Proved by Contemporary Monuments—As in History—Summary of Historical Evidence—Geological Evidence of Human Periods—Neolithic Period—Pal?olithic or Quaternary—Tertiary—Secondary and Older Periods—The Recent or Post-Glacial Period—Lake-Villages—Bronze Age—Kitchen-Middens—Scandinavian Peat-mosses—Neolithic Remains comparatively Modern—Definition of Post-Glacial Period—Its Duration—Mellard Read\'s Estimate—Submerged Forests—Changes in Physical Geography—Huxley—Objections from America—Niagara—Quaternary Period—Immense Antiquity—Presence of Man throughout—First Glacial Period—Scandinavian and Laurentian Ice-caps—Immense Extent—Mass of Débris—Elevation and Depression—In Britain—Inter-Glacial and Second Glacial Periods—Antiquity measured by Changes of Land—Lyell\'s Estimate—Glacial Débris and Loess—Recent Erosion—Bournemouth—Evans—Prestwich—Wealden Ridge and Southern Drift—Contain Human Implements—Evidence from New World—California.

We have now to take leave of historical records and fall back on the exact sciences for further traces of human origins. Our guides are still contemporary records, but these are no longer stately tombs and temples, massive pyramids and written inscriptions. Instead of these we have flint implements, incised bones, and a few rare specimens of human skulls and skeletons, the meaning of which has to be deciphered 261 by skilled experts in their respective departments of science.

Still these records tell their tale as conclusively as any hieroglyphic or cuneiform writings in Egyptian manuscripts or on Babylonian cylinders. The celt, the knife, the lance and arrow-heads, and other weapons and implements, can be traced in an uninterrupted progressive series from the oldest and rudest pal?olithic specimens, up to the highly-finished ones of polished stone, and through these into the age of metals, and into historic times and the actual implements of existing savage races. It is impossible to doubt that one of the pal?olithic celts from St. Acheul or St. Prest is as truly a work of the human hand, guided by human intelligence, as a modern axe; and that an arrow-head from Moustier or Kent\'s Cavern is no more an elf-bolt, or a lusus natur?, than is a Winchester rifle.

Before entering on this new line of investigation, it may be well to sum up briefly the evidence as to the starting-point from history and tradition. The commencement of the strictly historical period takes us back certainly for 6000 and in all probability for 7000 years in Egypt, and certainly for 5000 and probably for 6000 or 7000 years in Chald?a. In each case we find populous cities, important temples and public works, writing and other advanced arts and industries, and all the signs of an old civilization already existing. Other nations also evidently then existed with whom these ancient empires had relations of war and of commerce, though the annals of even the oldest of them, such as China, do not carry us back further than from 4000 to 5000 years.

Traditions do not add much to our information from monuments, and fade rapidly away into myths and 262 legends. The oldest and most authentic, those of Egypt, simply confirm the inference of great antiquity for its civilization prior to Menes, but give no clue as to its origin. They neither trace it up to the stone age, which we know existed in the valley of the Nile, nor refer it to any foreign source. The Egyptian people thought themselves autochthonous, and attributed their arts, industries, and sciences to the inventions of native gods, or demi-gods, who reigned like mortal kings, in a remote and fabulous antiquity. We can gather nothing therefore from tradition that would enable us to add even 1000 years with certainty to the date of Menes; while from the high state of civilization which had been evolved prior to his accession, from the primitive conditions of the stone period whose remains are found at Cairo and Thebes, we might fairly add 10,000 or 20,000 years to his date of 5004 years b.c., as a matter of probable conjecture for the first dawn of historical civilization. In any case we shall be well within the mark if we take 10,000 years as our first unit, or standard of chronological measurement, with which to start in our further researches, as we do with terrestrial standards in gauging the distances of suns and stars.

It may be well also to supplement this statement of the historical standard by a brief review of the previous geological periods through which evidences of man\'s existence can be traced. Immediately behind the historic age lies the recent period during which the existing fauna and flora, climate and configuration of seas and lands, have undergone no material change. It is characterized generally as the neolithic period, in which we find polished stone superseding the older and ruder forms of chipped stone, and passing itself into the 263 copper, bronze, and iron ages of early history. It may also be called the recent or post-glacial period, for it coincides with the final disappearance of the last great glaciation, and the establishment of conditions of climate resembling those of the present day.

