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Chapter 7 - The Antiquity of Man and Prehistoric Archaeology
The Flint Weapons and Implements
At the middle of the nineteenth century came the beginning of a
new epoch in science - an epoch when all these earlier
discoveries were to be interpreted by means of investigations in
a different field: for, in 1847, a man previously unknown to the
world at large, Boucher de Perthes, published at Paris the first
volume of his work on Celtic and Antediluvian Antiquities, and
in this he showed engravings of typical flint implements and
weapons, of which he had discovered thousands upon thousands in
the high drift beds near Abbeville, in northern France.
The significance of this discovery was great indeed - far greater
than Boucher himself at first supposed. The very title of his
book showed that he at first regarded these implements and
weapons as having belonged to men overwhelmed at the Deluge of
Noah; but it was soon seen that they were something very
different from proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis: for
they were found in terraces at great heights above the river
Somme, and, under any possible theory having regard to fact,
must have been deposited there at a time when the river system
of northern France was vastly different from anything known
within the historic period. The whole discovery indicated a
series of great geological changes since the time when these
implements were made, requiring cycles of time compared to which
the space allowed by the orthodox chronologists was as nothing.
His work was the result of over ten years of research and
thought. Year after year a force of men under his direction had
dug into these high-terraced gravel deposits of the river Somme,
and in his book he now gave, in the first full form, the results
of his labour. So far as France was concerned, he was met at
first by what he calls "a conspiracy of silence," and then by
a contemptuous opposition among orthodox scientists, at the head
of whom stood Elie de Beaumont.
This heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable: nothing that
Boucher could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of the
orthodox theological opinion behind it; not even his belief that
these fossils were remains of men drowned at the Deluge of Noah,
and that they were proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis
seemed to help the matter. His opponents felt instinctively
that such discoveries boded danger to the accepted view, and
they were right: Boucher himself soon saw the folly of trying to
account for them by the orthodox theory.
And it must be confessed that not a little force was added to
the opposition by certain characteristics of Boucher de Perthes
himself. Gifted, far-sighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his
own worst enemy. Carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped
to the most astounding conclusions. The engravings in the later
volume of his great work, showing what he thought to be human
features and inscriptions upon some of the flint implements, are
worthy of a comic almanac; and at the National Museum of
Archaeology at St. Germain, beneath the shelves bearing the
remains which he discovered, which mark the beginning of a new
epoch in science, are drawers containing specimens hardly worthy
of a penny museum, but from which he drew the most unwarranted
inferences as to the language, religion, and usages of
prehistoric man.
Boucher triumphed none the less. Among his bitter opponents at
first was Dr. Rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for
materials to refute the innovator, dug into the deposits of St.
Acheul - and was converted: for he found implements similar to
those of Abbeville, making still more certain the existence of
man during the Drift period. So, too, Gaudry a year later made
similar discoveries.
But most important was the evidence of the truth which now came
from other parts of France and from other countries. The French
leaders in geological science had been held back not only by awe
of Cuvier but by recollections of Scheuchzer. Ridicule has
always been a serious weapon in France, and the ridicule which
finally overtook the supporters of the attempt of Scheuchzer,
Mazurier, and others, to square geology with Genesis, was still
remembered. From the great body of French geologists, therefore,
Boucher secured at first no aid. His support came from the other
side of the Channel. The most eminent English geologists, such
as Falconer, Prestwich, and Lyell, visited the beds at Abbeville
and St. Acheul, convinced themselves that the discoveries of
Boucher, Rigollot, and their colleagues were real, and then
quietly but firmly told England the truth.
And now there appeared a most effective ally in France. The
arguments used against Boucher de Perthes and some of the other
early investigators of bone caves had been that the implements
found might have been washed about and turned over by great
floods, and therefore that they might be of a recent period; but
in 1861 Edward Lartet published an account of his own
excavations at the Grotto of Aurignac, and the proof that man
had existed in the time of the Quaternary animals was complete.
This grotto had been carefully sealed in prehistoric times by a
stone at its entrance; no interference from disturbing currents
of water had been possible; and Lartet found, in place, bones of
eight out of nine of the main species of animals which
characterize the Quaternary period in Europe; and upon them marks
of cutting implements, and in the midst of them coals and ashes.
Close upon these came the excavations at Eyzies by Lartet and
his English colleague, Christy. In both these men there was a
carefulness in making researches and a sobriety in stating
results which converted many of those who had been repelled by
the enthusiasm of Boucher de Perthes. The two colleagues found
in the stony deposits made by the water dropping from the roof
of the cave at Eyzies the bones of numerous animals extinct or
departed to arctic regions - one of these a vertebra of a
reindeer with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with
these were found evidences of fire.
