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Title: The Antiquity of Man

Author: Charles Lyell

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THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN BY CHARLES LYELL.

EVERYMAN
I WILL GO WITH THEE
& BE THY GUIDE
IN THY MOST NEED
TO GO BY THY SIDE.


EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY

EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS.

SCIENCE.


LYELL'S ANTIQUITY OF MAN

WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY R.H. RASTALL, M.A., F.G.S.


HOC SOLUM SCIO QUOD NIHIL SCIO.


THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN

BY

SIR CHARLES LYELL, BT., F.R.S., ETC. ETC.

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY J.M. DENT & SONS LTD.
AND IN NEW YORK BY E.P. DUTTON & CO.


INTRODUCTION.

The "Antiquity of Man" was published in 1863, and ran into a third
edition in the course of that year. The cause of this is not far to
seek. Darwin's "Origin of Species" appeared in 1859, only four
years earlier, and rapidly had its effect in drawing attention to
the great problem of the origin of living beings. The theories of
Darwin and Wallace brought to a head and presented in a concrete
shape the somewhat vague speculations as to development and
evolution which had long been floating in the minds of naturalists.
In the actual working out of Darwin's great theory it is impossible
to overestimate the influence of Lyell. This is made abundantly
clear in Darwin's letters, and it must never be forgotten that
Darwin himself was a geologist. His training in this science
enabled him to grasp the import of the facts so ably marshalled by
Lyell in the "Principles of Geology," a work which, as Professor
Judd has clearly shown,* contributed greatly to the advancement of
evolutionary theory in general. (* Judd "The Coming of Evolution"
("Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature") Cambridge 1910
chapters 6 and 7.)

From a study of the evolution of plants and of the lower animals it
was an easy and obvious transition to man, and this step was soon
taken. Since in his physical structure man shows so close a
resemblance to the higher animals it was a natural conclusion that
the laws governing the development of the one should apply also to
the other, in spite of preconceived opinions derived from
authority. Unfortunately the times were then hardly ripe for a calm
and logical treatment of this question: prejudice in many cases
took the place of argument, and the result was too often an
undignified squabble instead of a scientific discussion. However,
the dogmatism was not by any means all on one side. The disciples
as usual went farther than the master, and their teaching when
pushed to extremities resulted in a peculiarly dreary kind of
materialism, a mental attitude which still survives to a certain
extent among scientific and pseudo-scientific men of the old
school. In more Recent times this dogmatic agnosticism of the
middle Victorian period has been gradually replaced by speculations
of a more positive type, such as those of the Mendelian school in
biology and the doctrines of Bergson on the philosophical side.
With these later developments we are not here concerned.

In dealing with the evolution and history of man as with that of
any other animal, the first step is undoubtedly to collect the
facts, and this is precisely what Lyell set out to do in the
"Antiquity of Man." The first nineteen chapters of the book are
purely an empirical statement of the evidence then available as to
the existence of man in pre-historic times: the rest of the book is
devoted to a consideration of the connection between the facts
previously stated and Darwin's theory of the origin of species by
variation and natural selection. The keynote of Lyell's work,
throughout his life, was observation. Lyell was no cabinet
geologist; he went to nature and studied phenomena at first hand.
Possessed of abundant leisure and ample means he travelled far and
wide, patiently collecting material and building up the modern
science of physical geology, whose foundations had been laid by
Hutton and Playfair. From the facts thus collected he drew his
inferences, and if later researches showed these inferences to be
wrong, unlike some of his contemporaries, he never hesitated to say
so. Thus and thus only is true progress in science attained.

Lyell is universally recognised as the leader of the Uniformitarian
school of geologists, and it will be well to consider briefly what
is implied in this term. The principles of Uniformitarianism may be
summed up thus: THE PRESENT IS THE KEY TO THE PAST. That is to say,
the processes which have gone on in the past were the same in
general character as those now seen in operation, though probably
differing in degree. This theory is in direct opposition to the
ideas of the CATASTROPHIC school, which were dominant at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. The catastrophists attributed
all past changes to sudden and violent convulsions of nature, by
which all living beings were destroyed, to be replaced by a fresh
creation. At least such were the tenets of the extremists. In
opposition to these views the school of Hutton and Lyell introduced
the principle of continuity and development. There is no
discrepancy between Uniformitarianism and evolution. The idea of
Uniformitarianism does not imply that things have always been the
same; only that they were similar, and between these two terms
there is a wide distinction. Evolution of any kind whatever
naturally implies continuity, and this is the fundamental idea of
Lyellian geology.

In spite, however, of this clear and definite conception of natural
and organic evolution, in all those parts of his works dealing with
earth-history, with the stratified rocks and with the organisms
entombed in them, Lyell adopted a plan which has now been
universally abandoned. He began with the most Recent formations and
worked backwards from the known to the unknown. To modern readers
this is perhaps the greatest drawback to his work, since it renders
difficult the study of events in their actual sequence. However, it
must be admitted that, taking into account the state of geological
knowledge before his time, this course was almost inevitable. The
succession of the later rocks was fairly well known, thanks to the
labours of William Smith and others, but in the lower part of the
sequence of stratified rocks there were many gaps, and more
important still, there was no definite base. Although this want of
a starting point has been largely supplied by the labours of
Sedgwick, Murchison, De la Beche, Ramsay, and a host of followers,
still considerable doubt prevails as to which constitutes the
oldest truly stratified series, and the difficulty has only been
partially circumvented by the adoption of an arbitrary base-line,
from which the succession is worked out both upwards and downwards.
So the problem is only removed a stage further back. In the study
of human origins a similar difficulty is felt with special
acuteness; the beginnings must of necessity be vague and uncertain,
and the farther back we go the fainter will naturally be the traces
of human handiwork and the more primitive and doubtful those traces
when discovered.

The reprinting of the "Antiquity of Man" is particularly
appropriate at the present time, owing to the increased attention
drawn to the subject by recent discoveries. Ever since the
publication of the "Origin of Species" and the discussions that
resulted from that publication, the popular imagination has been
much exercised by the possible existence of forms intermediate
between the apes and man; the so-called "Missing Link." Much has
been written on this subject, some of it well-founded and some very
much the reverse. The discovery of the Neanderthal skull is fully
described in this volume, and this skull is certainly of a low
type, but it is more human than ape-like. The same remark applies
still more strongly to the Engis skull, the man of Spy, the
recently discovered Sussex skull, and other well-known examples of
early human remains. The Pithecanthropus of Java alone shows
perhaps more affinity to the apes. The whole subject has been most
ably discussed by Professor Sollas in his recent book entitled
"Ancient Hunters."

The study of Palaeolithic flint implements has been raised to a
fine art. Both in England and France a regular succession of
primitive types has been established and correlated with the gravel
terraces of existing rivers, and even with the deposits of rivers
no longer existing and with certain glacial deposits. But with all
of these the actual bodily remains of man are comparatively scanty.
From this it may be concluded that primitive methods of burial were
such as to be unfavourable to the actual preservation of human
remains. Attempts have also been made to prove the existence of man
in pre-glacial times, but hitherto none of these have met with
general acceptance, since in no case is the evidence beyond doubt.

One of the most important results of recent research in the subject
has been the establishment of the existence of man in interglacial
times. When Lyell wrote, it was not fully recognised that the
glaciation of Europe was not one continuous process, but that it
could be divided into several episodes, glaciations, or advances of
the ice, separated by a warm interglacial period. The monumental
researches of Penck and Bruckner in the Alps have there established
four glaciations with mild interglacial periods, but all of these
cannot be clearly traced in Britain. One very important point also
is the recognition of the affinities of certain types of
Palaeolithic man to the Eskimo, the Australians, and the Bushmen of
South Africa. However, it is impossible to give here a review of
the whole subject. Full details of recent researches will be found
in the works mentioned in the notes at the end of the book.

Another point of great interest and importance, arising directly
from the study of early man is the nature of the events
constituting the glacial period in Britain and elsewhere. This has
been for many years a fertile subject of controversy, and is likely
to continue such. Lyell, in common with most of the geologists of
his day, assumes that during the glacial period the British Isles
were submerged under the sea to a depth of many hundreds of feet,
at any rate as regards the region north of a line drawn from London
to Bristol. Later authors, however, explained the observed
phenomena on the hypothesis of a vast ice-sheet of the Greenland
type, descending from the mountains of Scotland and Scandinavia,
filling up the North Sea and spreading over eastern England. This
explanation is now accepted by the majority, but it must be
recognised that it involves enormous mechanical difficulties. It is
impossible to pursue the subject here; for a full discussion
reference may be made to Professor Bonney's presidential address to
the British Association at Sheffield in 1910.

