, king of Jeru-
salem, in the time of Joshua.

At the time in question, Jerusalem was ruled by
a king or chief, subject to Egypt, but, as in the times
of Abraham and Joshua, exercising some headship
over neighbouring cities. He complains of certain
hostile peoples called chabiri> a name supposed by
Zimmel1 to be equivalent to Ibrim or Hebrews, which
to some may seem strange, as the Israelites were,
according to the generally received chronology, at
this time in Egypt. We must bear in mind, how-
ever, that according to the Bible the Israelites were
not the only 'children of Eber.' The Edomites,
Moabites, Ammonites, Ishmaelites, and Midianites
were equally entitled to this name ; and we know,
from the second chapter of Deuteronomy, that these
were warlike and intrusive peoples, who had, before
the Exodus, dispossessed several native tribes, so
that we do not wonder at the fact that a king of
Jerusalem might have been suffering from their
attacks long before the Exodus.2 It may be noted
incidentally here, that this wide application of the term
Hebrew accords with the use of the name Aperiu
for Semitic peoples other than Israelites in Egypt

1 Inaugural Lecture, Halle, 1891. Possibly these people were
merely ' confederate ' Hittites and Amorites(Sayce, Records of the Past).

2 I cannot agree with Conder that the Exodus took place as early
as the time of Amunoph III. The evidence we have from Egyptian
sources plainly indicates one of the immediate successors of Rameses II.
as the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

M 2

i8o GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

We have here also a note on an obscure passage
in the life of Moses, namely, his apparent want of
acquaintance with the name Jehovah until revealed
to him at Horeb.1 Now, as reported in Exodus,
Moses in that interview addressed God as ' Adon,'
which is supposed to be the Hebrew equivalent of
' Aten,' the meaning being Lord. This is a curious
incidental agreement with the prevalence of the Aten
worship in Egypt, and shows that this name may
have been currently used by the Israelites, whose
God Moses himself calls Adon, till commanded to
use the name Jehovah.

A second point of contact of Egypt and Pales-
tine is in the painting and sculptures of hostile and
conquered nations in Egyptian temples and tombs.
These were evidently intended to be portraits, and
an admirable series of them has been published by
Mr. Petrie under a commission from the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. By
means of these excellent photographs, now before
me, we can see for ourselves the physiognomy and
form of head of the Amorite, Philistine, Hittite, and
many other peoples previously known to us only by
name and a few historical facts ; and thus with their
correspondence, as preserved in the Tel-el-Amarna
tablets, and their pictures as given by Petrie, we

1 Exodus iii. 16 et seqq. This passage has been often misunder-
stood, but it certainly shows that the name Jehovah had become
nearly obsolete among the Hebrews in Egypt, and that the name
usually given to God was Adon or Aten.

THE PREHISTORIC EAST 181

have them before us much as we have the speeches
and portraits of our contemporaries in the illustrated
newspapers, and can venture to express some opinion
as to their ethnic affinities and appearance, and can
judge more accurately as to the familiar statements
of the Bible respecting them.1 Lastly, Maspero and
Tomkins have, with the aid of the names fixed by
the survey of Western Palestine, revised the lists
given by Thothmes III., in the temple of Karnak, of
the places which this Egyptian Alexander had con-
quered ; and they have thus verified the Hebrew
geography of the Books of Joshua and Judges.

Another unexpected acquisition is the solution of
the mystery which has enshrouded that mysterious
people known as Hyksos or shepherd kings, who
invaded Egypt about the time of the Hebrew
patriarchs, and, after keeping the Egyptians in sub-
jection for centuries, were finally expelled by the
predecessors of the Amunoph already referred to.
They constitute a great feature in early Egyptian
history, but disappear mysteriously, leaving no trace
but a few sculptured heads, Turanian in aspect and
markedly contrasting with those of the native Egyp-
tians. It now appears that a people of Northern
Syria and Mesopotamia, known to the Egyptians at
a later time as Mitanni, and who were neighbours
of and associated with the Northern Hittites, have
the features of the Hyksos. It also seems from a
letter in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets that they spoke

1 Sayce, Races of the Old Testament, Religious Tract Society.

182 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

a non-Semitic or Turanian language akin to that of
the Hittites. Thus we have traced the shepherd
kings to their origin, and, curiously enough, Cushan-
rish-athaim, who oppressed the Israelites in the days
of Othniel, seems to represent a later inroad of the
same people.

Such 'restitutions of decayed intelligence' now
meet us on every hand as the results of modern
exploration, and are enabling us to bridge over the
gaps which have separated the geological ages from
the prehistoric and historic human periods in those
ancient countries where civilisation seems to have
originated.

CHAPTER XII

THE NEANTHROPIC DISPERSION AND ALLIED
TOPICS

THE remarkable record of the early distribution of
the sons of Noah (' Toledoth ' of the sons of Noah)
in Genesis x. may be regarded, relatively to most of
the nations it refers to, as a scrap of prehistoric lore
of the most intensely interesting character. From
the old ' Phaleg ' of Bochart to the recent commen-
taries of Delitzsch and other German scholars, it has
received a host of more or less conjectural explana-
tions ; and while all agree in extolling its value and
importance as a * Beginning of History,' nothing can
be more various than the views taken of it. Only
in the light of the recent discoveries and researches
already referred to can we arrive at a clear conception
of its import ; but with these and some common sense
we may hope to be more fortunate than the older
interpreters. It is necessary, however, to explain
here that, for want of a little scientific precision,
many modern archaeologists still fail in their inter-
pretations. They tell us that the Toledoth are not
properly 'ethnological,' but rather * ethnographical,1

184 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

and that we are to regard the document as referring,
not to the genealogical affiliations of nations, but to
their accidental geographical positions at the time of
the record.

Now this is precisely what the writer, with a sure
scientific instinct, carefully guards against, and ex-
plicitly informs us he did not intend. He tells us
that he gives the ' generations of the sons of Noah'
and their descendants, and at the ends of the three
lists relating to these sons, he is careful to say that
he has given them ' in their lands, each according to
his language, after their families, in their nations/ or
the formula is slightly varied into ' after their families,
after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations.'
Lastly, in the conclusion of the whole table he
reiterates, * These are the families of the sons of
Noah, according to their generations, after their
nations.' All these statements, let it be observed,
are acknowledged to be parts of one (Elohistic)
document. It is clear, therefore, that the writer
intends us to understand that the determining elements
of his classification are neither physical characters
nor accidents of geographical distribution, but descent
an I original language — two primary and scientific
grounds of classification, and which common sense
requires us to adhere to in interpreting the document,
whose value will depend on the certainty with Which
the writer could ascertain facts as to these criteria :
criteria which are, of course, less open to the observa-
tion of later inquirers, who may find difficulty in

1 86 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

ascertaining either descent or original language, and
in default of these may be obliged to resort to other
grounds of classification.

Among modern archaeologists it has been a fruit-
ful source of controversy whether we should classify
men according to their skulls or to their tongues ; in
other words, whether physical characters or linguistic
should be dominant in our classifications. Neither
ground is absolutely certain. We may find long and
short skulls in the same grave-mound, and there are
intermediate forms which defy certain arrangement.
In like manner history assures us that people of one
race have often adopted the language of another.
True science warns us that we may err unless we give
a fair valuation to every available character. The
ethnologist of Genesis considers both physical and
linguistic characters, but bases his arrangement
mainly on the sure ground of descent along with
original language.