Discoveries like these were thoroughly convincing; yet there
still remained here and there gainsayers in the supposed
interest of Scripture, and these, in spite of the convincing
array of facts, insisted that in some way, by some combination
of circumstances, these bones of extinct animals of vastly
remote periods might have been brought into connection with all
these human bones and implements of human make in all these
different places, refusing to admit that these ancient relics of
men and animals were of the same period. Such gainsayers
virtually adopted the reasoning of quaint old Persons, who,
having maintained that God created the world "about five
thousand sixe hundred and odde yeares agoe," added, "And if
they aske what God was doing before this short number of yeares,
we answere with St. Augustine replying to such curious
questioners, that He was framing Hell for them." But a new class
of discoveries came to silence this opposition. At La Madeleine
in France, at the Kessler cave in Switzerland, and at various
other places, were found rude but striking carvings and
engravings on bone and stone representing sundry specimens of
those long-vanished species; and these specimens, or casts of
them, were soon to be seen in all the principal museums. They
showed the hairy mammoth, the cave bear, and various other
animals of the Quaternary period, carved rudely but vigorously
by contemporary men; and, to complete the significance of these
discoveries, travellers returning from the icy regions of North
America brought similar carvings of animals now existing in
those regions, made by the Eskimos during their long arctic
winters to-day.
As a result of these discoveries and others like them, showing
that man was not only contemporary with long-extinct animals of
past geological epochs, but that he had already developed into
a stage of culture above pure savagery, the tide of thought
began to turn. Especially was this seen in 1863, when Lyell
published the first edition of his Geological Evidence of the
Antiquity of Man; and the fact that he had so long opposed the
new ideas gave force to the clear and conclusive argument which
led him to renounce his early scientific beliefs.
Research among the evidences of man's existence in the early
Quaternary, and possibly in the Tertiary period, was now pressed
forward along the whole line. In 1864 Gabriel Mortillet founded
his review devoted to this subject; and in 1865 the first of a
series of scientific congresses devoted to such researches was
held in Italy. These investigations went on vigorously in all
parts of France and spread rapidly to other countries. The
explorations which Dupont began in 1864, in the caves of
Belgium, gave to the museum at Brussels eighty thousand flint
implements, forty thousand bones of animals of the Quaternary
period, and a number of human skulls and bones found mingled
with these remains. From Germany, Italy, Spain, America, India,
and Egypt similar results were reported.
Especially noteworthy were the further explorations of the caves
and drift throughout the British Islands. The discovery by
Colonel Wood, In 1861, of flint tools in the same strata with
bones of the earlier forms of the rhinoceros, was but typical of
many. A thorough examination of the caverns of Brixham and
Torquay, by Pengelly and others, made it still more evident that
man had existed in the early Quaternary period. The existence of
a period before the Glacial epoch or between different glacial
epochs in England, when the Englishman was a savage, using rude
stone tools, was then fully ascertained, and, what was more
significant, there were clearly shown a gradation and evolution
even in the history of that period. It was found that this
ancient Stone epoch showed progress and development. In the
upper layers of the caves, with remains of the reindeer, who,
although he has migrated from these regions, still exists in
more northern climates, were found stone implements revealing
some little advance in civilization; next below these, sealed up
in the stalagmite, came, as a rule, another layer, in which the
remains of reindeer were rare and those of the mammoth more
frequent, the implements found in this stratum being less
skilfully made than those in the upper and more recent layers;
and, finally, in the lowest levels, near the floors of these
ancient caverns, with remains of the cave bear and others of the
most ancient extinct animals, were found stone implements
evidently of a yet ruder and earlier stage of human progress. No
fairly unprejudiced man can visit the cave and museum at
Torquay without being convinced that there were a gradation and
an evolution in these beginnings of human civilization. The
evidence is complete; the masses of breccia taken from the cave,
with the various soils, implements, and bones carefully kept in
place, put this progress beyond a doubt.
All this indicated a great antiquity for the human race, but in
it lay the germs of still another great truth, even more
important and more serious in its consequences to the older
theologic view, which will be discussed in the following chapter.