It will be seen, therefore, that the "Antiquity of Man" opens up a
wide field of speculation into a variety of difficult and obscure
though interesting subjects. In the light of modern research it
would be an easy task to pile up a mountain of criticism on points
of detail. But, though easy, it would be a thankless task. It is
scarcely too much to say that the dominant impression of most
readers after perusing this book will be one of astonishment and
admiration at the insight and breadth of view displayed by the
author. When it was written the subject was a particularly thorny
one to handle, and it undoubtedly required much courage to tackle
the origin and development of the human race from a purely critical
and scientific standpoint. It must be admitted on all hands that
the result was eminently successful, taking into account the
paucity of the available material, and the "Antiquity of Man" must
ever remain one of the classics of prehistoric archaeology.

This edition of the "Antiquity of Man" has been undertaken in order
to place before the public in an easily accessible form one of the
best known works of the great geologist Sir Charles Lyell; the book
had an immense influence in its own day, and it still remains one
of the best general accounts of an increasingly important branch of
knowledge.

In order to avoid a multiplicity of notes and thus to save space,
the nomenclature has been to a certain extent modernised: a new
general table of strata has been inserted in the first chapter, in
place of the one originally there printed, which was cumbrous and
included many minor subdivisions of unnecessary minuteness.

The notes have been kept as short as possible, and they frequently
contain little more than references to recent literature
elucidating the points under discussion in the text.

R.H. RASTALL.
1914.


BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The passage of the Beresina (in verse), 1815.

Principles of Geology, being an attempt to explain the former
   changes of the earth's surface, by reference to causes now in
   operation, 1830-33
(third edition, 1834;
fourth, 1835;
fifth, 1837;
sixth, 1840;
seventh, 1847;
ninth, entirely revised edition, 1853;
tenth, entirely revised edition, 1867, 1868;
eleventh, entirely revised edition, 1872;
twelfth, edited by L. Lyell, 1875).

Elements of Geology, 1838
(second edition, 1841).

A Manual of Elementary Geology
(third and entirely revised edition of the former work, 1851;
fourth and entirely revised edition, 1852;
fifth, enlarged edition, 1855;
Supplement to the fifth edition, 1857;
second edition of the Supplement, revised, 1857).

Elements of Geology,
sixth edition, greatly enlarged, 1865.

Travels in North America, with geological observations
   on the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia, 1845.

A Second Visit to the United States of North America, 1849.

The Students' Elements of Geology, 1871
(second edition, revised and corrected, 1874;
third, revised, with a table of British fossils
   [by R. Etheridge], 1878;
fourth, revised by P.M. Duncan, with a table of British fossils
   [by R. Etheridge], 1884).

The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man,
   with remarks on theories of the origin of species
   by variation, 1863;
(second edition, revised, 1863;
third edition, revised, 1863;
fourth edition, revised, 1873).

There has also been published The Student's Lyell: a Manual of
Elementary Geology, edited by J.W. Judd, 1896 (second edition
revised and enlarged, 1911).

LECTURES, ADDRESSES, AND ARTICLES:

On a Recent Formation of Freshwater Limestone in Forfarshire
("Transactions of the Geological Society" 2nd series, volume 2,
1826, part 1).

On a Dike of Serpentine in the County of Forfar ("Edinburgh Journal
of Science" 1825).

English Scientific Societies ("Quarterly Review" volume 34; three
papers with Sir Roderick and Mrs. Murchison ("Edinburgh
Philosophical Journal," 1829; abstract in "Proceedings of the
Geological Society" 1; "Annales des Sciences Naturelles" 1829;
abstract in "Proceedings of the Geological Society" 1).

Address delivered at the Geological Society of London, 1836.

Lectures on Geology--Eight Lectures on Geology, delivered at the
Broadway Tabernacle, New York ("New York Tribune" 1842).

A Paper on Madeira ("Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society"
10, 1853).

On the Structure of Lavas which have Consolidated on Steep Slopes
("Philosophical Transactions" 1858).

Address (to the British Association) 1864.

TRANSLATIONS:

Antiquity of Man, translated into French by M. Chaper, 1864; and
into German by L. Buchner, 1874.

Elements of Geology (sixth edition), translated into French by M.
J. Gineston, 1867.

Report, extracted from the "Aberdeen Free Press" and translated
into French, of Sir C. Lyell's address before the British
Association, 1859, under the title of Antiquities antediluviennes:
   L'homme fossile.

LIFE:

Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, edited by his
sister-in-law, Mrs. Lyell, 1881.

See also:

Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 1887.

Life and Letters of Sedgwick, by Clark and Hughes, 1890.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER 1.

INTRODUCTORY.

Preliminary Remarks on the Subjects treated of in this Work.
Definition of the terms Recent and Pleistocene.
Tabular View of the entire Series of Fossiliferous Strata.


CHAPTER 2.

RECENT PERIOD--DANISH PEAT AND SHELL MOUNDS--
   SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS.

Works of Art in Danish Peat-Mosses.
Remains of three Periods of Vegetation in the Peat.
Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron.
Shell-Mounds or ancient Refuse-Heaps of the Danish Islands.
Change in geographical Distribution of Marine Mollusca
   since their Origin.
Embedded Remains of Mammalia of Recent Species.
Human Skulls of the same Period.
Swiss Lake-Dwellings built on Piles.
Stone and Bronze Implements found in them.
Fossil Cereals and other Plants.
Remains of Mammalia, wild and domesticated.
No extinct Species.
Chronological Computations of the Date of the Bronze and Stone
   Periods in Switzerland.
Lake-Dwellings, or artificial Islands called "Crannoges,"
   in Ireland.


CHAPTER 3.

FOSSIL HUMAN REMAINS AND WORKS OF ART OF
   THE RECENT PERIOD--continued.

Delta and Alluvial Plain of the Nile.
Burnt Bricks in Egypt before the Roman Era.
Borings in 1851-54.
Ancient Mounds of the Valley of the Ohio.
Their Antiquity.
Sepulchral Mound at Santos in Brazil.
Delta of the Mississippi.
Ancient Human Remains in Coral Reefs of Florida.
Changes in Physical Geography in the Human Period.
Buried Canoes in Marine Strata near Glasgow.
Upheaval since the Roman Occupation of the Shores of the
   Firth of Forth.
Fossil Whales near Stirling.
Upraised Marine Strata of Sweden on Shores of the Baltic
   and the Ocean.
Attempts to compute their Age.


CHAPTER 4.

PLEISTOCENE PERIOD--BONES OF MAN AND EXTINCT MAMMALIA
   IN BELGIAN CAVERNS.

Earliest Discoveries in Caves of Languedoc of Human Remains
   with Bones of extinct Mammalia.
Researches in 1833 of Dr. Schmerling in the Liege Caverns.
Scattered Portions of Human Skeletons associated with Bones
   of Elephant and Rhinoceros.
Distribution and probable Mode of Introduction of the Bones.
Implements of Flint and Bone.
Schmerling's Conclusions as to the Antiquity of Man ignored.
Present State of the Belgian Caves.
Human Bones recently found in Cave of Engihoul.
Engulfed Rivers.
Stalagmitic Crust.
Antiquity of the Human Remains in Belgium how proved.


CHAPTER 5.

PLEISTOCENE PERIOD--FOSSIL HUMAN SKULLS OF THE
   NEANDERTHAL AND ENGIS CAVES.

Human Skeleton found in Cave near Dusseldorf.
Its geological Position and probable Age.
Its abnormal and ape-like Characters.
Fossil Human Skull of the Engis Cave near Liege.
Professor Huxley's Description of these Skulls.
Comparison of each, with extreme Varieties of the native
   Australian Race.
Range of Capacity in the Human and Simian Brains.
Skull from Borreby in Denmark.
Conclusions of Professor Huxley.
Bearing of the peculiar Characters of the Neanderthal Skull
   on the Hypothesis of Transmutation.


CHAPTER 6.

PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM AND CAVE DEPOSITS WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS.

General Position of Drift with extinct Mammalia in Valleys.
Discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes at Abbeville.
Flint Implements found also at St. Acheul, near Amiens.
Curiosity awakened by the systematic Exploration of the
   Brixham Cave.
Flint Knives in same, with Bones of extinct Mammalia.
Superposition of Deposits in the Cave.
Visits of English and French Geologists to Abbeville and Amiens.


CHAPTER 7.

PEAT AND PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM OF THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME.

Geological Structure of the Valley of the Somme and of the
   surrounding Country.
Position of Alluvium of different Ages.
Peat near Abbeville.
Its animal and vegetable Contents.
Works of Art in Peat.
Probable Antiquity of the Peat, and Changes of Level
   since its Growth began.
Flint Implements of antique Type in older Alluvium.
Their various Forms and great Numbers.


