long, according to observed modes and rates of change, it would take to develope the manifold speech of to-day. Physicists are called upon to tell us for how long the great lamp of heaven if not replenished can have burned; for if its age must be reduced, and yet include all the æons of geologic time, how very short the part through which man lived. Biologists are asked if they can say what is man's place in nature among the groups of living things that people earth, and, on the hypothesis of evolution, how long it is since he has become that which we call man. None of these questions are for me to-night. Though I must mention a theory of works of art of ancient date referred by some to "man's precursors," I shall dismiss that case on other grounds. I take the question to refer to man,-man as we know him-of whom we all agree to speak as man. I will suppose that I am asked first this: In what formations have we found conclusive evidence that man was there? and, secondly, having satisfied ourselves as to the relative position of the beds in which his works are found, can we assign any exact numerical estimate of years since those beds were laid down? and if we give that up, whether we can trace him back to a remote antiquity, and from what evidence we derive the impression or conviction that that was far removed from earliest history? This part of the question is entirely geological. We may consider that we have proved the relative position of the beds with which we have to deal. But to refer to them by name without more explanation, I will first give a sketch of these from older up to newer as they come. After the period when the present forms of life appeared upon the earth in numbers marked and well-defined-a period named from this the "dawn of recent days," the Eocene, there came a time when over Europe and beyond, the crumplings of the crust of earth left basins here and there not quite coincident with those that were before, and by this change drove out some forms of life, and let others in, which may have existed elsewhere before that time. Still few were there like those now seen in recent times, and hence they call the period by the name Oligocene. When later on, by waste of shore and continent, hollows were silted up, and with that too the land was raised; less sea, more land, with lakes and streams, prevailed. England then stood above the waves, and here and there small peaty patches tell of swamps with reedy margin, where the leaves of plants blown in accumulated deep in mud. In France the land was still more lowered, and received from lake and sea more mud and sand, and therefore deeper, wider beds there represent the time when a less number of the very same life-forms prevailed than afterwards. These beds were hence called Miocene, and in them it has been said that evidence of man's handiwork has been found. Next came the Pliocene; in which we place the Crag, marine deposits of shingle, sand, and shells, found in our eastern counties; and on the Continent made up of various kinds of beds, but all containing more of the forms of life that now exist, and hence the name. In this, too, evidence of man's art is seen by some in rude drilled bones and teeth, such as are strung by savages for ornament. After that followed a time, when from the great upheaving of the land the snow lay thick on all the northern heights of Europe, and glaciers crept down into the sea, and icebergs, with earth and stone fallen from crag or picked up on the shore, floated far south, melted and dropped their load. We need not now discuss the probability that then there might have been such combinations in the heavens as would intensify the extremes of heat and cold at either pole. This is a fair field of inquiry, and if we could obtain some means for correlating marked periods on the earth with cosmical events, then we might hope to arrive at some more accurate chronology; but we have too many unknown quantities to solve this problem with the data yet before us. Such questions we pass by, and only note that we had once within the later times such cold that frost held fast our northern shores, and ice came down in glaciers from the heights. When, later on, the land began to rise from underneath the sea, and the high ranges sank, and a more uniform temperature prevailed over all north-western Europe, the ice fell back, and could not gain in winter what it lost under the summer's sun. Then the streams, filled with melted snow and heavy rain, came down in floods over all the lower plains. The wandering animals, and even man, were often caught by the sudden rise of rivers winding about across the widening valleys, and their remains were buried in the mass of débris carried down. As time went on, the rivers, finding their way to lower levels, cut back waterfall and rapid to the hills, and left, now here now there, a terrace as a mark where once in ancient days the stream had run; and throughout all these later ages it is said that man was there, holding his own among fierce beasts, in forests and in caves along the river banks and rocky shore. Now we will criticise the evidence adduced of man's existence at these different times, and, having satisfied ourselves as to which cases we may accept as proved, will then consider the changes which have taken place since the date to which in the present state of the evidence we can with certainty assign his earliest known appearance. We may dismiss at once the case reported from the Dardanelles of works of art found in deposits said to be of Miocene age. The descriptions* prove that it was not given on the authority of one competent to judge in such a case, and it never was confirmed. Another instance referred to the same period we must consider more in full, because the evidence has been accepted by men of high authority in France.