Behind this again comes the quaternary or pleistocene period, so called from its fauna, which, although containing extinct species, shows along with them many existing forms, some of which have migrated and some remain. This also may be called the glacial period, for although the commencement, termination, and different phases of the two great glaciations and intermediate inter-glacial periods cannot be exactly defined, and hard-and-fast lines drawn between the later pliocene at one end and the post-glacial at the other, there is no doubt that in a general way the quaternary and glacial periods coincide, and that the changes of climate were to a considerable extent the cause of the changes of flora and fauna.

Behind the quaternary comes in the tertiary, with its three great divisions of Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene, each containing numerous subdivisions, and all showing a progressive advance in forms of life, from older and more generalized types towards newer and more specialized ones, and a constant approach towards genera and species now existing. Behind the tertiary comes the secondary period, into which it is unnecessary to enter for the present purpose, for all is different, and even mammalian life is only known to be present in a few forms of small and feeble marsupials. Nor is it necessary to enter on any detailed consideration of the Eocene or earlier tertiary, for the types of mammalian life are so different from those of later periods, that it 264 cannot be supposed that any animal so highly organized as man had then come into existence. The utmost we can suppose is that, as in the case of the horse, some ancestral form from which the quadrumana and man may possibly have been developed may be found. But up to the present time nothing has been found in the Eocene more nearly approaching such a missing link than an ancient form of lemur; and it is not until we get into the Miocene that any evidence presents itself that man, or some near ancestor of man, may possibly have existed.[8]

My present object being not to write a book on geology, but on human origins, I shall not attempt to trace back the geological evidence beyond the Miocene, or to enter on any details of the later periods, except so far as they bear on what may be called geological chronology, i.e. on the probable dates which may be assigned to the first appearance and subsequent evolution of the human race going back from historical times.

Beginning with the recent or post-glacial period, 265 the Swiss and Italian lake-villages supply clear evidence of the progress of man in Western Europe through the neolithic into the historical period. They afford us an unbroken series of substantially the same state of society, existing down to the time of the Romans, for a great many centuries back of communities living in lake-villages built upon piles, like the villages in Thrace described by Herodotus, or those of the present day in New Guinea. Some of these have been occupied continuously, so that the débris of different ages are stored in consecutive order like geological strata, and afford an unerring test of their relative antiquity. It is clear that many of those lake-villages were founded in the age of stone, and passed through that of bronze into the age of iron. The oldest settlements belong to the neolithic age, and contain polished stone implements and pottery, but they show a state of civilization not yet very far advanced. The inhabitants were only just emerging from the hunting into the pastoral stage. They lived principally on the produce of the chase, the bones of the stag and wild boar being very plentiful, while those of ox and sheep are rare. Agriculture and the cereals seem to have been unknown, though stores of acorns and hazel nuts were found which had been roasted for food.

By degrees the bones of wild animals become scarce, and those of ox and sheep common, showing that the pastoral stage had been reached; and the goat, pig, and horse were added to the list of domestic animals—the dog being included from the first, and the horse only at a later period. Agriculture follows next in order, and considerable proficiency was attained, barley and wheat being staple articles of food, and apples, pears, and other fruit being stored for winter consumption. Flax also 266 was grown, and the arts of spinning and weaving were introduced, so that clothing, instead of being confined to skins, was made of coarse linen and woollen stuffs.

The most important advance, however, in the arts of civilization is afforded by the introduction of metals. These begin to appear about the middle of the neolithic period, at first very sparingly, and in a few districts such as Spain, Upper Italy, and Hungary, where native copper was found and was hammered into shapes modelled on the old stone implements; but as a general rule, and in all the later settlements, bronze, in new and improved shapes, supersedes stone and copper. For the most part these bronze implements seem to have been obtained by foreign commerce from the Ph?nicians, Etruscans, and other nations bordering on the Mediterranean, though in some cases they were cast on the spot from native or imported ores. The existence of bronze, however, must go back to a far greater antiquity than the time when the neolithic people of Europe obtained their first supplies from Ph?nician traders. Bronze, as we have seen in a former chapter, is an alloy of two metals, copper and tin, and the hardest and most serviceable alloy is only to be obtained by mixing the two in a certain definite proportion. Now it is to be noted, that nearly all the prehistoric bronze found in Europe is an alloy in this definite proportion. Clearly all this bronze, or the art of making it, must have originated from some common centre.