CHAPTER 8.

PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS OF THE VALLEY
   OF THE SOMME--concluded.

Fluvio-marine Strata, with Flint Implements, near Abbeville.
Marine Shells in same.
Cyrena fluminalis.
Mammalia.
Entire Skeleton of Rhinoceros.
Flint Implements, why found low down in Fluviatile Deposits.
Rivers shifting their Channels.
Relative Ages of higher and lower-level Gravels.
Section of Alluvium of St. Acheul.
Two Species of Elephant and Hippopotamus coexisting with Man
   in France.
Volume of Drift, proving Antiquity of Flint Implements.
Absence of Human Bones in tool-bearing Alluvium, how explained.
Value of certain Kinds of negative Evidence tested thereby.
Human Bones not found in drained Lake of Haarlem.


CHAPTER 9.

WORKS OF ART IN PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

Flint Implements in ancient Alluvium of the Basin of the Seine.
Bones of Man and of extinct Mammalia in the Cave of Arcy.
Extinct Mammalia in the Valley of the Oise.
Flint Implement in Gravel of same Valley.
Works of Art in Pleistocene Drift in Valley of the Thames.
Musk Ox.
Meeting of northern and southern Fauna.
Migrations of Quadrupeds.
Mammals of Mongolia.
Chronological Relation of the older Alluvium of the Thames
   to the Glacial Drift.
Flint Implements of Pleistocene Period in Surrey, Middlesex,
   Kent, Bedfordshire, and Suffolk.


CHAPTER 10.

CAVERN DEPOSITS, AND PLACES OF SEPULTURE OF THE PLEISTOCENE PERIOD.

Flint Implements in Cave containing Hyaena and other extinct
   Mammalia in Somersetshire.
Caves of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales.
Rhinoceros hemitoechus.
Ossiferous Caves near Palermo.
Sicily once part of Africa.
Rise of Bed of the Mediterranean to the Height of three hundred
   Feet in the Human Period in Sardinia.
Burial-place of Pleistocene Date of Aurignac in the South of France.
Rhinoceros tichorhinus eaten by Man.
M. Lartet on extinct Mammalia and Works of Art found in the
   Aurignac Cave.
Relative Antiquity of the same considered.


CHAPTER 11.

AGE OF HUMAN FOSSILS OF LE PUY IN CENTRAL FRANCE
   AND OF NATCHEZ ON THE MISSISSIPPI DISCUSSED.

Question as to the Authenticity of the Fossil Man of Denise,
   near Le Puy-en-Velay, considered.
Antiquity of the Human Race implied by that Fossil.
Successive Periods of Volcanic Action in Central France.
With what Changes in the Mammalian Fauna they correspond.
The Elephas meridionalis anterior in Time to the Implement-bearing
   Gravel of St. Acheul.
Authenticity of the Human Fossil of Natchez on the Mississippi
   discussed.
The Natchez Deposit, containing Bones of Mastodon and Megalonyx,
   probably not older than the Flint Implements of St. Acheul.


CHAPTER 12.

ANTIQUITY OF MAN RELATIVELY TO THE GLACIAL PERIOD
   AND TO THE EXISTING FAUNA AND FLORA.

Chronological Relation of the Glacial Period, and the earliest
   known Signs of Man's Appearance in Europe.
Series of Tertiary Deposits in Norfolk and Suffolk immediately
   antecedent to the Glacial Period.
Gradual Refrigeration of Climate proved by the Marine Shells
   of successive Groups.
Marine Newer Pliocene Shells of Northern Character near Woodbridge.
Section of the Norfolk Cliffs.
Norwich Crag.
Forest Bed and Fluvio-marine Strata.
Fossil Plants and Mammalia of the same.
Overlying Boulder Clay and Contorted Drift.
Newer freshwater Formation of Mundesley compared to that of Hoxne.
Great Oscillations of Level implied by the Series of Strata
   in the Norfolk Cliffs.
Earliest known Date of Man long subsequent to the existing
   Fauna and Flora.


CHAPTER 13.

CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD
   AND THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE.

Chronological Relations of the Close of the Glacial Period
   and the earliest geological Signs of the Appearance of Man.
Effects of Glaciers and Icebergs in polishing and scoring Rocks.
Scandinavia once encrusted with Ice like Greenland.
Outward Movement of Continental Ice in Greenland.
Mild Climate of Greenland in the Miocene Period.
Erratics of Recent Period in Sweden.
Glacial State of Sweden in the Pleistocene Period.
Scotland formerly encrusted with Ice.
Its subsequent Submergence and Re-elevation.
Latest Changes produced by Glaciers in Scotland.
Remains of the Mammoth and Reindeer in Scotch Boulder Clay.
Parallel Roads of Glen Roy formed in Glacier Lakes.
Comparatively modern Date of these Shelves.


CHAPTER 14.

CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD
   AND THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE--continued.

Signs of extinct Glaciers in Wales.
Great Submergence of Wales during the Glacial Period
    proved by Marine Shells.
Still greater Depression inferred from Stratified Drift.
Scarcity of Organic Remains in Glacial Formations.
Signs of extinct Glaciers in England.
Ice Action in Ireland.
Maps illustrating successive Revolutions in Physical Geography
   during the Pleistocene Period.
Southernmost Extent of Erratics in England.
Successive Periods of Junction and Separation of England, Ireland,
   and the Continent.
Time required for these Changes.
Probable Causes of the Upheaval and Subsidence of the Earth's Crust.
Antiquity of Man considered in relation to the Age of the existing
   Fauna and Flora.


CHAPTER 15.

EXTINCT GLACIERS OF THE ALPS AND THEIR CHRONOLOGICAL RELATION
   TO THE HUMAN PERIOD.

Extinct Glaciers of Switzerland.
Alpine Erratic Blocks on the Jura.
Not transported by floating Ice.
Extinct Glaciers of the Italian Side of the Alps.
Theory of the Origin of Lake-Basins by the erosive Action
   of Glaciers considered.
Successive phases in the Development of Glacial Action in the Alps.
Probable Relation of these to the earliest known Date of Man.
Correspondence of the same with successive Changes in the
   Glacial Condition of the Scandinavian and British Mountains.
Cold Period in Sicily and Syria.


CHAPTER 16.

HUMAN REMAINS IN THE LOESS, AND THEIR PROBABLE AGE.

Nature, Origin, and Age of the Loess of the Rhine and Danube.
Impalpable Mud produced by the Grinding Action of Glaciers.
Dispersion of this Mud at the Period of the Retreat of the
   great Alpine Glaciers.
Continuity of the Loess from Switzerland to the Low Countries.
Characteristic Organic Remains not Lacustrine.
Alpine Gravel in the Valley of the Rhine covered by Loess.
Geographical Distribution of the Loess and its Height above the Sea.
Fossil Mammalia.
Loess of the Danube.
Oscillations in the Level of the Alps and lower Country required
   to explain the Formation and Denudation of the Loess.
More rapid Movement of the Inland Country.
The same Depression and Upheaval might account for the
   Advance and Retreat of the Alpine Glaciers.
Himalayan Mud of the Plains of the Ganges compared to
   European Loess.
Human Remains in Loess near Maestricht, and their probable
   Antiquity.


CHAPTER 17.

POST-GLACIAL DISLOCATIONS AND FOLDINGS OF CRETACEOUS AND
   DRIFT STRATA IN THE ISLAND OF MOEN, IN DENMARK.

Geological Structure of the Island of Moen.
Great Disturbances of the Chalk posterior in Date to the
   Glacial Drift, with Recent Shells.
M. Puggaard's Sections of the Cliffs of Moen.
Flexures and Faults common to the Chalk and Glacial Drift.
Different Direction of the Lines of successive Movement,
   Fracture, and Flexure.
Undisturbed Condition of the Rocks in the adjoining Danish Islands.
Unequal Movements of Upheaval in Finmark.
Earthquake of New Zealand in 1855.
Predominance in all Ages of uniform Continental Movements
   over those by which the Rocks are locally convulsed.


CHAPTER 18.

THE GLACIAL PERIOD IN NORTH AMERICA.

Post-glacial Strata containing Remains of Mastodon giganteus
   in North America.
Scarcity of Marine Shells in Glacial Drift of Canada and the
   United States.
Greater southern Extension of Ice-action in North America than
   in Europe.
Trains of Erratic Blocks of vast Size in Berkshire, Massachusetts.
Description of their Linear Arrangement and Points of Departure.
Their Transportation referred to Floating and Coast Ice.
General Remarks on the Causes of former Changes of Climate
   at successive geological Epochs.
Supposed Effects of the Diversion of the Gulf Stream in a
   Northerly instead of North-Easterly Direction.
Development of extreme Cold on the opposite Sides of the Atlantic
   in the Glacial period not strictly simultaneous.
Effect of Marine Currents on Climate.
Pleistocene Submergence of the Sahara.