It may be said, however, that if taken in the
sense obviously intended by the writer, the list will
not correspond with the facts. A few data have,
however, to be taken into the account in order to give
this early writer fair play.

i. The record has nothing to do with antediluvian
peoples or with survivors of the Deluge other than
the sons of Noah, if there were any such. Therefore,
those ethnologists who are sceptical as to the his-
torical Deluge, and who postulate an uninterrupted
advance of man through long ages of semi-bestial

THE DISPERSION 187

brutality, have nothing in common with our narrator,
and cannot possibly understand his statements.

2. The document does not profess to be a series
of ethnological inferences from the present or ancient
characters of different nations, but an actual his-
torical statement of the known migrations of men
from a common centre in Shinar, the Sumir of the
Chaldeans.

3. It relates only to the primary distribution of
men from their alleged centre over certain districts
of Western Asia, Eastern Europe, and Northern
Africa, and does not profess to know anything of
their subsequent migrations or history.

4. It is thus not responsible for those later, even
if very ancient, changes which displaced one race by
another, or obliged one race to move on by the
pressure of another, nor for any changes of language
or mixtures of races which may have occurred in
these movements.

5. It affirms nothing as to the physical characters
of the races referred to, except as they may be
inferred from heredity, but it implies some resemblance
in language between the derivatives of the same
stock, and this, be it observed, notwithstanding the
added narrative of the confusion of tongues at Babel,1
which the narrator does not regard as interfering
with the fact of languages originally forming a few
branches proceeding from a common stock.

1 Held by some to belong to another (Jahvistic) document, but
certainly incorporated by the early editor.

i88 GEOLOGY AAD HISTORY

6. If we ask what our narrator supposed to be
the original or Noachic tongue, we might infer from
his three lines of descent, and from the locality of the
dispersion and the episode of Nimrod's prehistoric
kingdom, that the primitive language of Chaldea
would be the original stem ; and this we now know
from authentic written records to have been an
agglutinate language of the type usually known as
Turanian, and more closely allied to the Tartar and
Chinese tongues than to other kinds of speech. It
would follow that what we now call Semitic and
Aryan or Japhetic forms of speech must, in the view
of our ancient authority, date from the sequelae of the
great ' confusion of tongues.'

These points being premised, we can clear away
the fogs which have been gathered around this little
luminous spot in the early history of the world, and
can trace at least the principal ethnic lines of radiation
from it. Though the writer gives us three main
branches of affiliation of the children of Noah, he
really refers to six principal lines of migration, three
of them belonging to that multifarious progeny of
Ham, in which he seems to include both the Turanian
and Negroid types of our ordinary classifications, as
well as some of the brown and yellow races.

One of the lines of affiliation of Ham leads
eastward and is not traced ; but if the Cushite people,
who are said to have gone to the land which in earlier
antediluvian times was that of ' gold and bedolach
and shoham stone,' that is, along the fertile valley of

THE DISPERSION 189

Susiana, were those primitive people, preceding the
Elamites of history, who are said to have spoken an
agglutinate language,1 then we have at least one
stage of this migration. A second line leads west to
the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, to Egypt and
to North Africa. A third passes south-westward
through Southern Arabia and across the Red Sea
into interior Africa. To the sons of Japhet are
ascribed two lines of migration, one through Asia
Minor and the northern coasts of the Mediterranean ;
another north-west, around the Black Sea. The
Semites would seem to have been a less wandering
people at the first, but subsequently to have encroached
on and mingled with the Hamites, and especially on
that western line of migration leading to the Mediter-
ranean. All this can be gathered from undisputed
national names in the several lines of migration above
sketched, without touching on the more obscure and
doubtful names or referring to tribes which remained
near the original centre. We must, however, inquire
a little more particularly into the movements bearing
on Palestine and Egypt.

1 Sayce (Hibbert Lectures) and Bagster's Records oj the Past.
Inscriptions of Cyrus published in the last volume of the latter appear
to set at rest the vexed questions relating to early Elam. It would
seem that in the earliest -times Cushites and Semitic Elamites
contended for the fertile plains and the mountains east of the Tigris,
and were finally subjugated by Japhetic Medes and Persians. Thus
this region first formed a part of the Cushite Nimrodic empire
(Genesis ii. n, x. 8) ; it then became the seat of a conquering Elamite
power (Genesis xiv. I to 4) ; and was finally a central part of the
Medo-Persian empire. All this agrees with the Bible and the
inscriptions, as well as in the main with Herodotus.

190 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

So far as the writer in Genesis is informed, he
does not seem to be aware of any sons of Japhet
having colonised Palestine or Egypt. It was only in
the later reflux of population that the sons of Javan
gained a foothold in these regions. They were both
colonised primarily by Hamites and subsequently
intruded on by Semites.

Here a little prehistoric interlude noted by the
writer, or by an author whom he quotes, gives a
valuable clue not often attended to. The oldest son
of Ham, Cush, begat Nimrod, the mighty hunter and
prehistoric conqueror, who organised the first empire
in that Euphratean plain which subsequently became
•the nucleus of the Babylonian and Assyrian power.
The site of his kingdom cannot be doubted, for
cities well known in historic times, Babel, Erech,
Accad, and Calneh, were included in it, as well as
probably Nineveh. The first point which I wish to
make in this connection is that we cannot suppose
this to have been a Semitic empire. Its nucleus
must have been composed of Nimrod's tribal con-
nections, who were Hamites and presumably Cushites.
He is, indeed, said to have gone into or invaded the
land of Ashur, and if by this is meant the Semitic
Ashur, he must have been hostile to these people,
as indeed the Chaldeans were in later times. The
next point to be noted is that the Nimrodic
empire must have originated at a time when the
Cushites were still strong on the Lower Euphrates,
and before that great movement of these people

THE DISPERSION 191

which carried them across Arabia to the Upper
Nile, and ultimately caused the name Cush or
Kesh to be almost exclusively applied to the
Ethiopians of Africa. Now is this history, or mere
legend ?