All this, however, is very conjectural, and all that can be concluded from it is, that any indications as to the antiquity of man derived from the bronze age as known to us in Europe, hardly carry us back to dates as remote as those furnished by the monuments of Egypt 267 and Chald?a. Indeed, there are no facts certainly known to us from remains of the bronze age in Europe that imply a greater antiquity than 1500 or possibly 2000 years b.c., a date at which bronze had undoubtedly been already known in Egypt and the East for many centuries.

The neolithic period which preceded that of metals is of longer duration, but still comparatively recent. Attempts have been made to measure it by a sort of natural chronometer in the case of the lake-villages, by comparing the amount of silting up since the villages were built with the known rate of silting up since Roman times. The calculations vary very much, and can only be taken as approximative; but the oldest dates assigned do not exceed 5000 b.c., and most of them are not more than 2000 or 3000 b.c. It must be remembered however that the foundation of a lake-village on piles implies a long antecedent neolithic period, to have arrived at a stage of civilization which made the construction of such villages possible.

This civilization coincides wonderfully with that of the primitive Aryans as shown by linguistic pal?ontology. The discussion as to the origin of the Aryans has thrown a great deal of light on this question, and has gone far to dispel the old notion that they radiated from some centre in Asia, and overran Europe in successive waves. On the contrary, all the evidence and all the best authorities point to their having occupied, when we first get traces of them, pretty much the same districts of the great plain of Northern Europe and Southern Russia as we now find them in, and developed there their distinct dialects and nationalities; while the words common to all or nearly all the Aryan families point 268 to their having been pastoral nomads, in a state of civilization very like that of the earlier lake-villagers, before this separation took place.

The Scandinavian kitchen-middens, or shell-mounds, carry us further back into this early neolithic period. The shell-mounds which are found in great numbers along the Baltic shore of Denmark are often of great size. They are formed of an accumulation of shells of oysters, mussels, and other shell-fish, bones of wild animals, birds, and fish, all of existing species, with numerous implements of flint or bone, and occasional fragments of coarse pottery. They are decidedly more archaic than the lake-dwellings, showing a much ruder civilization of savages living like the Fuegians of the present day, in scanty tribes on the sea-shore, supported mainly by shell-fish, supplemented by the chase of wild animals.

The dog was their only domestic animal, and their only arts the fabrication of rude pottery and implements of stone and bone, unless it can be inferred from the occasional presence of bones of cod and other deep-sea fish, that they possessed some form of boat or canoe, and had hooks and lines or nets. These mounds must have taken an enormous time to accumulate, for they are very numerous, and often of great bulk, some of them being 1000 feet long, 200 feet wide, and ten feet thick. How long such masses must have taken to accumulate must be apparent when we consider that the state of civilization implies a very scanty population. It has been calculated that if the neolithic population of Denmark required as many square miles for its support as the similar existing populations of Greenland and Patagonia, their total number could not have 269 exceeded 1000, and each mound must have been the accumulation of perhaps two or three families. Ancient, however, as these mounds must be, they are clearly neolithic. They are sharply distinguished from the far older remains of the pal?olithic period by the knowledge, however rude, of pottery and polished stone, and still more by the fauna, which is entirely recent, and from which the extinct animals of the quaternary period have disappeared; while the position of the mounds shows that only slight geological changes, such as are now going on, have occurred since they were accumulated. Similar mounds, on even a larger scale, occur on the sea-coasts of various districts in Europe and America, but they afford no indication of their date beyond that of great antiquity.