CHAPTER 19.

RECAPITULATION OF GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY.

Recapitulation of Results arrived at in the earlier Chapters.
Ages of Stone and Bronze.
Danish Peat and Kitchen-Middens.
Swiss Lake-Dwellings.
Local Changes in Vegetation and in the wild and domesticated
   Animals and in Physical Geography coeval with the Age of
   Bronze and the later Stone Period.
Estimates of the positive Date of some Deposits of the later
   Stone Period.
Ancient Division of the Age of Stone of St. Acheul and Aurignac.
Migrations of Man in that Period from the Continent to England
   in Post-Glacial Times.
Slow Rate of Progress in barbarous Ages.
Doctrine of the superior Intelligence and Endowments of the
   original Stock of Mankind considered.
Opinions of the Greeks and Romans, and their Coincidence with
   those of the Modern Progressionist.


CHAPTER 20.

THEORIES OF PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION.

Antiquity and Persistence in Character of the existing Races
   of Mankind.
Theory of their Unity of Origin considered.
Bearing of the Diversity of Races on the Doctrine of Transmutation.
Difficulty of defining the Terms "Species" and "Race."
Lamarck's Introduction of the Element of Time into the Definition
   of a Species.
His Theory of Variation and Progression.
Objections to his Theory, how far answered.
Arguments of modern Writers in favour of Progression in the
   Animal and Vegetable World.
The old Landmarks supposed to indicate the first Appearance of Man,
   and of different Classes of Animals, found to be erroneous.
Yet the Theory of an advancing Series of Organic Beings not
   inconsistent with Facts.
Earliest known Fossil Mammalia of low Grade.
No Vertebrata as yet discovered in the oldest Fossiliferous Rocks.
Objections to the Theory of Progression considered.
Causes of the Popularity of the Doctrine of Progression as
   compared to that of Transmutation.


CHAPTER 21.

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY VARIATION AND NATURAL SELECTION.

Mr. Darwin's Theory of the Origin of Species by Natural Selection.
Memoir by Mr. Wallace.
Manner in which favoured Races prevail in the Struggle for
   Existence.
Formation of new Races by breeding.
Hypotheses of definite and indefinite Modifiability equally
   arbitrary.
Competition and Extinction of Races.
Progression not a necessary Accompaniment of Variation.
Distinct Classes of Phenomena which Natural Selection explains.
Unity of Type, Rudimentary Organs, Geographical Distribution,
   Relation of the extinct to the living Fauna and Flora,
   and mutual Relations of successive Groups of Fossil Forms.
Light thrown on Embryological Development by Natural Selection.
Why large Genera have more variable Species than small ones.
Dr. Hooker on the Evidence afforded by the Vegetable Kingdom
   in favour of Creation by Variation.
Steenstrup on alternation of Generations.
How far the Doctrine of Independent Creation is opposed to the
   Laws now governing the Migration of Species.


CHAPTER 22.

OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION CONSIDERED.

Statement of Objections to the Hypothesis of Transmutation
   founded on the Absence of Intermediate Forms.
Genera of which the Species are closely allied.
Occasional Discovery of the missing Links in a Fossil State.
Davidson's Monograph on the Brachiopoda.
Why the Gradational Forms, when found, are not accepted as
   Evidence of Transmutation.
Gaps caused by Extinction of Races and Species.
Vast Tertiary Periods during which this Extinction has been going
   on in the Fauna and Flora now existing.
Genealogical Bond between Miocene and Recent Plants and Insects.
Fossils of Oeningen.
Species of Insects in Britain and North America represented by
   distinct Varieties.
Falconer's Monograph on living and fossil Elephants.
Fossil Species and Genera of the Horse Tribe in North and
   South America.
Relation of the Pliocene Mammalia of North America, Asia,
   and Europe.
Species of Mammalia, though less persistent than the Mollusca,
   change slowly.
Arguments for and against Transmutation derived from the
   Absence of Mammalia in Islands.
Imperfection of the Geological Record.
Intercalation of newly discovered Formation of intermediate Age
   in the chronological Series.
Reference of the St. Cassian Beds to the Triassic Periods.
Discovery of new organic Types.
Feathered Archaeopteryx of the Oolite.


CHAPTER 23.

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGES AND SPECIES COMPARED.

Aryan Hypothesis and Controversy.
The Races of Mankind change more slowly than their Languages.
Theory of the gradual Origin of Languages.
Difficulty of defining what is meant by a Language as distinct
   from a Dialect.
Great Number of extinct and living Tongues.
No European Language a Thousand Years old.
Gaps between Languages, how caused.
Imperfection of the Record.
Changes always in Progress.
Struggle for Existence between rival Terms and Dialects.
Causes of Selection.
Each Language formed slowly in a single Geographical Area.
May die out gradually or suddenly.
Once lost can never be revived.
Mode of Origin of Languages and Species a Mystery.
Speculations as to the Number of original Languages or
   Species unprofitable.


CHAPTER 24.

BEARING OF THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMUTATION ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN,
   AND HIS PLACE IN THE CREATION.

Whether Man can be regarded as an Exception to the Rule if the
   Doctrine of Transmutation be embraced for the rest of the
   Animal Kingdom.
Zoological Relations of Man to other Mammalia.
Systems of Classification.
Term Quadrumanous, why deceptive.
Whether the Structure of the Human Brain entitles Man to form
   a distinct Sub-class of the Mammalia.
Intelligence of the lower Animals compared to the Intellect and
   Reason of Man.
Grounds on which Man has been referred to a distinct Kingdom
   of Nature.
Immaterial Principle common to Man and Animals.
Non-discovery of intermediate Links among Fossil Anthropomorphous
   Species.
Hallam on the compound Nature of Man, and his Place in the Creation.
Great Inequality of mental Endowment in different Human Races and
   Individuals developed by Variation and ordinary Generation.
How far a corresponding Divergence in physical Structure may
   result from the Working of the same Causes.
Concluding remarks.


NOTES.


(PLATES AND FIGURES.

PLATE 1. A VILLAGE BUILT ON PILES IN A SWISS LAKE.

FIGURE 1. SECTION OF THE NEANDERTHAL CAVE.

FIGURE 2. SIDE VIEW OF THE CAST OF PART OF A HUMAN SKULL
   FOUND BY DR. SCHMERLING EMBEDDED AMONGST THE REMAINS
   OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN THE CAVE OF ENGIS.

FIGURE 3. SIDE VIEW OF THE CAST OF A PART OF A HUMAN SKULL
   FROM A CAVE IN THE NEANDERTHAL.

FIGURE 4. OUTLINE OF THE SKULL OF AN ADULT CHIMPANZEE,
   OF THAT FROM THE NEANDERTHAL, AND OF THAT OF A EUROPEAN.

FIGURE 5. SKULL ASSOCIATED WITH GROUND FLINT IMPLEMENTS.

FIGURE 6. OUTLINES OF THE SKULL FROM THE NEANDERTHAL,
   OF AN AUSTRALIAN SKULL FROM PORT ADELAIDE,
   AND OF THE SKULL FROM THE CAVE OF ENGIS.

FIGURE 7. SECTION ACROSS THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME IN PICARDY.

FIGURE 8. FLINT IMPLEMENT FROM ST. ACHEUL, NEAR AMIENS,
   OF THE SPEAR-HEAD SHAPE.

FIGURE 9. OVAL-SHAPED FLINT HATCHET FROM MAUTORT.

FIGURE 10. FLINT TOOL FROM ST. ACHEUL.

FIGURES 11, 12 AND 13. DENDRITES ON SURFACES OF FLINT HATCHETS
   IN THE DRIFT OF ST. ACHEUL.

FIGURE 14. FLINT KNIFE OR FLAKE FROM BELOW THE SAND CONTAINING
   Cyrena fluminalis.

FIGURE 15. FOSSILS OF THE WHITE CHALK.

FIGURE 16. SECTION OF FLUVIO-MARINE STRATA, CONTAINING FLINT
   IMPLEMENTS AND BONES OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA.

FIGURE 17. Cyrena fluminalis, O.F. Muller, sp.

FIGURE 18. Elephas primigenius.

FIGURE 19. Elephas antiquus, Falconer.

FIGURE 20. Elephas meridionalis, Nesti.