The answer of archaeology is not doubtful. We
have in the earliest monuments of Chaldea evidence

HEAD ILLUSTRATING THE MOST ANCIENT TYPE OF

CUSHITE TURANIAN, FROM TEL-LOH (after de Sarzec).
The cap is perhaps an imitation of the antediluvian
shell-caps, like that of the ' man of Mentorie. '

that there was a pre-Semitic population, to whom,
indeed, it is believed that the Semites who invaded
the country owed much of their civilisation. A recent
writer has said that * outside of the Bible we know-
nothing of Nimrod,' but others see a trace of him in
the legendary hero of Chaldean tradition, Gisdubar
or Gingamos, while others think that, as Na-marod,

192 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

he may be the original of Merodach, the tutelary god
of Babylon. Independently of this, there was cer-
tainly an early Chaldean and * Turanian' empire,
which must have had some founder, whatever his
name, and which was not Semitic or Aryan, and
therefore what an early writer would call Hamitic.
Further, our author traces from this region the great
Cushite line of migration, which includes such well-
known names as Seba, Sabta, Sheba and Dedan, into
Arabia on the way to Africa. Here the Egyptian
monuments take up the tale, and inform us of a South
Arabian and East African people, the people of Pun
or Punt, represented as like to themselves and to the
Kesh or Ethiopians, and who thus correspond to the
Arabian Cushites of Genesis. In accordance with
this the Abyssinian of to-day is scarcely distinguish-
able from the old Punites as represented on the
Egyptian monuments.1

Thus the primitive Cushite kingdom and one of
the great lines of Cushite migration are established
by ancient monuments. Let it be further observed
that, as represented in Egypt, these primitive
Ethiopians were not black, but of a reddish or
brownish colour, like the Egyptians themselves, and
that their migration explains the resemblance of the
customs and religion of early Egypt to those of
Babylonia, and the ascription by the Egyptians of
the origin of their gods to the land of Pun.

1 The recent discoveries of Glaser with reference to the early
civilisation of Southern Arabia also bear on this point.

THE DISPERSION 193

The remaining sons of Ham, Mizraim, Put and
Canaan, are not mentioned in connection with the
old Nimrodic kingdom, and seem to have moved
westward at a very early period. They were already
' in the land/ and apparently constituted a consider-
able citizen population before the migration of
Abraham.

Mizraim represents the twin populations of the
delta and Lower Egypt, and the Tel-el-Amarna
tablets inform us that long before the time of Moses
Mitzor was the ordinary name of Egypt, while we
know that its early population was closely allied in
features and language to the Cushites.

Canaan 1 heads a central line of migration, and
Sidon and Cheth are said to have been his leading
sons. The first represents the Phoenician maritime
power of Northern Syria, the second that great nation
known to the Egyptians as Kheta and to the
Assyrians as Khatti, whose territory extended from
Carchemish on the Euphrates through the plain of
Coele-Syria to Hebron in Southern Palestine, and not
improbably into the delta. They were a people
whose language was allied to that of Cushite Chal-
dea,2 whose features were of a coarser type than those
of their more southern confreres, and who, according
to the Egyptian annals, were closely allied with the

1 Canaan with our old historian is the name of a man, but it came
to designate first the 'low country' or coast region of Western
Palestine, and then the whole of Palestine.

- Conder and others call it Turanian.

N

194 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

Amorites, Jebusites, and other people identified with
Canaan in the Old Testament. The Cheta, at one
time known only as the sons of Heth in the Old
Testament, may be said in our time to have ex-
perienced a sudden resurrection, and now bulk so
largely in the minds of archaeologists that their
importance is in danger of being exaggerated.

A significant note is added : * Afterwards were
the families of the Canaanites scattered abroad.' How
could this be ? Their line of migration and settle-
ment led directly to the great sea, and was hemmed
in by that of the Japhetites on the north and of the
Cushites on the south ; but they made the sea their
highway, and soon there was no coast from end to
end of the Mediterranean, and far along the European
and African shores of the Atlantic, that was not
familiar with the Phoenician Canaanite. But it may
be said these Phoenicians were a Semitic people.
They certainly spoke a Semitic language allied to
the Hebrew, but what right have we to attribute
Semitic languages solely to the descendants of the
Biblical Shem ? Even if these languages originated
with them they may have spread to other peoples, as
we know they replaced the old Turanian speech of
Babylonia, just as the Arabic has extinguished other
languages in Egypt itself. In whatever way the
Phoenicians acquired a Semitic tongue, in physical
character they were not Semitic, but closely allied to
the Hittites, the Philistines, and the people of Mitzor,
or Egypt. The Egyptian sculptures prove this, and

THE DISPERSION 195

the celebrated Capuan bust of Hannibal reminds us
of the features of the old Hyksos kings of Egypt,
who were no doubt of Hamite or Turanian stock.

Finally, what relation does the record in Genesis x.
bear to the prehistoric peoples of the neanthropic
age ? These must have been in the main the ad-
vanced colonists and straggling adventurers of the
leading lines of migration. We find such people
recorded in the Pentateuch, and also in the caverns
and shelters of Phoenicia, as preceding the Canaan-
ites in Syria ; and such nomads and hunters must
have streamed out into Europe and Africa in advance
of the more settled and slowly advancing agricultural
peoples. At first they must have been few, rude, and
users of stone implements only, living chiefly by
hunting and fishing ; but some of them may have
taken with them domestic animals and seeds of grains,
and so have established here and there civilised com-
munities. In later times, new colonists and commerce
introduced among them bronze and iron and more
advanced arts. Thus these early neanthropic peoples
belonged to one or other of the great lines of migra-
tion indicated in our old record ; though by virtue of
physical changes and dialectic differences induced by
isolation and new conditions of life, and which in
such circumstances would arise with a rapidity un-
exampled in later times, as well as the want of
historical annals, it has in many cases become difficult
or impossible precisely to trace their affinities. Even
in Palestine, at the time of the Exodus, peoples of

l\ 2

196 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

this kind (Horites, Avvites, &c.) l were known, whose
affinities had been lost ; and it is not necessary to
suppose that these were remnants of antediluvians,
since what we know in modern times of the wanderers
on the outskirts of great migrations sufficiently ac-
counts for their existence.

This is, I think, a fair summary of the testimony
of the writer of Genesis x., as compared with the
general evidence of history and archaeology. But we
have something further to learn from what may be
called the fossil remains of prehistoric peoples as
embodied in the Egyptian monuments, which are
conversant with all the nations around the eastern
end of the Mediterranean.

The Egyptians divided the nations known to them
into four groups, of which they have given us several
representations in tombs and public buildings. One
of these consisted of their own race. The other three
were as follows ; (i) Southern peoples mostly of
dark complexions, ranging from light brown to black.
These included the Cushites, Punites, and negroes.

(2) Western peoples mostly of fair complexions in-
habiting the islands and northern coasts of the
Mediterranean, the * Hanebu ' or chiefs of the north
or of the isles, with some populations of North
Africa, the so-called white Lybians and Maxyans.

(3) Northern or north-eastern peoples, or those of
Syria and the neighbouring parts of Western Asia,
Amorites, Hittites, Edomites, Arabs, &c., usually
represented as of yellowish complexion.

1 Deuteronomy ii.

THE DTSPERSION 197

The first of these divisions evidently corresponds
with the line of Cushite migration of Genesis, extend-
ing from Shinar through Southern Arabia, Nubia,
and Ethiopia, and of which the negroes are apparently
degraded members pushed in advance of the others,
while the populations of Pun and Kesh, the southern
Arabians and their relatives in Africa, closely re-
semble, as figured in the monuments, the Egyptians
themselves.

The second group of the Egyptian classification
represents those so-called Aryan peoples of Europe
and its islands, and parts of Northern Africa, of
whom the Greeks are a typical race, and who in
Genesis are said to have possessed the ' Isles of the
Gentiles ' ; though in the wave of migration from
the east they were in many places preceded by
non-Aryan races, Pelasgians, Iberians, &c., possibly
wandering Hamitic tribes, while they were also in-
vaded by that scattering abroad of the Phoenician
Canaan ites referred to in Genesis. They are repre-
sented in the monuments as people with European
features, fair complexions, and sometimes fair hair
and blue eyes.