† In beds said to be Miocene, at Thenay, near Pontlevoy, the Abbé Bourgeois found flints which he supposed were dressed by man. These flints are now exhibited in the Museum at St. Germains, where I saw them with Sir Charles Lyell several years ago, and again with others since. Some of them seemed entirely natural, common forms, such as we find over the surface everywhere, broken by all the various accidents of heat and frost and blows. A few seemed as if they might have been man's handiwork, -cores from which he had struck off flakes such as we know were used by early man, of which I show examples. Yet this is not quite clear, for, had the evidence been good that they were found in place there still would have been a doubt whether they were man's work. But when we came to inquire about the evidence that they occurred in beds of Miocene age, we learned that only those that we put down as natural were found by the Abbé himself; the others were brought in by workmen, picked up, we may suppose, upon the heaps turned over by their spades, and so perhaps just dropped down from the surface. When all the other higher forms of life were different it was not probable that man should have been the same, even when we remember that his intellect allowed him to adapt himself unmodified to different states of life, taking the clothing of the meaner brutes for his own use, and lighting fires and building homes, anticipating the future in more various ways than they. It would require the clearest evidence in such a case to prove that man was there, or that some other form as "man's precursor" represented him, but such evidence there is not. * Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vol. iii. April, 1873, p. 127. + Bourgeois, "Étude sur des Silex Travaillés trouvés dans les Dépôts Tertiaires de Thenay (Loir et Cher)."-Congrès International d'Anthrop. et d'Archéol. Prehist. 2me. Session, Paris, 1867. Hamy. Paléont. Hum., 1870. Next in the Crag the teeth of sharks, bored through, as if for wear, were found,* part of a string of ornaments such as commonly are worn by savages. Of these I give examples: one a boar's tusk, from the lake dwellings of Switzerland; another, a tooth from a deposit of paleolithic age, in a cave just above the miraculous grotto of Lourdes in the Pyrenees. But let us see whether such holes are not sometimes the work of nature, and inquire more carefully whether these from the Crag were probably produced by nature or by art. For this purpose I have examined fragments of bone and teeth of various size and shape, and found them marked over the surface with many a pit or deeper hole, or even perforation irregularly placed, not as if by design, but accident. There they were in every stage, all over, yet of one type. One sawn across explains the whole. The chamber of a shell which bores its way into the solid rock or softer shale was clearly shown. When the mass lay embedded in the mud it was but touched here and there. If it was thin the animal bored right through into the sand or clay below, and showed the tooth pierced through-a perfectly well-turned and finished work, so good they thought it was man's. But if the mass was thick and near the surface, the little mollusc made a home entirely within it, and its shell often remains there, and reveals the history and manner of formation of the holes. To the Miocene and Pliocene have been assigned some bones of large sea mammals marked as if cut by implements, and some fashioned as if for use as batons, swords, or clubs. Of these I have seen some, and in those cases certainly would not admit the evidence. There are so many common natural accidents that scratch and cut and break, that it requires far more accumulative evidence of design in the resulting form than any I have seen before we could assume man's agency. Some bones when fossilised break with a clean fracture, and show a smooth and even surface. Some of the specimens are held to be of doubtful origin, but in the best of those that I have seen, though I had no reason to suspect the origin, I felt it was too much to say that it was shaped by man. An account has also been given by the Abbé Bourgeois of flints from Pliocene beds at St. Prest, near to Chartres, said to be worked by man, but this we may dismiss on the same ground as those before referred to given on the same authority.† * Journ. Anthrop. Inst. vol. ii. April, 1872, p. 91. Another case brought forward from abroad but recently, has found much favour here as there.* Around the Lake of Zurich there are left traces of ancient lakes at somewhat higher levels. A bed of clay below with glacial stones, a bed of plants between half-turned to coal, a mass of clay moraine-like on the top, tell of the time when Alpine ice crept further down the hills, and touched upon the lake, now more, now less encroaching. In these beds the peaty mass of lignite, known as Dürnten coal, was largely dug for fuel. I have worked a long time down below to see the evidence myself. The sequence of the beds is clear. But recently two Swiss professors have proclaimed that they have obtained proofs incontestable that man was there, and wove a basket, fragments of which were found among the drifted plants which formed the coal. These fragments, it is said, consist of pointed sticks, sharpened across the grain, not tapering naturally, and a cross set of binding withies, all now pressed and changed, but by such characters referred to work of man. Now I have found myself along the shore fragments of wood and twigs half decomposed and waveworn till they were cut to a point obliquely to the grain, as they describe the Dürnten sticks. Across such fragments often others fell, and when the whole was then compressed what wonder if they left a mark of wattle or of basket-work? and the whole mass has suffered such great pressure from the superincumbent weight of clay that all the round twigs and stems are squeezed quite flat, as in the specimens before you. These Dürnten pointed sticks, however, I have not seen, and, therefore, speak with caution, showing only how I think the thing might be otherwise explained. More recently the legitimate ambition to be first to make a great discovery, not controlled and kept subordinate to judgment, has adduced other examples, where the age of man has been too hastily referred to glacial or inter-glacial times. Whatever may be found hereafter, the evidence on which this case has now been based was not such as would justify the statements founded on it. Widespread beds of loam and sand, and gravel, cover the lower levels of East Anglia; and, probably ranging over a vast period, have been collectively described as "middle-glacial," for below are glacial beds, and in the middle series boulder clay, and over them, whether in part remanié or not, another boulder clay. Lying in hollows and on the flanks of valleys, cut through this ancient loam and other beds, are river terraces of later date; Rütimeyer, Archiv. für Anthropologic, 1875; Heer, Primeval World of Switzerland. |