FIGURE 21. SECTION OF GRAVEL PIT CONTAINING FLINT IMPLEMENTS
   AT ST. ACHEUL.

FIGURE 22. CONTORTED FLUVIATILE STRATA AT ST. ACHEUL.

FIGURE 23. SECTION ACROSS THE VALLEY OF THE OUSE.

FIGURE 24. SECTION SHOWING THE POSITION OF THE FLINT WEAPONS
   AT HOXNE.

FIGURE 25. SECTION OF PART OF THE HILL OF FAJOLES.

FIGURE 26. SECTION THROUGH THE ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

FIGURE 27. DIAGRAM TO ILLUSTRATE THE GENERAL SUCCESSION
   OF THE STRATA IN THE NORFOLK CLIFFS.

FIGURE 28. Cyclas (Pisidium) amnica var.(?)

FIGURE 29. CLIFF 50 FEET HIGH BETWEEN BACTON GAP AND MUNDESLEY.

FIGURE 30. FOLDING OF THE STRATA BETWEEN EAST AND WEST RUNTON.

FIGURE 31. SECTION OF CONCENTRIC BEDS WEST OF CROMER.

FIGURE 32. INCLUDED PINNACLE OF CHALK AT OLD HYTHE POINT.

FIGURE 33. SECTION OF THE NEWER FRESH-WATER FORMATION
   IN THE CLIFFS AT MUNDESLEY.

FIGURE 34. Paludina marginata, Michaud (P. minuta, Strickland).
   Hydrobia marginata.

FIGURE 35. OVAL AND FLATTISH PEBBLES.

PLATE 2. VIEW OF THE MOUTHS OF GLEN ROY AND GLEN SPEAN.

FIGURE 36. MAP OF THE PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY.

FIGURE 37. SECTION THROUGH SIDE OF LOCH.

FIGURE 38. DOME-SHAPED ROCKS, OR "ROCHES MOUTONEES."

FIGURE 39. MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES AND PART OF THE NORTH-WEST
   OF EUROPE, SHOWING THE GREAT AMOUNT OF SUPPOSED SUBMERGENCE
   OF LAND BENEATH THE SEA DURING PART OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD.

FIGURE 40. MAP SHOWING WHAT PARTS OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS WOULD
   REMAIN ABOVE WATER AFTER A SUBSIDENCE OF THE AREA TO THE EXTENT
   OF 600 FEET.

FIGURE 41. MAP OF PART OF THE NORTH-WEST OF EUROPE, INCLUDING
   THE BRITISH ISLES, SHOWING THE EXTENT OF SEA WHICH WOULD BECOME
   LAND IF THERE WERE A GENERAL RISE OF THE AREA TO THE EXTENT OF
   600 FEET.

FIGURE 42. MAP SHOWING THE SUPPOSED COURSE OF THE ANCIENT
   AND NOW EXTINCT GLACIER OF THE RHONE.

FIGURE 43. MAP OF THE MORAINES OF EXTINCT GLACIERS
   EXTENDING FROM THE ALPS INTO THE PLAINS OF THE PO NEAR TURIN.

FIGURE 44. Succinea oblonga.

FIGURE 45. Pupa muscorum.

FIGURE 46. Helix hispida, Lin.; H. plebeia, Drap.

FIGURE 47. SOUTHERN EXTREMITY OF MOENS KLINT.

FIGURE 48. SECTION OF MOENS KLINT.

FIGURE 49. POST-GLACIAL DISTURBANCES OF VERTICAL, FOLDED,
   AND SHIFTED STRATA OF CHALK AND DRIFT, IN THE DRONNINGESTOL.

FIGURE 50. MAP SHOWING THE RELATIVE POSITION AND DIRECTION
   OF SEVEN TRAINS OF ERRATIC BLOCKS IN BERKSHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS,
   AND IN PART OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.

FIGURE 51. ERRATIC DOME-SHAPED BLOCK OF COMPACT CHLORITIC ROCK.

FIGURE 52. SECTION SHOWING THE POSITION OF THE BLOCK IN FIGURE 51.

FIGURE 53. SECTION THROUGH CANAAN AND RICHMOND VALLEYS
   AT A TIME WHEN THEY WERE MARINE CHANNELS.

FIGURE 54. UPPER SURFACE OF BRAIN OF CHIMPANZEE, DISTORTED.

FIGURE 55. SIDE VIEW OF BRAIN OF CHIMPANZEE, DISTORTED.

FIGURE 56. CORRECT SIDE VIEW OF CHIMPANZEE'S BRAIN.

FIGURE 57. CORRECT VIEW OF UPPER SURFACE OF CHIMPANZEE'S BRAIN.

FIGURE 58. SIDE VIEW OF HUMAN BRAIN.)

***



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.


CHAPTER 1.

INTRODUCTORY.

Preliminary Remarks on the Subjects treated of in this Work.
Definition of the Terms Recent and Pleistocene.
Tabular View of the entire Series of Fossiliferous Strata.

No subject has lately excited more curiosity and general interest
among geologists and the public than the question of the Antiquity
of the Human Race--whether or no we have sufficient evidence in
caves, or in the superficial deposits commonly called drift or
"diluvium," to prove the former co-existence of man with certain
extinct mammalia. For the last half-century the occasional
occurrence in various parts of Europe of the bones of Man or the
works of his hands in cave-breccias and stalagmites, associated
with the remains of the extinct hyaena, bear, elephant, or
rhinoceros, has given rise to a suspicion that the date of Man must
be carried farther back than we had heretofore imagined. On the
other hand extreme reluctance was naturally felt on the part of
scientific reasoners to admit the validity of such evidence, seeing
that so many caves have been inhabited by a succession of tenants
and have been selected by Man as a place not only of domicile, but
of sepulture, while some caves have also served as the channels
through which the waters of occasional land-floods or engulfed
rivers have flowed, so that the remains of living beings which have
peopled the district at more than one era may have subsequently
been mingled in such caverns and confounded together in one and the
same deposit. But the facts brought to light in 1858, during the
systematic investigation of the Brixham cave, near Torquay in
Devonshire, which will be described in the sequel, excited anew the
curiosity of the British public and prepared the way for a general
admission that scepticism in regard to the bearing of cave evidence
in favour of the antiquity of Man had previously been pushed to an
extreme.

Since that period many of the facts formerly adduced in favour of
the co-existence in ancient times of Man with certain species of
mammalia long since extinct have been re-examined in England and on
the Continent, and new cases bearing on the same question, whether
relating to caves or to alluvial strata in valleys, have been
brought to light. To qualify myself for the appreciation and
discussion of these cases, I have visited in the course of the last
three years many parts of England, France, and Belgium, and have
communicated personally or by letter with not a few of the
geologists, English and foreign, who have taken part in these
researches. Besides explaining in the present volume the results of
this inquiry, I shall give a description of the glacial formations
of Europe and North America, that I may allude to the theories
entertained respecting their origin, and consider their probable
relations in a chronological point of view to the human epoch, and
why throughout a great part of the northern hemisphere they so
often interpose an abrupt barrier to all attempts to trace farther
back into the past the signs of the existence of Man upon the
earth.

In the concluding chapters I shall offer a few remarks on the
recent modifications of the Lamarckian theory of progressive
development and transmutation, which are suggested by Mr. Darwin's
work on the "Origin of Species by Variation and Natural Selection,"
and the bearing of this hypothesis on the different races of
mankind and their connection with other parts of the animal
kingdom.

NOMENCLATURE.

Some preliminary explanation of the nomenclature adopted in the
following pages will be indispensable, that the meaning attached to
the terms Recent, Pleistocene, and Post-Tertiary may be correctly
understood. [Note 1.]

Previously to the year 1833, when I published the third volume of
the "Principles of Geology," the strata called Tertiary had been
divided by geologists into Lower, Middle, and Upper; the Lower
comprising the oldest formations of the environs of Paris and
London, with others of like age; the Middle, those of Bordeaux and
Touraine; and the Upper, all that lay above or were newer than the
last-mentioned group.

When engaged in 1828 in preparing for the press the treatise on
geology above alluded to, I conceived the idea of classing the
whole of this series of strata according to the different degrees
of affinity which their fossil testacea bore to the living fauna.
Having obtained information on this subject during my travels on
the Continent, I learnt that M. Deshayes of Paris, already
celebrated as a conchologist, had been led independently by the
study of a large collection of Recent and fossil shells to very
similar views respecting the possibility of arranging the Tertiary
formations in chronological order, according to the proportional
number of species of shells identical with living ones, which
characterised each of the successive groups above mentioned. After
comparing 3000 fossil species with 5000 living ones, the result
arrived at was, that in the lower Tertiary strata there were about
3 1/2 per cent identical with Recent; in the middle Tertiary (the
faluns of the Loire and Gironde), about 17 per cent; and in the
upper tertiary, from 35 to 50, and sometimes in the most modern
beds as much as 90 to 95 per cent.