The third group is the most varied of the whole,
because its seat in Syria was a meeting-place of many
tribes. Its most ancient members, the Phoenicians
and allied nations, were, according to the monuments,
men resembling the Egyptian and Cushite type, and
these, no doubt, were those pre-Semitic and pre-
historic nations of Canaan referred to in the remark-

198 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

able notes regarding the Emim, Zuzim, &c., in the
second chapter of Deuteronomy, which may be re-
garded as a foot-note to the Toledoth of Genesis x.
These aborigines were invaded by men of different
types. First, we find in the monuments that the
Amorites of the Palestine hills were a fair people
with somewhat European features, like some of the
present populations of the Lebanon. When re-
turning over the Lebanon in 1884 we met a large
company of men with camels and donkeys carrying
merchandise. They were fair-complexioned and with
brown hair, and from their features I might have
supposed they were Scottish Highlanders. I was
told they were Druses, and they were evidently much
like, as are indeed many of the modern fellaheen of
the Palestine hills, the Amar as they are pictured in
Egypt. These white peoples, though reckoned in
the Bible as Hamites, may have had a mixture of
Aryan blood. It is to be noted here that the
Amorite chiefs, Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre, named
as confederate with Abraham, have non-Semitic
names.

A later inroad was that of the Hittites, evidently
a people having affinity with the Philistines and
Egyptians, but whose chiefs and nobles seem to have
been of Tartar blood, like the modern Turks. The
names of their kings seem also to have been non-
Semitic. Later, the great westward migration of
Semitic peoples, to which that of Abraham himself
belongs, not only introduced the -Israelites but many

THE DISPERSION 199

nations of Semitic or mixed blood, the Moabites,
Ammonites, Edomites, Ishmaelites, &c., whom we
find figuring in the Egyptian monuments as yellow
or brownish people with a Jewish style of features,
and all of whom, as mentioned above, would be known
to the Egyptians and Canaanites as ' Hebrews.' l

Thus the monuments confirm the Jewish record,
and the confusion which some ethnologists have
introduced into the matter arises from their applying
in an arbitrary manner the special tests of physical
and philological characteristics, and neglecting to
distinguish the primary migrations of men from sub-
sequent intrusions.

Another singular point of agreement is that, just
as in Egypt we find men civilised from the first, so
we find elsewhere. In Egypt writing and literature
date from before the time of Abraham. In like
manner we have no monumental evidence of any
time when the Accadian people of Babylonia were
destitute of writing and science, and we now find
that there were learned scribes in all the cities of
Canaan, and that the Phoenicians and Southern
Arabians knew their alphabet ages before Moses,
while even the Greeks seem to have known alpha-
betic writing long before the Mosaic age.2 These
men, in short, were descendants of the survivors of

1 This is independent of the question whether we regard the name
Eber as that of an ancestor, or merely of men from beyond the
Euphrates.

2 Petrie, Tllahun, Kahun and Garob, 1891.

200 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

the Noachian Deluge, and therefore civilised from
the first ; and though we have no certain evidence of
letters before the Flood, except the statement of the
author of the Babylonian deluge tablets, that Noah
hid written archives at Sippara before going into
the ark, yet it is quite certain that men who could
build Noah's ship are not unworthy ancestors of the
Phoenician seamen, who probably launched their barks
on the Mediterranean before the death of Noah himself.
Thus, whatever value we may attach to the record
in Genesis, we cannot refuse to admit that it is
thoroughly consistent with itself and with the testi-
mony of the oldest monuments of Asia and Africa,
as it is also with the evidence of the geological
changes of the pleistocene and early modern
epoch.

In like manner the Egyptian inscriptions of the
conquests of Thothmes III. give us a pre-Mosaic
record of Palestinian geography corresponding with
that of the Hebrew conquest, and the pictures of
sieges coincide with the excavations of Petrie at
Lachish in restoring those Canaanite towns, ' walled
up to heaven/ which excited the fear of the Israelites.
Neither can we scoff at the illiteracy of men who
were carrying on diplomatic correspondence in written
despatches before Genesis itself was compiled. Nor
can we doubt the military prowess of these people,
their chariot forces, their sculptured idols and
images, their wealth of gold and silver, their agri-
cultural and artistic skill. All these are amply

THE DISPERSE!* 201

proved by the monuments of the Egyptians and the
Hittites.1

Palestine thus presents a prehistoric past parallel
with the earlier years of Egypt. It has, however, a
still earlier period, for in Palestine, as stated in a
previous chapter, we have evidence of the existence
of man long before the dispersion of the sons of
Noah. To appreciate this evidence, we must go
back, as in the case of Egypt, to the pre-human
period. All along the coast of Palestine, from Jaffa
to the northern limit of old Phoenicia, the geological
traveller sees evidence of a recent submergence, in
the occurrence of sandstone, gravel, and limestone
with shells and other marine remains of species still
living in the Mediterranean. These are the relics of
that pleistocene submergence already referred to, in
which the Nile valley was an arm of the sea and
Africa was an island. No evidence has been found
of the residence of man in Palestine in this period,
when, as the sea washed the very bases of the hills,
and the plains were under water, it was certainly not
very well suited to his abode. The climate was also
probably more severe than at present, and the glaciers
of Lebanon must have extended nearly to the sea.

1 Bliss, in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration
Fund for April 1892, figures many interesting objects, found in the
lower or Amorite stratum of the mound of Tell-el-Hesy (Lachish).
We have here a bronze battle-axe and heads of javelins that may have
been used against the soldiers of Joshua, and axes and pottery of
equally early date, along with multitudes of flint flakes, arrow-heads,
&c., used at this early time. It is to be hoped that the further
exploration of this site may yield yet more interesting results.

202 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

This was the time of the so-called glacial period in
Western Europe.

This, however, was succeeded by that post-glacial
period in which, as already explained, the area of
the Mediterranean was much smaller than at present,
and the land encroached far upon the bed of the sea.
This, the second continental period, is that in which
man makes his first undoubted appearance in Europe,
and we have evidence of the same kind in Syria,
to which I have already directed attention in the
description of the caverns of the Lebanon, in
Chapter IV.

