LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

fossil remains of man himself—the human bones found by Dr. Schmerling in a cavern near Liege, the remains mentioned by M. Marcel de Serres and others in several caverns in France, associated with fossil relics of this period. But more from the occurrence of flints, apparently fashioned by human art, in superficial deposits, together with the same extinct fossils of the tertiary. Even at the very moment that I write this sheet, my eye falls on the report[20] of an important meeting of the Ethnological Society, for the purpose of discussing this very subject of "The flint implements found associated with the bones of extinct animals in the Drift." Many of the leading geologists and archæologists were present, for the matter has become one of absorbing interest, conflicting, as the facts seem to do, with some assumptions received as unquestioned verities in Geology.

      These flints, which seem indubitably to have been chipped into the forms of arrow-heads, lance-heads, and the like, have been found in France in large numbers, as also in other parts of the continent, and in England. They resemble those still used by some savage tribes. In this very neighbourhood, as in the cavern called Kent's Hole near Torquay, and in one more recently examined at Brixham, they are found mixed up with the bones of the Rhinoceros, of the Cave Bear, and the Hyena, At Menchecourt, near Abbeville, they occur in a deposit of sand, sandy clay, and marl, with bones of the same animals, and others, their contemporaries. Concerning this bed, Mr. Prestwich, in a paper read before the Royal Society, May 26, 1859, says that it must be referred to those usually designated as post pliocene, but that the period of its deposit was anterior to that of the surface assuming its present outline, so far as some of its minor features are concerned. "He does not, however, consider that the facts of necessity carry man back in past time more than they bring forward the great extinct mammals towards our own time, the evidence having reference only to relative, and not to absolute time; and he is of opinion that many of the later geological changes may have been sudden, or of shorter duration than generally considered. In fact, from the evidence here exhibited, and from all that he knows regarding the drift phenomena generally, the author sees no reason against the conclusion that this period of man and the extinct mammals—supposing their contemporaneity to be proved—was brought to a sudden end by a temporary inundation of the land; on the contrary, he sees much to support such a view on purely geological considerations."[21]

      At the meeting of the Ethnological Society just held, there seems to have been an increasing tendency to admit the hypothesis of the continuance of the Mammalia of the Tertiary into the human era. Mr. Evans, who exhibited specimens taken at a depth of twenty to thirty feet, from a stratum of coarse fresh-water gravel, lying on chalk, and containing an entire skeleton of an extinct Rhinoceros, and overlaid by sandy marl containing existing shells, shewed that the deposit had certainly not been disturbed till the present time, so that the gravel, the bones, and the flints had been deposited coetaneously. He suggested "that the animals supposed to have become extinct before man was created might have continued to exist to more recent periods than had been admitted." And this opinion found support from other leading geologists.

      That this conclusion would throw the existence of man to an era far higher than that assigned to him by the inspired Word, is, I know, generally held; and certain investigations, made in the alluvial deposit of the Nile,[22] are considered to prove that man has been living in a state of comparative civilisation in the Nile Valley for the last 13,500 years. But that conclusion absolutely rests on the supposition that the rate of increase formed by the annual deposit of the Nile mud has been always exactly the same as now—a supposition, not only without the least shadow of proof, but also directly contrary to the highest probability, nay, certainty, in the estimation of those who believe in the Noachian deluge. For surely the drainage of the entire plain of North Africa after that inundation must have produced an alluvium of vast thickness in a very brief time; while beneath that deposit the works of the antediluvian world might well be buried. Yet the possibility of there ever having been any greater rate of deposit than within the last 3000 years, the recorder of those investigations, in his unseemly haste to prove the Bible false, strangely leaves wholly out of his consideration.

      So, doubtless, concerning other deposits containing fossil remains, whose extreme antiquity is assumed from the known rate of surface-increase now, we ought to remember that we have not a tittle of proof that the rate of increase has not at certain remote periods been suddenly and immensely augmented. There are many facts on record which tend to shew that the rate at which geologic changes take place in certain localities affords no reliable data whatever to infer that at which phenomena apparently quite parallel have occurred in other localities. An upheaval or a subsidence of one part of a country may rapidly effect a great change in the amount of soil or gravel precipitated by streams, without destroying or changing their channels, and yet the deposit may be made sufficiently gradually to allow the burial of shells or of bones of creatures which lived and died on the spot.

      The degradation of a cliff, either suddenly or gradually, might throw a vast quantity of fragments into a rapid stream, and cause a deposit of gravel of considerable breadth and thickness in a comparatively short period of time—say a century or two.

      Sir Charles Lyell has adduced examples of very rapid formation of certain stony deposits, which should make us cautious how we assert that such and such a thickness must have required a vast number of years. In one of them there is a thickness of 200 or 300 feet of travertine of recent deposit, while in another, a solid mass thirty feet thick was deposited in about twenty years. There are countless places in Italy where the formation of limestone may be seen, as also in Auvergne and other volcanic districts.[23]

      From these and similar considerations it seems to me by no means unreasonable that the four thousand years which elapsed between the Creation and the commencement of Western European history should have been amply sufficient for many of those geological operations whose results are seen in what are known as the later Tertiary deposits—the crag, the drift, the cavern-accumulations, and the like. And, as a corollary to this, that the great extinct Mammalia may have extended into this period, and thus have been contemporary with man, for a greater or less duration, according to the species; some, probably, having been extinguished at a very early period of the era, while others lived on to the time I have named, or even later.

      But have we nothing better for this conclusion than an assumption of the possibility, and a more or less probable conjecture? Yes; we have some facts of interest to warrant it, or I should not have ventured to introduce the subject in this work. There are facts—besides the admixture of human workmanship with the animal remains in undisturbed deposits—direct evidence, not altogether shadowy, of the co-existence of the extinct animals with living men.

      And first, I would mention some circumstances bearing analogy to the exhumation of the fresh Pachyderms of Siberia. Some years ago, a portion of the leg of an Irish Elk, so-called, (Megaceros hibernicus,) with a part of the tendons, skin, and hair upon it, was dug up with other remains from a deposit on the estate of H. Grogan Morgan, Esq., of Johnstown Castle, Wexford, and is now in that gentleman's possession. This leg was exhibited, and formed the subject of a lecture at the time by Mr. Peile, veterinary surgeon, Dublin.

      It has been ascertained that the marrow in some of the bones blazes like a candle; that the cartilage and gelatine, so far from having been destroyed, were not apparently altered by time.[24] Archdeacon Maunsell actually made soup of the bones, and presented a portion thereof to the Royal Dublin Society (whether they enjoyed it I have not heard; it must have been "a little high," I fear). They are frequently used by the peasantry for fuel. On the occasion of the rejoicings for the victory at Waterloo, a bonfire was made of these bones, and it was observed that they gave out as good a blaze as those of horses, often used for similar purposes.[25]

      Pepper, in his "History of Ireland," states that the ancient Irish used to hunt a very large black deer, the milk of which they used as we do that of the cow, and the flesh of which served them for food, and the skin for clothing. This is a very remarkable record; and is confirmed by some bronze tablets found by Sir William Betham, the inscriptions on which attested that the ancient Irish fed upon the milk and flesh of a great black deer.

      According to the "Annals of the Four Masters," Niel Sedamin, a king of Ireland before the Christian era, was so called because "the cows and the female deer were alike milked in his reign." The art of taming the wild deer and converting

Скачать книгу