For the sake of clearness and brevity, I proposed to give short
technical names to these sets of strata, or the periods to which
they respectively belonged. I called the first or oldest of them
Eocene, the second Miocene, and the third Pliocene. The first of
the above terms, Eocene, is derived from Greek eos, dawn, and Greek
kainos, recent; because an extremely small proportion of the fossil
shells of this period could be referred to living species, so that
this era seemed to indicate the dawn of the present testaceous
fauna, no living species of shells having been detected in the
antecedent or Secondary rocks.

Some conchologists are now unwilling to allow that any Eocene
species of shell has really survived to our times so unaltered as
to allow of its specific identification with a living species. I
cannot enter in this place into this wide controversy. It is enough
at present to remark that the character of the Eocene fauna, as
contrasted with that of the antecedent Secondary formations, wears
a very modern aspect, and that some able living conchologists still
maintain that there are Eocene shells not specifically
distinguishable from those now extant; though they may be fewer in
number than was supposed in 1833.

The term Miocene (from Greek meion, less; and Greek kainos, recent)
is intended to express a minor proportion of Recent species (of
testacea); the term Pliocene (from Greek pleion, more; and Greek
kainos, recent), a comparative plurality of the same.

It has sometimes been objected to this nomenclature that certain
species of infusoria found in the chalk are still existing, and, on
the other hand, the Miocene and Older Pliocene deposits often
contain the remains of mammalia, reptiles, and fish, exclusively of
extinct species. But the reader must bear in mind that the terms
Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene were originally invented with
reference purely to conchological data, and in that sense have
always been and are still used by me.

Since the first introduction of the terms above defined, the number
of new living species of shells obtained from different parts of
the globe has been exceedingly great, supplying fresh data for
comparison, and enabling the palaeontologist to correct many
erroneous identifications of fossil and Recent forms. New species
also have been collected in abundance from Tertiary formations of
every age, while newly discovered groups of strata have filled up
gaps in the previously known series. Hence modifications and
reforms have been called for in the classifications first proposed.
The Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods have been made to
comprehend certain sets of strata of which the fossils do not
always conform strictly in the proportion of Recent to extinct
species with the definitions first given by me, or which are
implied in the etymology of those terms. These innovations have
been treated of in my "Elements or Manual of Elementary Geology,"
and in the Supplement to the fifth edition of the same, published
in 1859, where some modifications of my classification, as first
proposed, are introduced; but I need not dwell on these on the
present occasion, as the only formations with which we shall be
concerned in the present volume are those of the most modern date,
or the Post-Tertiary. It will be convenient to divide these into
two groups, the Recent and the Pleistocene. In the Recent we may
comprehend those deposits in which not only all the shells but all
the fossil mammalia are of living species; in the Pleistocene those
strata in which, the shells being Recent, a portion, and often a
considerable one, of the accompanying fossil quadrupeds belongs to
extinct species.

Cases will occur where it may be scarcely possible to draw the line
of demarcation between the Newer Pliocene and Pleistocene, or
between the latter and the recent deposits; and we must expect
these difficulties to increase rather than diminish with every
advance in our knowledge, and in proportion as gaps are filled up
in the series of geological records.

The annexed tabular view (Table 1/1) of the whole series of
fossiliferous strata will enable the reader to see at a glance the
chronological relation of the Recent and Pleistocene to the
antecedent periods. [Note 2.]


TABLE 1/1. STRATIFIED ROCKS.

KAINOZOIC OR TERTIARY:
  Pleistocene and Recent.
  Pliocene.
  Miocene.
  Oligocene.
  Eocene.

MESOZOIC OR SECONDARY:
  Cretaceous.
  Jurassic.
  Triassic.

PALAEOZOIC OR PRIMARY:
  Permian.
  Carboniferous.
  Devonian or old Red Sandstone.
  Silurian.
  Ordovician.
  Cambrian.

PRECAMBRIAN OR ARCHAEAN.


CHAPTER 2.

RECENT PERIOD--DANISH PEAT AND SHELL MOUNDS--SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS.

(PLATE 1. A VILLAGE BUILT ON PILES IN A SWISS LAKE.
   Restored by Dr. F. Keller, partly from Dumont D'Urville's
   Sketch of similar habitations in New Guinea.)

Works of Art in Danish Peat-Mosses.
Remains of three Periods of Vegetation in the Peat.
Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron.
Shell-Mounds or ancient Refuse-Heaps of the Danish Islands.
Change in geographical Distribution of Marine Mollusca
   since their Origin.
Embedded Remains of Mammalia of Recent Species.
Human Skulls of the same Period.
Swiss Lake-Dwellings built on Piles.
Stone and Bronze Implements found in them.
Fossil Cereals and other Plants.
Remains of Mammalia, wild and domesticated.
No extinct Species.
Chronological Computations of the Date of the Bronze and
   Stone Periods in Switzerland.
Lake-Dwellings, or artificial Islands called "Crannoges,"
  in Ireland.

WORKS OF ART IN DANISH PEAT.

When treating in the "Principles of Geology" of the changes of the
earth which have taken place in comparatively modern times, I have
spoken of the embedding of organic bodies and human remains in
peat, and explained under what conditions the growth of that
vegetable substance is going on in northern and humid climates. Of
late years, since I first alluded to the subject, more extensive
investigations have been made into the history of the Danish
peat-mosses. Of the results of these inquiries I shall give a brief
abstract in the present chapter, that we may afterwards compare
them with deposits of older date, which throw light on the
antiquity of the human race.

The deposits of peat in Denmark,* varying in depth from 10 to 30
feet, have been formed in hollows or depressions in the northern
drift or boulder formation hereafter to be described. (* An
excellent account of these researches of Danish naturalists and
antiquaries has been drawn up by an able Swiss geologist, M.A.
Morlot, and will be found in the "Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise
des Sci. Nat." tome 6 Lausanne 1860.) The lowest stratum, 2 to 3
feet thick, consists of swamp-peat composed chiefly of moss or
sphagnum, above which lies another growth of peat, not made up
exclusively of aquatic or swamp plants. Around the borders of the
bogs, and at various depths in them, lie trunks of trees,
especially of the Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris), often 3 feet in
diameter, which must have grown on the margin of the peat-mosses,
and have frequently fallen into them. This tree is not now, nor has
ever been in historical times, a native of the Danish Islands, and
when introduced there has not thriven; yet it was evidently
indigenous in the human period, for Steenstrup has taken out with
his own hands a flint instrument from below a buried trunk of one
of these pines. It appears clear that the same Scotch fir was
afterwards supplanted by the sessile variety of the common oak, of
which many prostrate trunks occur in the peat at higher levels than
the pines; and still higher the pedunculated variety of the same
oak (Quercus robur, L.) occurs with the alder, birch (Betula
verrucosa, Ehrh.), and hazel. The oak has now in its turn been
almost superseded in Denmark by the common beech. Other trees, such
as the white birch (Betula alba), characterise the lower part of
the bogs, and disappear from the higher; while others again, like
the aspen (Populus tremula), occur at all levels, and still
flourish in Denmark. All the land and freshwater shells, and all
the mammalia as well as the plants, whose remains occur buried in
the Danish peat, are of Recent species. [Note 3.]

It has been stated, that a stone implement was found under a buried
Scotch fir at a great depth in the peat. By collecting and studying
a vast variety of such implements, and other articles of human
workmanship preserved in peat and in sand-dunes on the coast, as
also in certain shell-mounds of the aborigines presently to be
described, the Danish and Swedish antiquaries and naturalists, MM.
Nilsson, Steenstrup, Forchhammer, Thomsen, Worsaae, and others,
have succeeded in establishing a chronological succession of
periods, which they have called the ages of stone, of bronze, and
of iron, named from the materials which have each in their turn
served for the fabrication of implements.

The age of stone in Denmark coincided with the period of the first
vegetation, or that of the Scotch fir, and in part at least with
the second vegetation, or that of the oak. But a considerable
portion of the oak epoch coincided with "the age of bronze," for
swords and shields of that metal, now in the Museum of Copenhagen,
have been taken out of peat in which oaks abound. The age of iron
corresponded more nearly with that of the beech tree.* (* Morlot
"Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci. Nat." tome 6 page 292.)
[Note 4.]