That the occupancy of these caves is very ancient
is proved by the fact that the old Egyptian con-
querors, who cut a road for themselves over these
precipices before the Exodus, seem to have found
them in the same state as at present, while farther
south ancient Syrian tombs are excavated in similar
bone breccias. But there is better evidence than this.
The bones and teeth in these caves belong not to the
animals which have inhabited the Lebanon in historic
times, but to creatures like the hairy rhinoceros and
the bison, now extinct, which could not have lived in
this region since the comparatively modern period in
which the Mediterranean resumed its dominion over
that great plain between Phoenicia and Cyprus. This
we know had been submerged long before the first
migrations of the Himites into Phoenicia, even before
the entrance of those comparatively rude tribes which
seem to have inhabited the country before the Phceni-

THE DISPERSION 203

cian colonisation.1 Unfortunately no burials of these
early men have yet been found, and perhaps the
Lebanon caves were only their summer sojourns on
hunting expeditions. They were, however, probably
of the same stock with the races (the Cro-magnon
and Canstadt) of the so-called mammoth age in
Western Europe, who have left similar remains. Thus
we can carry man in the Lebanon back to that abso-
lutely prehistoric age which preceded the Noachian
Deluge and the dispersion of the Noachidae.2

If in imagination we suppose ourselves to visit
the caves of the Nahr-el-Kelb pass, when they were
inhabited by these early men, we should find them to
be tall muscular people, clothed in skins, armed with
flint-tipped javelins and flint hatchets, and cooking
the animals caught in the chase in the mouths of
their caves. They were probably examples of the
ruder and less civilised members of that powerful and
energetic antediluvian population which had appa-
rently perfected so many arts, and the remains of
whose more advanced communities are now buried
in the silt of the sea bottom. If we looked out
westward on what is now the Mediterranean, we
should see a wide wooded or grassy plain as far as
eye could reach, and perhaps might discern vast
herds of elephant, rhinoceros, and bison wandering

1 Some of these tribes also lived in caves, as that of Ant Elias, but
the animals they consumed are those now living in the Lebanon.

2 Dawson, Trans. Viet. Institute, May 1884; also Modern Science
in Bible Lands.

204 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

over these plains in their annual migrations. Possibly
on the far margin of the land we might see the smoke
of antediluvian towns long ago deeply submerged in
the sea.

The great diluvial catastrophe which closed this
period, and finally introduced the present geographical
conditions, we have seen good reason to identify with
the historical Deluge, and the old peoples of the age
of the mammoth and rhinoceros were antediluvians,
and must have perished from the earth before the
earliest migration of the Beni Noah.

Putting together the results referred to in the
preceding pages, we may restore the prehistoric ages
of the Eastern Mediterranean under the following
statements :

1. In the period immediately preceding human
occupancy, the land of Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia
participated in the great pleistocene depression,
accompanied by a rigorous climate.

2. The next stage was one of continental elevation,
in which the borders of the Mediterranean were dry
land, and vast plains in this basin, and even in the
Western Atlantic, were open to human migration. In
this age palseocosmic men took up their abode all over
Western Asia, Europe, and Northern Africa, and
probably occupied broad lands since submerged. At
this period the region was inhabited by the mammoth,
rhinoceros, bison, and other large animals now alto-
gether or locally extinct.

3. The earlier part of this post-glacial or antedi-

THE DISPERSION 205

luvian period was one of mild climatal conditions,
followed by a slight return of the conditions of the
previous glacial age.

4. The period was terminated by a great sub-
mergence, accompanied with vast destruction of
animal and human life ; and of comparatively short
duration, corresponding to the historical Deluge.

5. From this depression the more limited conti-
nents of the modern period were elevated, and man
again overspread them from his primitive seats in
the Euphratean region, as recorded in the tenth
chapter of Genesis.

6. In this early migration the Biblical Hamites,
forming one of the groups of men vaguely known as
Turanian, first spread themselves over Palestine and
Egypt, and founded the early Phoenician, Canaanite,
Mizraimite, and Cushite tribes and nations.

7. In early historic times Semitic peoples,
Hebrews and others from the east, and Mongoloid
peoples from the north, migrated into Palestine
and dominated and mixed with the primitive
tribes, finally penetrating into Egypt and esta-
blishing there the dominion known as that of the
Hyksos. The historical Moabites, Ammonites,
Ishmaelites, and Hittites were peoples of this
character, having a substratum of Hamite blood
with aristocracies of Semitic or Tartar origin.

It will be observed that while .archaeological
evidence tends to illustrate and corroborate that
wonderful collection of early historical documents

206 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

contained in the Book of Genesis, and to prove
their great antiquity, on the other hand these
documents prove to be the most precious sources
of information as to the antediluvian age, the great
Flood, the earliest dispersion of men, the old Nimrodic
empire, the connections of Asiatic and African
civilisation, and other matters connected with the
origins of the oldest nations, respecting which we
have little other written history.

We thus learn that, relatively to Bible history,
there is no prehistoric age, since it carries us back
beyond the Deluge to the origin of man, so that we
might properly restrict this term in its narrower
signification to those parts of the world not covered
by this primitive history. It is true that a tide of
criticism hostile to the integrity of Genesis has been
rising for some years ; but it seems to beat vainly
against a solid rock, and the ebb has now evidently
set in. The battle of historical and linguistic criticism
may indeed rage for a time over the history and date
of the Mosaic law, but in so far as Genesis is con-
cerned it has been practically decided by scientific
exploration.

Since writing the preceding pages I have met
with a remarkable paper by Mr. Horatio Hale in the
Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada)- It is
one which should commend itself to the study of
every Biblical scholar and archaeologist ; but is
contained in a periodical which perhaps meets the
1 Vol. IX. Sec. II. 1891.

THE DISPERSION 207

eyes of few of them. In this paper he maintains the
importance of language as a ground of anthropo-
logical classification, and then uses his wide knowledge
of the languages of American aborigines, and other rude
races, to show that the grammatical complexity and
logical perfection of these languages implies a high
intellectual capacity in their original framers, and
that where such complex and perfect languages are
spoken by very rude tribes like the Australian
aborigines, they originated with cultivated and
intellectual peoples — in the case of the Australian,
with the civilised primitive Dravidians of India. He
thus shows that languages, like alphabets, have
undergone a process of degradation, so that those
of modern times are less perfect exponents of
thought than those which preceded them, and that
primitive man in his earliest state must have been
endowed with as high intellectual powers as any of
his descendants.

On similar grounds he shows that it is not in the
outlying barbarous races that we are to look for truly
primitive man, since here we have merely degraded
types, and that the primitive centres of man and
language must have been in the old historic lands of
Western Asia and Northern Africa. On this view
the time necessary for the development of the arts ol
civilisation and of extensive colonisation would not
be great. * In five centuries a single human pair
planted in a fertile oasis might have given origin to
a people of five hundred thousand souls, numerous

208 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

enough to have sent out emigrations to the nearest
inviting lands.' The same lapse of time would have
sufficed to develop agriculture, to domesticate animals,
and to make some progress in architectural and other
arts of life. He quotes the remarkable passage of
Reclus l as to the agency of woman in the inventions
of early art, and shows that this accords with more
modern experience among the less civilised nations.
It is obvious that all this tends to bring scientific
anthropology into the closest relation with the old
Biblical history, though Hale, in deference, perhaps,
to modern prejudices, does not refer to this.

In the passage quoted by Hale, Reclus says : * It
is to woman that mankind owes all that has made us
men.' Following this hint of the ingenious French
writer, we may imagine the first man and woman
inhabiting some fertile region, rich in fruits and other
natural products, and subsisting at first on the un-
cultivated bounty of nature. With the birth of their
first child, perhaps before, would come the need of
shelter either in some dry cavern or booth of poles
and leaves or bark, carpeted perhaps with moss or
boughs of pine. This would be the first 'home,'
with the woman for its housekeeper. We may
imagine the man bringing to it the lamb or kid whose
dam he had killed, and the woman, with motherly
instinct, pitying the little orphan and training it to be
a domestic pet, the first of tamed animals. She, too,
would store grain, seeds and berries for domestic use,
Primitive Folk (Contemporary Science Series), p. 58.