But new evidences came in, showing a yet greater antiquity of
man. Remains of animals were found in connection with human
remains, which showed not only that man was living in times more
remote than the earlier of the new investigators had dared
dream, but that some of these early periods of his existence
must have been of immense length, embracing climatic changes
betokening different geological periods; for with remains of
fire and human implements and human bones were found not only
bones of the hairy mammoth and cave bear, woolly rhinoceros,
and reindeer, which could only have been deposited there in a
time of arctic cold, but bones of the hyena, hippopotamus,
sabre-toothed tiger, and the like, which could only have been
deposited when there was in these regions a torrid climate. The
conjunction of these remains clearly showed that man had lived
in England early enough and long enough to pass through times
when there was arctic cold and times when there was torrid heat;
times when great glaciers stretched far down into England and
indeed into the continent, and times whe England had a land
connection with the European continent, and the European
continent with Africa, allowing tropical animals to migrate
freely from Africa to the middle regions of England.
The question of the origin of man at a period vastly earlier
than the sacred chronologists permitted was thus absolutely
settled, but among the questions regarding the existence of man
at a period yet more remote, the Drift period, there was one
which for a time seemed to give the champions of science some
difficulty. The orthodox leaders in the time of Boucher de
Perthes, and for a considerable time afterward, had a weapon of
which they made vigorous use: the statement that no human bones
had yet been discovered in the drift. The supporters of science
naturally answered that few if any other bones as small as those
of man had been found, and that this fact was an additional
proof of the great length of the period since man had lived with
the extinct animals; for, since specimens of human workmanship
proved man's existence as fully as remains of his bones could
do, the absence or even rarity of human and other small bones
simply indicated the long periods of time required for
dissolving them away.
Yet Boucher, inspired by the genius he had already shown, and
filled with the spirit of prophecy, declared that human bones
would yet be found in the midst of the flint implements, and in
1863 he claimed that this prophecy had been fulfilled by the
discovery at Moulin Quignon of a portion of a human jaw deep in
the early Quaternary deposits. But his triumph was short-lived:
the opposition ridiculed his discovery; they showed that he had
offered a premium to his workmen for the discovery of human
remains, and they naturally drew the inference that some tricky
labourer had deceived him. The result of this was that the men
of science felt obliged to acknowledge that the Moulin Quignon
discovery was not proven.
But ere long human bones were found in the deposits of the early
Quaternary period, or indeed of an earlier period, in various
other parts of the world, and the question regarding the Moulin
Quignon relic was of little importance.
We have seen that researches regarding the existence of
prehistoric man in England and on the Continent were at first
mainly made in the caverns; but the existence of man in the
earliest Quaternary period was confirmed on both sides of the
English Channel, in a way even more striking, by the close
examination of the drift and early gravel deposits. The results
arrived at by Boucher de Perthes were amply confirmed in
England. Rude stone implements were found in terraces a hundred
feet and more above the levels at which various rivers of Great
Britain now flow, and under circumstances which show that, at
the time when they were deposited, the rivers of Great Britain
in many cases were entirely different from those of the present
period, and formed parts of the river system of the European
continent.
Researches in the high terraces above the Thames and
the Ouse, as well as at other points in Great Britain, placed
beyond a doubt the fact that man existed on the British Islands
at a time when they were connected by solid land with the
Continent, and made it clear that, within the period of the
existence of man in northern Europe, a large portion of the
British Islands had been sunk to depths between fifteen hundred
and twenty-five hundred feet beneath the Northern Ocean, - had
risen again from the water, - had formed part of the continent of
Europe, and had been in unbroken connection with Africa, so that
elephants, bears, tigers, lions, the rhinoceros and
hippopotamus, of species now mainly extinct, had left their
bones in the same deposits with human implements as far north as
Yorkshire. Moreover, connected with this fact came in the new
conviction, forced upon geologists by the more careful
examination of the earth and its changes, that such elevations
and depressions of Great Britain and other parts of the world
were not necessarily the results of sudden cataclysms, but
generally of slow processes extending through vast cycles of
years - processes such as are now known to be going on in various
parts of the world. Thus it was that the six or seven thousand
years allowed by the most liberal theologians of former times
were seen more and more clearly to be but a mere nothing in the
long succession of ages since the appearance of man.
Confirmation of these results was received from various other
parts of the world. In Africa came the discovery of flint
implements deep in the hard gravel of the Nile Valley at Luxor
and on the high hills behind Esneh. In America the discoveries
at Trenton, N. J., and at various places in Delaware, Ohio,
Minnesota, and elsewhere, along the southern edge of the drift
of the Glacial epochs, clinched the new scientific truth yet
more firmly; and the statement made by an eminent American
authority is, that "man was on this continent when the climate
and ice of Greenland extended to the mouth of New York harbour."