M. Morlot, to whom we are indebted for a masterly sketch of the
recent progress of this new line of research, followed up with so
much success in Scandinavia and Switzerland, observes that the
introduction of the first tools made of bronze among a people
previously ignorant of the use of metals, implies a great advance
in the arts, for bronze is an alloy of about nine parts of copper
and one of tin; and although the former metal, copper, is by no
means rare, and is occasionally found pure or in a native state,
tin is not only scarce but never occurs native. To detect the
existence of this metal in its ore, then to disengage it from the
matrix, and finally, after blending it in due proportion with
copper, to cast the fused mixture in a mould, allowing time for it
to acquire hardness by slow cooling, all this bespeaks no small
sagacity and skilful manipulation. Accordingly, the pottery found
associated with weapons of bronze is of a more ornamental and
tasteful style than any which belongs to the age of stone. Some of
the moulds in which the bronze instruments were cast, and "tags,"
as they are called, of bronze, which are formed in the hole through
which the fused metal was poured, have been found. The number and
variety of objects belonging to the age of bronze indicates its
long duration, as does the progress in the arts implied by the
rudeness of the earlier tools, often mere repetitions of those of
the stone age, as contrasted with the more skilfully worked weapons
of a later stage of the same period.

It has been suggested that an age of copper must always have
intervened between that of stone and bronze; but if so, the
interval seems to have been short in Europe, owing apparently to
the territory occupied by the aboriginal inhabitants having been
invaded and conquered by a people coming from the East, to whom the
use of swords, spears, and other weapons of bronze was familiar.
Hatchets, however, of copper have been found in the Danish peat.

The next stage of improvement, or that manifested by the
substitution of iron for bronze, indicates another stride in the
progress of the arts. Iron never presents itself, except in
meteorites, in a native state, so that to recognise its ores, and
then to separate the metal from its matrix, demands no
inconsiderable exercise of the powers of observation and invention.
To fuse the ore requires an intense heat, not to be obtained
without artificial appliances, such as pipes inflated by the human
breath, or bellows, or some other suitable machinery.

DANISH SHELL-MOUNDS, OR KJOKKENMODDING.*

(* Mr. John Lubbock published, after these sheets were written, an
able paper on the Danish "Shell-mounds" in the October number of
the "Natural History Review" 1861 page 489, in which he has
described the results of a recent visit to Denmark, made by him in
company with Mr. Busk.)

In addition to the peat-mosses, another class of memorials found in
Denmark has thrown light on the pre-historical age. At certain
points along the shores of nearly all the Danish islands, mounds
may be seen, consisting chiefly of thousands of cast-away shells of
the oyster, cockle, and other molluscs of the same species as those
which are now eaten by Man. These shells are plentifully mixed up
with the bones of various quadrupeds, birds, and fish, which served
as the food of the rude hunters and fishers by whom the mounds were
accumulated. I have seen similar large heaps of oysters, and other
marine shells with interspersed stone implements, near the
seashore, both in Massachusetts and in Georgia, U.S.A., left by the
native North American Indians at points near to which they were in
the habit of pitching their wigwams for centuries before the white
man arrived.

Such accumulations are called by the Danes, Kjokkenmodding, or
"kitchen-middens." Scattered all through them are flint knives,
hatchets, and other instruments of stone, horn, wood, and bone,
with fragments of coarse pottery, mixed with charcoal and cinders,
but never any implements of bronze, still less of iron. The stone
hatchets and knives had been sharpened by rubbing, and in this
respect are one degree less rude than those of an older date,
associated in France with the bones of extinct mammalia, of which
more in the sequel. The mounds vary in height from 3 to 10 feet,
and in area are some of them 1000 feet long, and from 150 to 200
wide. They are rarely placed more than 10 feet above the level of
the sea, and are confined to its immediate neighbourhood, or if not
(and there are cases where they are several miles from the shore),
the distance is ascribable to the entrance of a small stream, which
has deposited sediment, or to the growth of a peaty swamp, by which
the land has been made to advance on the Baltic, as it is still
doing in many places, aided, according to Puggaard, by a very slow
upheaval of the whole country at the rate of 2 or 3 inches in a
century.

There is also another geographical fact equally in favour of the
antiquity of the mounds, namely, that they are wanting on those
parts of the coast which border the Western Ocean, or exactly where
the waves are now slowly eating away the land. There is every
reason to presume that originally there were stations along the
coast of the North Sea as well as that of the Baltic, but by the
gradual undermining of the cliffs they have all been swept away.

Another striking proof, perhaps the most conclusive of all, that
the "kitchen-middens" are very old, is derived from the character
of their embedded shells. These consist entirely of living species;
but, in the first place, the common eatable oyster is among them,
attaining its full size, whereas the same Ostrea edulis cannot live
at present in the brackish waters of the Baltic except near its
entrance, where, whenever a north-westerly gale prevails, a current
setting in from the ocean pours in a great body of salt water. Yet
it seems that during the whole time of the accumulation of the
"kitchen-middens" the oyster flourished in places from which it is
now excluded. In like manner the eatable cockle, mussel, and
periwinkle (Cardium edule, Mytilus edulis, and Littorina littorea),
which are met with in great numbers in the "middens," are of the
ordinary dimensions which they acquire in the ocean, whereas the
same species now living in the adjoining parts of the Baltic only
attain a third of their natural size, being stunted and dwarfed in
their growth by the quantity of fresh water poured by rivers into
that inland sea.* (* See "Principles of Geology" chapter 30.) Hence
we may confidently infer that in the days of the aboriginal hunters
and fishers, the ocean had freer access than now to the Baltic,
communicating probably through the peninsula of Jutland, Jutland
having been at no remote period an archipelago. Even in the course
of the nineteenth century, the salt waters have made one irruption
into the Baltic by the Lymfiord, although they have been now again
excluded. It is also affirmed that other channels were open in
historical times which are now silted up.* (* See Morlot "Bulletin
de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci. Nat." tome 6.)

If we next turn to the remains of vertebrata preserved in the
mounds, we find that here also, as in the Danish peat-mosses, all
the quadrupeds belong to species known to have inhabited Europe
within the memory of Man. No remains of the mammoth, or rhinoceros,
or of any extinct species appear, except those of the wild bull
(Bos urus, Linn., or Bos primigenius, Bojanus), which are in such
numbers as to prove that the species was a favourite food of the
ancient people. But as this animal was seen by Julius Caesar, and
survived long after his time, its presence alone would not go far
to prove the mounds to be of high antiquity. The Lithuanian aurochs
or bison (Bos bison, L., Bos priscus, Boj.), which has escaped
extirpation only because protected by the Russian Czars, surviving
in one forest in Lithuania) has not yet been met with, but will no
doubt be detected hereafter, as it has been already found in the
Danish peat. The beaver, long since destroyed in Denmark, occurs
frequently, as does the seal (Phoca Gryppus, Fab.), now very rare
on the Danish coast. With these are mingled bones of the red deer
and roe, but the reindeer has not yet been found. There are also
the bones of many carnivora, such as the lynx, fox, and wolf, but
no signs of any domesticated animals except the dog. The long bones
of the larger mammalia have been all broken as if by some
instrument, in such a manner as to allow of the extraction of the
marrow, and the gristly parts have been gnawed off, as if by dogs,
to whose agency is also attributed the almost entire absence of the
bones of young birds and of the smaller bones and softer parts of
the skeletons of birds in general, even of those of large size. In
reference to the latter, it has been proved experimentally by
Professor Steenstrup, that if the same species of birds are now
given to dogs, they will devour those parts of the skeleton which
are missing, and leave just those which are preserved in the old
"kitchen-middens."

The dogs of the mounds, the only domesticated animals, are of a
smaller race than those of the bronze period, as shown by the
peat-mosses, and the dogs of the bronze age are inferior in size
and strength to those of the iron age. The domestic ox, horse, and
sheep, which are wanting in the mounds, are confined to that part
of the Danish peat which was formed in the ages of bronze and iron.

Among the bones of birds, scarcely any are more frequent in the
mounds than those of the auk (Alca impennis), now extinct. The
Capercailzie (Tetrao urogallus) is also met with, and may, it is
suggested, have fed on the buds of the Scotch fir in times when
that tree flourished around the peat-bogs. The different stages of
growth of the roedeer's horns, and the presence of the wild swan,
now only a winter visitor, have been appealed to as proving that
the aborigines resided in the same settlements all the year round.
That they also ventured out to sea in canoes such as are now found
in the peat-mosses, hollowed out of the trunk of a single tree, to
catch fish far from land, is testified by the bony relics of
several deep-sea species, such as the herring, cod, and flounder.
The ancient people were not cannibals, for no human bones are
mingled with the spoils of the chase. Skulls, however, have been
obtained not only from peat, but from tumuli of the stone period
believed to be contemporaneous with the mounds. These skulls are
small and round, and have a prominent ridge over the orbits of the
eyes, showing that the ancient race was of small stature, with
round heads and overhanging eyebrows--in short, they bore a
considerable resemblance to the modern Laplanders. The human skulls
of the bronze age found in the Danish peat, and those of the iron
period, are of an elongated form and larger size. There appear to
be very few well-authenticated examples of crania referable to the
bronze period--a circumstance no doubt attributable to the custom
prevalent among the people of that era of burning their dead and
collecting their bones in funeral urns.