THE DISPERSION 209

and some of these germinating would produce patches
of grain, or shrubs, or fruit trees around the hut.
Noticing these and protecting them, she would be
the first gardener and orchardist. The woman and her
children might add to the cultivated plants or domes-
ticated quadrupeds and birds ; and the man would
be induced, in the intervals of hunting and fishing, to
guard, protect, and fence them.

When the boys grew up, to one of them might be
assigned the care of the sheep and goats, to the other
the culture of the little farm, while they might aid
their father in erecting a better and more artistic
habitation, the first attempt at architecture, and in
introducing artificial irrigation to render their field
more fertile. Is not this little romance of M. Elie
Reclus perfectly in harmony with the old familiar
story in Genesis, and also with the most recent
results of modern science ?

210 GEOLOGY AND HISJORY

CHAPTER XIII
SUMMARY OF RESULTS

IT may be well, in conclusion, to sum up the general
truths we have arrived at in relation to the place of
man in the great and long-continued drama of the
earth's geological history.

I. We have found no link of derivation connec-
ting man with the lower animals which preceded him.
He appears before us as a new departure in creation,
without any direct relation to the instinctive life of
the lower animals. The earliest men are no less men
than their descendants, and up to the extent of their
means, inventors, innovators, and introducers of new
modes of life, just as much as they. We have not
even been able as yet to trace man back to the
harmless golden age. As we find him in the caves and
gravels he is already a fallen man, out of harmony
with his environment and the foe of his fellow
creatures, contriving against them instruments of
destruction more fatal than those furnished by nature
to the carnivorous wild beasts. Yet we would fain
believe in an Edenic age of innocence ; and physio-
logical probability, as well as the old story in Genesis,

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

211

Scheme of possible Correlation of the Geological
and Historical Records as to Early Man, as
the Facts appear in the present Stage of Inves-
tigation, May 1894.

Submergence

lit

$>x«

Deluge

o

I

i

u

II
i 1

I s

Primitive
Man

Adam

O 2

212 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

demands that we should suppose a primitive condition
in which man, careless and happy, should subsist on
the spontaneous bounty of nature in some favoured
* garden of the Lord.'

2. If we inquire as to the nature of the interval
which separates man from the lower animals, we find
that it exists with reference both to his rational and
physical nature. With respect to the first we may
affirm in man the existence of a lower (psychical)
intelligence, similar to that of the inferior animals,
and of a spiritual nature allying him with higher
intelligences, and with God Himself. Rightly con-
sidered, this places the doctrine of creation in a very
firm position. Those who deny it must adopt one of
two alternatives. Either they must refuse to admit
the evidence in man of any nature higher than that
of brutes — a conclusion which common sense, as well
as mental science, must always refuse to admit — or
they must attempt to bridge over the ' chasm,' as it
has been called, which separates the instinctive nature
of the animal from the rational and moral nature of
man — an effort confessedly futile.

3. As to the body of man, the case is different, but
still perfectly in harmony with the idea of his higher
nature. Man, as to his body, is confessedly an
animal, of the earth earthy. He is also a member of
the province vertebrata, and the class mammalia ;
but in that class he constitutes not only a distinct
species and genus, but even a distinct family, or
order. In other words, he is the sole species of his

SUMMARY OF RESULTS 213

genus, and of his family, or order. He is thus
separated, by a great gap, from all the animals
nearest to him ; and even if we admit the doctrine,
as yet unproved, of the derivation of one species
from another in the case of the lower animals, we
are unable to supply the ' missing links ' which would
be required to connect man with any group of in-
ferior animals. This physical distinctness has also
a special significance, inasmuch as it depends on
certain negative peculiarities such as the absence of
clothing, of natural weapons of attack and defence,
as well as on the positive properties of the erect
posture, the hands adapted to various kinds of mani-
pulation, and the special sensory gifts. Thus viewed
in relation to his environment, his wants as well as
his possessions in regard to structures and powers,
would be fatal to any creature not possessed of his
intelligence, and we cannot conceive how such priva-
tions or such gifts could spontaneously arise in
nature.

4. No fact of science is more certainly established
than the recency of man in geological time. Not
only do we find no trace of his remains in the older
geological formations, but we find no remains even of
the animals nearest to him ; and the conditions of
the world in those periods seem to unfit it for the
residence of man. If, following the usual geological
system, we divide the whole history of the earth into
four great periods, extending from the oldest rocks
known to us, the eozoic, or archaean, up to the

214 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

modern, we find remains of man, or his works, only
in the latest of the four, and in the later part of this.
In point of fact, there is no indisputable proof of the
presence of man until we reach the early modern
period. This is, no doubt, what was to have been
expected on the supposition of the orderly develop-
ment of the chain of animal life in the long geologic
eons ; but it is not by any means the only hypothesis
that was possible when, for example, the Book of
Genesis was written. A more fanciful cosmologist
might at that time have given precedence to man,
and might have supposed that the other animate
were produced later, and for his benefit, or his injury.
This is the view of the sacred writer himself with
respect to the local group of animals intended to be
in immediate association with the first man. Re-
stricted in this way, the statement of a group of
animals created with man in his earliest abode is not
contradictory to the order in Genesis first, nor
scientifically improbable. We have seen that in any
case the deductions from geology are in harmony
with the earliest revelations made to the human
mind on the subject, and in accordance with all the
later facts of actual history.

5. The absolute date of the first appearance of
man cannot perhaps be fixed within a few years or
centuries, either by human chronology or by the
science of the earth. It would seem, however, that
the Bible history, as well as such hints as we can
gather from the history of other nations, limits us to

SUMMARY OF RESULTS 215

two or three thousand years before the Deluge of
Noah, while some estimates of the antiquity of man,
based on physical changes or ancient history, or on
philology, greatly exceed this limit. If the earliest
men were those of the river gravels and caves, men
of the ' mammoth age,' or of the * palaeolithic ' or
palaeocosmic period, we can form some definite ideas
as to their possible antiquity. They colonised the
continents immediately after the elevation of the land
from the great subsidence which closed the pleisto-
cene or glacial period, in what has been called the
1 continental ' period of the post-glacial age, because
the new lands then raised out of the sea exceeded in
extent those which we have now. We have, as
stated in a previous chapter, some measures of the
date of this great continental elevation, and know
that its distance from our time must fall within about
eight thousand years. Many indications, both in
Europe and America, lead to the belief that it is
physically impossible that man could have colonised
the northern hemisphere at an earlier date than this
geologically recent continental period.

6. There is but one species of man, though many
races and varieties ; and these races or varieties seem
to have developed themselves at a very early time
and have shown a remarkable fixity in their later
history. There is reason to believe, however, from
various physiological facts, that this is a very general
law of varietal forms, v/hich are observed to appear
rapidly or suddenly, and then in favourable circum-

216 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

stances to be propagated continuously. It would
seem also to apply to the introduction of forms
regarded as species, since it is not unusual to find a
genus at or near its origin represented by its
maximum number of specific forms.

