The Epoch of the Mammoth and the apparition of Man upon the Earth ... With illustrations

Preface

. The question of the antiquity of man is intimately connected with the truth or falsity of the theories of evolution which colour so 'materially all current scien tific investigations. If traces of man shall be carried back to the Glacial Age, and if the date of this epoch in the geological history of the earth can be fixed at one or several hundred thousand years ago ; and if, moreover, it shall prove true also, on examination, that man is pre-glacial, and that his remains may be found even in the strata of the Pliocene and Miocene periods, then, undoubtedly, a powerful accession is made to the testimony from the lower world adduced in favour of the gradual development of animal life from earlier and more simple forms. If, on the other hand, these traces of man fail in the glacial and pre-glacial deposits, and the glacial epoch should prove, in addition, to be removed from us by no considerable lapse of time ; and much more, if introduced recently and since the glacial epoch, man should appear in the beginning, in the words of M. Pruner-Bey, " constituted man in the full force of the term " — tlie man in all respects of the present day ;—

PREFACE.

. then it is impossible, so far at least as man is concerned, for the evolution theory to be true. The ultimate decision of these great questions must rest on the facts ; and the active exploration of the post tertiary (and tertiary) strata in most parts of the world witliin the past thirty years has accumulated a mass of evidence on the subject which must very soon put an end, one way or the other, to the discussion. The object of the present volume is to give in a com pact form all that the investigations of the students of geology and pre-historic archæology have brought to light with regard to " man's age in the world." It is a question which should be decided apart from all theo logical prepossessions, and in no way prejudged by any supposed interpretations of a biblical revelation on the subject.

It is purely as a question of science that I propose to discuss it ; and if we arrive at a conclusion out of harmony with religion, let it be squarely recognised, and let the adjustment constitute a separate task. If, on the other hand, the two records agree, it is only another wonderful testimony to tlie endurance and vitality of the Hebrew books. It is very certain that at some undefined period in the past man was to be found all over Europe, south of the Baltic and the line of 54° lat. in England, living in caves, and that elephants and rhinoceroses, lions and hyænas, reindeer and hippopotami, abounded in all this region at that time. It is equally certain that some time after the race had been thus spread over Europe, a great flood covered a large portion of the continent with water, and that

PREFACE.

. IX the same deluge submerged large districts of country in America and in Asia. This was the Flood of thc Loess, vhich closed the Palæolithic Age. It was probably subsequent to the Noachian Deluge, which was probably local in its character and more serious in its effects, within its range. It is extremely doubtful whether, previous to this — the Biblical Deluge — the human race had left their original home. They were probably up to that time shut in by the ice and the sea to a very limited area. There was an African Mediterranean Sea covering the space now occupied by the Northern Sahara, and an Asiatic Mediterranean, of which the Caspian and the Aral and the Black Seas are the shrunken relics. Ear to the south the reign of ice pre vailed in Europe, and the Northern Ocean rolled far over Eussia and Siberia.

The Arabian and Nubian deserts, with the snow-capped mountains of Abyssinia and the east coast of Africa, formed, it is not unlikely, a harrier in that direction. There were glaciers in the Lebanon ; glaciers in the Atlas ; glaciers in Ana tolia. The Himalaya Mountains constituted a barrier towards India, and the elevated plateau of Central Asia shut out China on the east, a great portion of which was probably under water — as was North-western India — Central India (like the western part of North America) being at the same time the theatre of terrific volcanic convulsions. Such was the geology and zoology of the earth when man appeared. The crust of the earth was still in an unstable condition, although that strange episode in the geological history of the earth, the Glacial Age, had

PREFACE.

. X nearly done its work— the work of consolidating this surface-crust for the reign of Man. Man did not penetrate at once into the North of Eur0pe — ne was unquestionably pre-glacial in that sense; for the ice had not retired from Scandinavia and Denmark and Scotland. Man never entered these countries until the Polished Stone Age, and we shall find herein in the sequel a clue to the date of tlie Glacial Age. The Chevalier Bunsen in his work on Egypt, and M. Lenormant in his " Ancient History of the East," both recognise in the Zend-Avesta an allusion to the Glacial Age, and both think that, according to the tradition of the Aryan race, that primeval people " were frozen out of their paradise." The earliest traces of the human race ought to be found in Central or Western Asia, amongst these very Aryans, or amongst the early population of the Chal dæan Valley, or in Egypt.

For it is admitted that Cen tral or Western Asia was the point of departure. It is a startling fact, however, that the Chaldæans, the primitive Aryans, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the South Arabian Cushites, the Phœnicians, the Phry gians, the "Pelasgi" (and probably the Chinese) — all set out as builders of cities and acquainted with the arts of civilised life ; while we are told that there are no traces of a Stone Age among the great Uralo- Altaic race [the primitive Asiatic Scythians] from Lake Baikal to the Kama river in Eussia. The presence of the mammoth and the other great extinct animals in the bone-caves and river-gravels in

PREFACE.

. XI association with human remains, carried with it a very strong suggestion of the antiquity of the palæolithic tribes of Western Europe ; but when it is remembered that the elephant roamed in herds on the north-western coast of Africa at the beginning of the Christian Era, and now that it is ascertained that he was hunted in the Tigris Valley by the Assyrian monarchs in the twelfth century before the same era, the existence of the palæolithic fauna in Europe along with man does not appear so remarkable. Mr. Boyd Dawkins identifies the cave-dwellers of the Palæolithic Age with the modern Eskimo, and these, we know from their language, are related to the Finns and the tribes of the Altai, whose tongue, on the other hand, philology now connects with the primitive language of Chaldæa (the Accadian), thus bringing together " the artisans of the drift," whose remains are found in the Somme Valley, and the tenants of those ancient tombs in the Southern Tetrapolis of Babylonia, in which we find mingled implements of stone and bronze and iron.

It is the endeavour of the following pages to con struct a picture of these pre-historic times, uncoloured by the pencil of fancy — a map or a chart rather than a picture of the post-glacial world ; to discern the human shadows that begin to flit in the dissolving darkness of the glacial night, or rather the struggling dawn of what geologists denominate the Eecent Period — before the earth had been laved with the partial baptism of the Loess Flood, or the gigantic fauna of the quaternary epoch had vanished from Europe ; to

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. XII correlate the abrupt civilisation on the Lower Euphrates and at the mouth of the Nile — or the restless move ments of the Aryan tribes — with the rock-shelters and caves of the Western Troglodytes, living in the pri meval wilderness, and battling with their rude imple ments against the elements, and the wild beasts who almost shared their habitations with them. What changes have occurred since then — not only in the shifting scenes of human life, but in the brute creation, and in the climate and physical geography of the earth ! When was it ? CONTENTS.

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