The discoveries of prehistoric remains on the Pacific coast, and
especially in British Columbia, finished completely the last
chance at a reasonable contention by the adherents of the older
view.
As to these investigations on the Pacific slope of the
United States, the discoveries of Whitney and others in
California had been so made and announced that the judgment of
scientific men regarding them was suspended until the visit of
perhaps the greatest living authority in his department, Alfred
Russel Wallace, in 1887. He confirmed the view of Prof. Whitney
and others with the statement that "both the actual remains and
works of man found deep under the lava-flows of Pliocene age show
that he existed in the New World at least as early as in the
Old." To this may be added the discoveries in British Columbia,
which prove that, since man existed in these regions, "valleys
have been filled up by drift from the waste of mountains to a
depth in some cases of fifteen hundred feet; this covered by a
succession of tuffs, ashes, and lava-streams from volcanoes long
since extinct, and finally cut down by the present rivers
through beds of solid basalt, and through this accumulation of
lavas and gravels." The immense antiquity of the human remains
in the gravels of the Pacific coast is summed up by a most
eminent English authority and declared to be proved, "first, by
the present river systems being of subsequent date, sometimes
cutting through them and their superincumbent lava-cap to a depth
of two thousand feet; secondly, by the great denudation that has
taken place since they were deposited, for they sometimes lie on
the summits of mountains six thousand feet high; thirdly, by the
fact that the Sierra Nevada has been partly elevated since their
formation."
As an important supplement to these discoveries of ancient
implements came sundry comparisons made by eminent physiologists
between human skulls and bones found in different places and
under circumstances showing vast antiquity.
Human bones had been found under such circumstances as early as
1835 at Cannstadt near Stuttgart, and in 1856 in the Neanderthal
near Dusseldorf; but in more recent searches they had been
discovered in a multitude of places, especially in Germany,
France, Belgium, England, the Caucasus, Africa, and North and
South America. Comparison of these bones showed that even in
that remote Quaternary period there were great differences of
race, and here again came in an argument for the yet earlier
existence of man on the earth; for long previous periods must
have been required to develop such racial differences.
Considerations of this kind gave a new impulse to the belief
that man's existence might even date back into the Tertiary
period. The evidence for this earlier origin of man was ably
summed up, not only by its brilliant advocate, Mortillet, but by
a former opponent, one of the most conservative of modern
anthropologists, Quatrefages; and the conclusion arrived at by
both was, that man did really exist in the Tertiary period. The
acceptance of this conclusion was also seen in the more recent
work of Alfred Russel Wallace, who, though very cautious and
conservative, placed the origin of man not only in the Tertiary
period, but in an earlier stage of it than most had dared
assign - even in the Miocene.
The first thing raising a strong presumption, if not giving
proof, that man existed in the Tertiary, was the fact that from
all explored parts of the world came in more and more evidence
that in the earlier Quaternary man existed in different,
strongly marked races and in great numbers. From all regions
which geologists had explored, even from those the most distant
and different from each other, came this same evidence - from
northern Europe to southern Africa; from France to China; from
New Jersey to British Columbia; from British Columbia to Peru.
The development of man in such numbers and in so many different
regions, with such differences of race and at so early a period,
must have required a long previous time.
This argument was strengthened by discoveries of bones bearing
marks apparently made by cutting instruments, in the Tertiary
formations of France and Italy, and by the discoveries of what
were claimed to be flint implements by the Abbe Bourgeois in France,
and of implements and human bones by Prof. Capellini in Italy.
On the other hand, some of the more cautious men of science are
still content to say that the existence of man in the Tertiary
period is not yet proven. As to his existence throughout the
Quaternary epoch, no new proofs are needed; even so determined
a supporter of the theological side as the Duke of Argyll has
been forced to yield to the evidence.
Of attempts to make an exact chronological statement throwing
light on the length of the various prehistoric periods, the most
notable have been those by M. Morlot, on the accumulated strata
of the Lake of Geneva; by Gillieron, on the silt of Lake
Neufchatel; by Horner, in the delta deposits of Egypt; and by
Riddle, in the delta of the Mississippi. But while these have
failed to give anything like an exact result, all these
investigations together point to the central truth, so amply
established, of the vast antiquity of man, and the utter
inadequacy of the chronology given in our sacred books. The
period of man's past life upon our planet, which has been fixed
by the universal Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," is
thus perfectly proved to be insignificant compared with those
vast geological epochs during which man is now known to have
existed.
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