7. The precise locality of the origin of man can
be defined on probable grounds as in a temperate
region, supplied with the vegetable productions most
useful to him in a natural state, and free from destruc-
tive animal rivals. We can scarcely suppose that
this locality can have been in any of those parts of
the world in which man finds the greatest difficulty
in subsisting, or becomes most degraded, though this
paradoxical view has been held by some archaeolo-
gists. It must rather have been in some fertile and
salubrious region of the northern hemisphere ; and
probability as well as tradition points to those regions
in South-Western Asia which have not only been the
earliest historical abodes of man, but are also the
centres of the animals and plants most useful to him.
It is interesting to note here that Haeckel, on purely
physical grounds, decides against Europe, Africa,
Australia, and America, and concludes that 'most
circumstances indicate Southern Asia.'

8. It is to be observed, however, that the diluvial
interlude gives a double origin of man ; but the
historical accounts of the neocosmic dispersion, as
we have already seen, refer us in this case also to the
same regions of South-Western Asia. The traditions
which ascribe human origin to a ' Mountain of the

SUMMARY OF RESULTS 217

North* refer to the second dispersion, and coincide
with the Ararat of Genesis and the c Mountain of the
North ' on which the ship of Hasisadra was supposed
by the Chaldeans to have grounded.

9. We are now in a position to correlate the
historical Deluge with the great geographical changes
which closed the palanthropic age. This, when
regarded as an established fact, furnishes the solution
of many of the most disputed questions of anthro-
pology. The misuse of the Deluge in the early
history of geology, in employing it to account for
changes that took place long before the advent of
man, certainly should not cause us to neglect its
legitimate uses, when these arise in the progress of
investigation. It is evident that if this correlation be
accepted as probable, it must modify many views
now held as to the antiquity of man. In that case,
the modern rubble spread over plateaus and in river
valleys, far above the reach of the present floods, may
be accounted for, not by the ordinary action of the
existing streams, but by the abnormal action of
currents of water diluvial in their character. Further,
since the historical Deluge cannot have been of very
long duration, the physical changes separating the
deposits containing the remains of palaeocosmic men
from those of later date would, in like manner, be
accounted for, not by slow processes of subsidence,
elevation, and erosion, but by causes of a more abrupt
and cataclysmic character.

Finally, it has been the tendency of modern geo-

2i8 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

logical and archaeological discovery to attach more
and more value and importance to the ancient records
of the human race, and especially to those precious
documents which have been preserved to our time in
the Book of Genesis.

We have merely glanced cursorily at a few of the
salient points of the relation of the primitive history
of man in Genesis to modern scientific discovery.
Many other details might have been adduced as
tending to show similar coincidences of these two
distinct lines of evidence. Enough has, however,
been said to indicate the remarkable manner in which
the history in Genesis has anticipated modern dis-
covery, and to show that this ancient book is in every
way trustworthy, and as remote as possible from the
myths and legends of ancient heathenism, while it
shows the historical origin of beliefs which in more or
less corrupted forms lie at the foundations of the oldest
religions of the Gentiles, and find their true significance
in that of the Hebrews. To the Christian the record
in Genesis has a still higher value, as constituting
those historical groundworks of the plan of salvation
to which our Lord Himself so often referred, and on
which He founded so much of His teaching.

INDEX

ADAM, description of, 64
Adon, the name, 180
Akkadian kingdom, foundation

of, 108

Alphabets, early, 108
Amunoph III., 177
Amunoph IV., 177
Anakim, the, 65
Animals, remains of, 23, 30, 38,

43, 45, 46, 48, 50, 74, 96, 98
Antediluvians, identification of,

'25
Anthropic age, definition of, 17;

events of, 39
Anthropology, 16
Archaean age, the, 19
Ark, the, description of, 135
Arrow-headed characters, use

of, 1 08
Artemis, 160
Aten, worship of, 177
Atlantis, fable of, 156
Auriferous gravel, finds in, 34

BEARS, cave, 46
Beni Elohim, 132

Beni ha Adam, 132
Bones, human, gnawed, 47
Boule, on deposits at Schweiz-

ersbild, 87

Britain, early inhabitants of, 103
Broca, on skulls, 6 1
Burials, discoveries of, 56

CAIN, the race of, 131
Canaan, migration of, 193
Canstadt race, the, 51, 80; age
of, 70 ; condition of, 75 ; in-
terments of, 77 ; skulls of,
81

Carthaillac on palanthropic age,
70 ; on the mortuary customs

of, 77

Carving, specimens of, 49
Castelnedolo, skeleton at, 29
Cave dwellers, 48 ; their food,

49

Caverns, various, 42
Celtse, the, description of, 104
Cenozoic age, the, 20 ; changes
of, 24; events of, 39; rela-
tions of, 84

220

GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

Chaldean version of the Deluge,
137 ; creation tablets, 107 ;
Genesis quoted, 113
Cheth, children of, 167
Chipped Stone age, the, 69
Chronometers, geological, 89
Civilisation, early postdiluvian,

118

Clichy skull, the, 60
Climate of the pliocene, 25 ; of
the eocene, 27 ; changes of,
35. 36; of the post-glacial
age, 36 ; of the palanthropic
age, 38, 40, 171

Creation, the, order of, in
Genesis, 106, 112, 114;
Chaldean account of, 112
Cresswell caves, description of,

95

Cro-magnon cave, the, 5 1
Cro-magnon race, the, 51 ;
skeletons of, 53 ; skulls of,
61, 81 ; age of, 70; condition
of, 75 ; appearance of, 76 ;
belief of, 76 ; interments of,

77

Curse, the, 120
Cushite kingdom, foundation of,

108
Cushite migration, the, 192

DAWKINS on palaeolithic and

neolithic periods, 93
Days of creation, the, 14, 18
Delta, the, age of, 174
Deluge, the, accounts of, 107 ;

story of, 121 ; Lenormant on,

123; conclusions as to, 126;

prevalence of story of, 127 ;

physical aspects of, 135 ;

Chaldean version of, 136 ;
history of, 137 ; was it mira-
culous? 140; was it universal?

147, IS*

Diana, 160

Dispersion of man, the, 108

Druses, the, 198

Dupont on cave of Goyet, 46 ;
on primitive man, 73 ; on
plain dwellers, 74; on Fron-
tal caves, 98

EARTH, the stages of its history,

15, 18 ; age of, 18
Eber, children of, 179
Eden, site of, 114
Edwards, Miss, criticism of,

171
Egypt, history of, 168 ; first

colonist^ of, 174
Elephant in Europe, the, 38
Elevation of land in post-glacial

age, 36

Elohim, use of the name, 112
Embalming, early practice of,

78

Engis skull, the, 60
Eocene age, the, 23; changes

of, 24

Eozoic age, the, 19
Euphrates, the, 114
Eve, story of, 160
Evolution of man, the, 22 ;

vagaries of, 118
Exodus, the, Pharaoh of, 179

FALL OF MAN, the, 116
Fauna of palanthropic age,

changes of, 86
Flints, worked, 28

INDEX

221

Food of cave dwellers, 49
Furfooz caves, description of, 98

GENERATIONS OF NOAH, the,

184

Genesis, order of creation in, 106
Geologist, the, method of, 12
Giants, a race of, 63
Gibraltar skull, the, 60
Glacial age, the, 25
Globe, incandescent, picture of,