The peat-mosses of Denmark have been appealed to as affording something like a conjectural date for the early neolithic period in that country. These are formed in hollows of the glacial drift, which have been small lakes or ponds in the midst of forests, into which trees have fallen, and which have become gradually converted into peat by the growth of marsh plants. It is clearly established that there have been three successive ages of forest growth, the upper one of beech, below it one of oak, and lowest of all one of fir. The implements and relics found in the beech stratum are all modern, those in the oak stratum are of the later neolithic and bronze ages, and those in the lowest, or fir-horizon, are earlier and ruder neolithic, resembling those found in the older lake-villages and shell-mounds. Now beech has been the characteristic forest tree of Denmark certainly since the Roman period, or for 2000 years, and no one can say for how much longer. If the speculations 270 as to the origin of the Aryan race in Northern Europe are correct, it must have been for very much longer, as the word for beech is common to so many of the dialects into which the primitive Aryan language became divided. The stages of oaks and firs must equally have been of long duration, and the different stages could only have been brought about by slow secular variations of climate during the post-glacial period. Still this affords no reliable information as to specific dates, and we can only take Steenstrup\'s calculation of from 4000 to 16,000 years for the formation of some of these peat-bogs as a very vague estimate, and this only carries us back to a time when Egypt and Chald?a must have been already densely peopled, and far advanced in civilization.

On the whole, it seems that the neolithic arrow-heads found in Egypt, and the fragments of pottery brought up by borings through the deposits of the Nile, are the oldest certain human relics of the neolithic age which have yet been discovered, and these do not carry us back further than a possible date of 15,000 or 20,000 years b.c.

Nor is there any certainty that any of the neolithic remains found in the newer deposits of rivers and the upper strata of caves go further, or even so far back as these relics of an Egyptian stone period. All that the evidence really shows is, that while the neolithic period must have lasted for a long time as compared with historical standards, its duration is almost infinitesimally small as compared with that of the preceding pal?olithic period. Thus in Kent\'s Cavern neolithic remains are only found in a small surface layer of black earth from three to twelve inches thick; while below this, pal?olithic 271 implements and a quaternary fauna occur in an upper stalagmite one to three feet thick, below it in red cave earth five to six feet thick; then in a lower stalagmite in places ten or twelve feet thick, and below it again in a breccia three or four feet thick. This is confirmed by the evidence of all the caves explored in all parts of the world, which uniformly show any neolithic remains confined to a superficial layer of a few inches with many feet of pal?olithic strata below them. And river-drifts in the same manner show neolithic remains confined to the alluvia and peat-beds of existing streams, while pal?olithic remains occur during the whole series of deposits while these rivers were excavating their present valleys. If we say feet for inches, or twelve for one, we shall be well within the mark in estimating the comparative duration of the pal?olithic and neolithic periods, as measured by the thickness of their deposits in caves and river-drifts; and as we shall see hereafter, other geological evidence from elevations and depressions, denudations and depositions, point to even a higher figure.

In going back from the neolithic into the pal?olithic period, we are confronted by the difficulty to which I have already referred, of there being no hard-and-fast lines by which geological eras are clearly separated from one another. Zoologically there seems to be a very decided break between the recent and the quaternary. The instances are rare and doubtful in which we can see any trace of the remains of pal?olithic man, and of the fauna of extinct animals, passing gradually into those of neolithic and recent times. But geologically there is no such abrupt break. We cannot draw a line at the culmination of the last great glaciation and say, here the glacial period ends and the post-glacial begins. 272 Nor can we say of any definite period or horizon, this is glacial and this recent.

A great number of pal?olithic remains and of quaternary fossils are undoubtedly post-glacial in the sense of being found in deposits which have accumulated since the last great glaciers and ice-caps began to retreat. Existing valleys have been excavated to a great extent since the present rivers, swollen by the melting snows and torrential rains of this period of the latest glacial retreat, superseded old lines of drainage, and began to wear down the surface of the earth into its present aspect. This phase is more properly included in the term glacial, for both the coming on and the disappearance of the periods of intense cold are as much part of the phenomenon as their maximum culmination, and very probably occupied much longer intervals of time. In like manner, we cannot positively say when this post-glacial period ended and the recent began. Not, I should say, until the exceptional effects of the last great glacial period had finally disappeared, and the climate, geographical conditions, and fauna had assumed nearly or entirely the modern conditions in which we find them at the commencement of history. And this may have been different in different countries, for local conditions might make the glacial period commence sooner and continue later in some districts than in others. Thus in North America, where the glaciation was more intense, and the ice-cap extended some ten degrees further south than in Europe, it might well be that it was later in retreating and disappearing. The elevation of the Laurentian highlands into the region of perpetual snow was evidently one main factor of the American ice-cap, just as that of Scandinavia was of that of Europe, and it by no 273 means follows that their depression was simultaneous. It would be unwise, for instance, to take the time occupied in cutting back the Niagara gorge by a river which only began to run at some stage of the post-glacial period, as an absolute test of the duration of that period all over the world. Indeed, the glacial period cannot be said to have ended and the post-glacial begun at the present day in Greenland, if the disappearance of the ice-cap over very extensive regions is to be taken as the test.