18

Goyet, cave of, description of, 46
Greenwell on men of Britain,

103
Crenelle, skull of, 60; deposit

at, 94

HALE on importance of lan-
guage, 206

Karaites, migrations of, 188
Hasisadra, the Chaldean Noah,

118

Hebrew annals, truth of, 106
Heth, 167

Higher criticism, Sayce on, 109
Historian, the, method of, 12
Hittites, the, inroad of, 198
Holmes on worked flints, 31
Homeric heroes, reality of, 166
Horus, sons of, 159
Hyksos, the, 181

IDINU, or Eden, 114

Ightham, worked flints of, 31

Interments, discoveries of, 56 ;
mode of, 77

Isha, story of, 160

Ivory, ornaments of, 58; en-
graving on, 74

JAHVEH, 133

Japhet, migrations of, 189, 190
Jebel Assart, flint chips at, 171
Jehovah Elohim, use of the

name, 112, 132
Jerusalem, ancient state of, 179

KARUN, a river of Eden, 114,

116

Kerkhat, the, 114
Kheta, or Khatti, 167
Kneeling posture in interments,

77

LAUGERIE BASSE, cave at 51 ;

skeleton at, 58
Lebanon caves, human remains

in, 43, 45 ; visit to, 202
Lenormant on the Deluge, 123 ;

on the Ark, 136
Lion, the cave, 46
Lyell, on Falls of Niagara, 124

MAMMALS in palanthropic age,
species of, 37

Mammoth age, cave of, 50

Mammoth, the, in Europe, 38 ;
extinction of, 74

Man, date of his appearance,
21, 213 ; his earliest remains
still human, 22 ; antecedents
of, 23 ; his remains overlaid,
35 ; in Europe, 35 ; in pal-
anthropic age, 40 ; how dis-
tinguished, 41 ; his remains
at Nahr-el-Kelb, 45 ; at Goy-
et, 46 ; gnawed bones of,
47 ; a cave dweller, 48 ; his
ornaments, 48, 58 ; carving
of, 49; food of, 49; his

GEOLOGY AND HISTORY

physical characters, 51 ; his
remains at Cro-magnon, 51 ;
skeleton of, at Mentone, 58 ;
varieties in skull of, 60 ; gi-
gantic size of, 62 ; a feebler
race, 63 ; conditions of, 71;
Dupont on primitive, 73 ;
unprogressive character of
men of mammoth age, 75 ;
beliefs of, 76 ; mortuary cus-
toms of palanthropic, 77 ;
change of, from palaeocosmic
to neocosmic, 91 ; neolithic,
IOI ; of Britain, 103 ; in
Eden, US; condition of
palanthropic, 116; recency of,
213 ; locality of his origin, 216

Meeting-place of geology and
history, 13

Mentone skeleton, the, 58

Mesozoic age, the, 19

Metals, the knowledge of, 118

Miocene age, the, 23 ; changes
of, 24 ; monkeys of, 27

Mitanni, 181

Mizraim, 193

Monkeys, miocene, 27

Mortillet on the stone age, 69

Moses : his knowledge of Divine
name, 180

Mourlon on pleistocene remains,

30

Musical instruments, invention
of, 118

NAHR-EL-KELB, caverns of, 44 j

people of, 203
Neanderthal skull, the, 60
Neanthropic age, definition of,

17 ; events of, 39 ; men of,

95

Nebula, picture of, 1 8
Necklace, a shell, 48
Neocosmic age, appearance of,

men of, 91, 102
Neolithic age, men of, IOI
Niagara, Lyell's use of, 124
Nile valley, limestones of, 1 68,

241 ; appearance of, 174
Nimrod, kingdom of, 190
Noah, story of, 121
Nuesch on deposits at Schweiz-

ersbild, 87

OLD man of Cro-magnon, 53 ;

supposed history of, 65
Ornaments, remains of, 48, 58

PALAEOLITHIC implements, dis-
coveries of, 31

Palaeozoic age, the, 19

Palanthropic age, definition of,
17; number of species of
mammals in, 37 ; climate of,
38 ; land of, 40 ; caves of, 46 ;
animals of, 50 ; man of, 5 1 ;
conditions of, 69; divisions
of, 70 ; tragic end of, 85 ;
changes in fauna of, 80 ;
subsidence of, 88

Palestine, people of, 197 ; his-
tory of, 20 1

Paviland skull, the, 60

Petrie : his photographic por-
traits, 1 80

Pharaoh of the Exodus, the, 179

Phoenicians, the, 193

INDEX

223

Pictet on number of species in

palanthropic age, 37
Pinches on Chaldean Genesis,

"3

Plain dwellers, 51 ; conditions

of, 74
Pleistocene age, definition of,

17 ; history of, 23 ; human

remains of, 30 ; events of, 39
Pliocene age, 23 ; changes of,

24 ; human remains of, 29 ;

events of, 39
Polished Stone age, the, 69;

men of, 101
Post-glacial age, 26 ; elevation

of, 36
Punites, 193

QUATERNARY period, the, 20
Quatrefages on Castelnedolo

skeleton, 29 ; on Truchere

skull, 84

RA, worship of, 177
Recency of man, 213
Reclus, romance of, 208
Reindeer age, the, 38, 50
Rhinoceros in Europe, the, 38
Riviere on Mentone skeleton,
58,62

SAYCE on the higher criticism,

109

Scale of earth's history, a, 22
Schliemann, discoveries of, 166
Schweizersbild, deposits at, 87
Semites, migrations, 189
Seth, the race of, 131
Shell ornaments, remains of, 48,

58

Sickle, wooden, 172

Silures, the, 103

Skeleton of Castelnedolo, 29;
Mentone, 58 ; of Laugerie
Basse, 58

Skull from Val d'Arno, 29 ; of
Cro-magnon, 53> ^2 > °f
Clichy, Crenelle, Gibraltar,
Paviland, Neanderthal, Engis,
60 ; of Canstadt, 81 ; of
Truchere, 83

Species, number of palanthropic,

37

Sphinx, the, history of, 176
Spy, imterments at, 56
Stone ages, the, 69
Submergence, records of, 148
Subsidence of palanthropic age,

88 ; date of, 90

TAMMUZ, story of, 161

Taylor on early men of Britain,

103
Teeth, human, condition of,

63

Tel-el-Amarna tablets, 16$, 177
Tigris, the, 114
Trenton, flints of, 32
Tristram on cave shelters, 44

VEZERE, rock shelters of, 51

WHISTLE, bone, 116
Woman of Cro magnon, 55
Woolly rhinoceros in Europe,
the, 38

ZITTEL on number of species of
mammals, 37

JUL29

DAY USE

RETURN TO

ANTHROPOLOGY LIIRARY

This publication is due on the LAST DATE
and HOUR stamped below. A /

RBI 7-40711-8,' 72
(Q4186810)4188— A-32

General Library

University of California

Berkeley

M79390

Q26

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

SUPPLIED BY

THE SEVEN BOOKHUNTERS

STATION 0. BOX 22— NEW YORK CITV
Out-of-Print Books