Any approximation to the duration of the post-glacial period in any given locality can only be obtained by defining its commencement with the first deposits which lie above the latest glacial drift, and measuring the amount of work done since.

This has been done very carefully by the officers of the Geological Survey and other eminent authorities in England and Scotland, and the result clearly shows that since the last glaciation left the country buried in a thick mantle of boulder-clay and drift, such an amount of denudation, and such movements of elevation and depression have taken place, as must have required a great lapse of time. The most complete attempt at an estimate of this time is that made by Mr. Mellard Read of the Geological Survey, from the changes proved to have occurred in the Mersey valley.

In this case it is shown that the valley, almost in its present dimensions, must have been first carved out of an uniform plain of glacial drift and upper boulder-clay by sub-a?rial denudation; then that a depression let the sea into the valley and accumulated a series of estuarine clays and silts; then an elevation raised the whole into a plain on which grew an extensive forest of 274 oak rooted in the clays; this again must have subsided and let in the sea for a second time, which must have remained long enough to leave a large estuarine deposit, and finally the whole must have been raised to the present level before historical times. The phenomenon of the submerged forest is a very general one, being traced along almost all the sea-coasts of Western Europe, where shelving shores and sheltered bays favour the preservation of patches of this prim?val forest. It testifies to a considerable amount of elevation and subsequent depression, for its remains can be traced below low-water mark, and are occasionally dredged up far out to sea, and stately oaks could not have flourished unless more or less continental conditions had prevailed.

It is evident that in this age of forests the German Ocean must have been dry land, and the continent of Europe must have extended beyond the Orkneys and Hebrides, probably to the hundred fathom line. Such movements of elevation and depression, so far as we know anything of them, are extremely slow. There has been no change in the fords of rivers in Britain since Roman times, and the spit connecting St. Michael\'s Mount with Cornwall was dry at ebb and covered at flood as at the present day, when the British carted their tin across it to trade with the Ph?nicians 2500 years ago. Mr. Read goes into elaborate calculations based on the time required for these geological changes, and arrives at the conclusion that they point to a date of not less than 50,000 or 60,000 years ago for the commencement of the post-glacial period. These calculations are disputed, but it seems certain that several multiples of the historical standard of say 10,000 years, must be required to measure the period since the 275 glacial age finally disappeared, and the earth, with its existing fauna, climate, and geographical conditions, came fairly into view. This is confirmed by the great changes which have taken place in the distribution of land and water since the quaternary period. Huxley, in an article on the Aryan question, points out that in recent times four great separate bodies of water—the Black Sea, the Caspian, the Sea of Aral, and Lake Balkash—occupied the southern end of the vast plains which extend from the Arctic Sea to the highlands of the Balkan peninsula, of Asia Minor, of Persia and Afghanistan, and of the high plateaux of Central Asia, as far as the Altai. But he says, "This state of things is comparatively modern. At no very distant period the land of Asia Minor was continuous with that of Europe, across the present site of the Bosphorus, forming a barrier several hundred feet high, which dammed up the waters of the Black Sea. A vast extent of Eastern Europe and of west-central Asia thus became one vast Ponto-Aralian Mediterranean, into which the largest rivers of Europe and Asia, the Danube, Volga, Oxus, and Jaxartes, discharged their waters, and which sent its overflow northwards through the present basin of the Obi." The time necessary for such changes goes far to confirm Mellard Read\'s estimate for the long duration of the recent or post-glacial period.

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