No traces of grain of any sort have hitherto been discovered, nor
any other indication that the ancient people had any knowledge of
agriculture. The only vegetable remains in the mounds are burnt
pieces of wood and some charred substance referred by Dr.
Forchhammer to the Zostera marina, a sea plant which was perhaps
used in the production of salt.

What may be the antiquity of the earliest human remains preserved
in the Danish peat cannot be estimated in centuries with any
approach to accuracy. In the first place, in going back to the
bronze age, we already find ourselves beyond the reach of history
or even of tradition. In the time of the Romans the Danish Isles
were covered, as now, with magnificent beech forests. Nowhere in
the world does this tree flourish more luxuriantly than in Denmark,
and eighteen centuries seem to have done little or nothing towards
modifying the character of the forest vegetation. Yet in the
antecedent bronze period there were no beech trees, or at most but
a few stragglers, the country being then covered with oak. In the
age of stone again, the Scotch fir prevailed, and already there
were human inhabitants in those old pine forests. How many
generations of each species of tree flourished in succession before
the pine was supplanted by the oak, and the oak by the beech, can
be but vaguely conjectured, but the minimum of time required for
the formation of so much peat must, according to the estimate of
Steenstrup and other good authorities, have amounted to at least
4000 years; and there is nothing in the observed rate of the growth
of peat opposed to the conclusion that the number of centuries may
not have been four times as great, even though the signs of Man's
existence have not yet been traced down to the lowest or amorphous
stratum. As to the "kitchen-middens," they correspond in date to
the older portion of the peaty record, or to the earliest part of
the age of stone as known in Denmark.

ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS, BUILT ON PILES.

In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is a depth of
no more than from 5 to 15 feet of water, ancient wooden piles are
observed at the bottom sometimes worn down to the surface of the
mud, sometimes projecting slightly above it. These have evidently
once supported villages, nearly all of them of unknown date, but
the most ancient of which certainly belonged to the age of stone,
for hundreds of implements resembling those of the Danish
shell-mounds and peat-mosses have been dredged up from the mud into
which the piles were driven.

The earliest historical account of such habitations is that given
by Herodotus of a Thracian tribe, who dwelt, in the year 520 B.C.,
in Prasias, a small mountain-lake of Paeonia, now part of modern
Roumelia.* (* Herodotus lib. 5 cap. 16. Rediscovered by M. de Ville
"Natural History Review" volume 2 1862 page 486.)

Their habitations were constructed on platforms raised above the
lake, and resting on piles. They were connected with the shore by a
narrow causeway of similar formation. Such platforms must have been
of considerable extent, for the Paeonians lived there with their
families and horses. Their food consisted largely of the fish which
the lake produced in abundance.

In rude and unsettled times, such insular sites afforded safe
retreats, all communication with the mainland being cut off, except
by boats, or by such wooden bridges as could be easily removed.

The Swiss lake-dwellings seem first to have attracted attention
during the dry winter of 1853-54, when the lakes and rivers sank
lower than had ever been previously known, and when the inhabitants
of Meilen, on the Lake of Zurich, resolved to raise the level of
some ground and turn it into land, by throwing mud upon it obtained
by dredging in the adjoining shallow water. During these dredging
operations they discovered a number of wooden piles deeply driven
into the bed of the lake, and among them a great many hammers,
axes, celts, and other instruments. All these belonged to the stone
period with two exceptions, namely, an armlet of thin brass wire,
and a small bronze hatchet.

Fragments of rude pottery fashioned by the hand were abundant, also
masses of charred wood, supposed to have formed parts of the
platform on which the wooden cabins were built. Of this burnt
timber, on this and other sites, subsequently explored, there was
such an abundance as to lead to the conclusion that many of the
settlements must have perished by fire. Herodotus has recorded that
the Paeonians, above alluded to, preserved their independence
during the Persian invasion, and defied the attacks of Darius by
aid of the peculiar position of their dwellings. "But their
safety," observes Mr. Wylie,* (* W.M. Wylie "Archaeologia" volume
38 1859, a valuable paper on the Swiss and Irish lake-habitations.)
"was probably owing to their living in the middle of the lake,
(Greek) en mese te limne, whereas the ancient Swiss settlers were
compelled by the rapidly increasing depth of the water near the
margins of their lakes to construct their habitations at a short
distance from the shore, within easy bowshot of the land, and
therefore not out of reach of fiery projectiles, against which
thatched roofs and wooden walls could present but a poor defence."
To these circumstances and to accidental fires we are probably
indebted for the frequent preservation, in the mud around the site
of the old settlements, of the most precious tools and works of
art, such as would never have been thrown into the Danish
"kitchen-middens," which have been aptly compared to a modern
dusthole.

Dr. Ferdinand Keller of Zurich has drawn up a series of most
instructive memoirs, illustrated with well-executed plates, of the
treasures in stone, bronze, and bone brought to light in these
subaqueous repositories, and has given an ideal restoration of part
of one of the old villages (see Plate 1 above),* such as he
conceives may have existed on the lakes of Zurich and Bienne. (*
Keller "Pfahlbauten, Antiquarische Gesellschaft in Zurich" Bd. 12
and 13 1858-1861. In the fifth number of the "Natural History
Review" January 9, 1862, Mr. Lubbock has published an excellent
account of the works of the Swiss writers on their
lake-habitations.) In this view, however, he has not simply trusted
to his imagination, but has availed himself of a sketch published
by M. Dumont d'Urville, of similar habitations of the Papuans in
New Guinea in the Bay of Dorei. It is also stated by Dr. Keller,
that on the River Limmat, near Zurich, so late as the last century,
there were several fishing-huts constructed on this same plan.* (*
Keller "Pfahlbauten, Antiquarische Gesellschaft in Zurich" Bd. 9
page 81 note.) It will be remarked that one of the cabins is
represented as circular. That such was the form of many in
Switzerland is inferred from the shape of pieces of clay which
lined the interior, and which owe their preservation apparently to
their having been hardened by fire when the village was burnt. In
the sketch (Plate 1), some fishing-nets are seen spread out to dry
on the wooden platform. The Swiss archaeologist has found abundant
evidence of fishing-gear, consisting of pieces of cord, hooks, and
stones used as weights. A canoe also is introduced, such as are
occasionally met with. One of these, made of the trunk of a single
tree, fifty feet long and three and a half feet wide, was found
capsized at the bottom of the Lake of Bienne. It appears to have
been laden with stones, such as were used to raise the foundation
of some of the artificial islands.

It is believed that as many as 300 wooden huts were sometimes
comprised in one settlement, and that they may have contained about
1000 inhabitants. At Wangen, M. Lohle has calculated that 40,000
piles were used, probably not all planted at one time nor by one
generation. Among the works of great merit devoted specially to a
description of the Swiss lake-habitations is that of M. Troyon,
published in 1860.* (* "Sur les Habitations lacustres.") The number
of sites which he and other authors have already enumerated in
Switzerland is truly wonderful. They occur on the large lakes of
Constance, Zurich, Geneva, and Neufchatel, and on most of the
smaller ones. Some are exclusively of the stone age, others of the
bronze period. Of these last more than twenty are spoken of on the
Lake of Geneva alone, more than forty on that of Neufchatel, and
twenty on the small Lake of Bienne.

One of the sites first studied by the Swiss antiquaries was the
small lake of Moosseedorf, near Berne, where implements of stone,
horn, and bone, but none of metal, were obtained. Although the
flint here employed must have come from a distance (probably from
the south of France), the chippings of the material are in such
profusion as to imply that there was a manufactory of implements on
the spot. Here also, as in several other settlements, hatchets and
wedges of jade have been observed of a kind said not to occur in
Switzerland or the adjoining parts of Europe, and which some
mineralogists would fain derive from the East; amber also, which,
it is supposed, was imported from the shores of the Baltic.

At Wangen near Stein, on the Lake of Constance, another of the most
ancient of the lake-dwellings, hatchets of serpentine and
greenstone, and arrow-heads of quartz have been met with. Here also
remains of a kind of cloth, supposed to be of flax, not woven but
plaited, have been detected. Professor Heer has recognised lumps of
carbonised wheat, Triticum vulgare, and grains of another kind, T.
dicoccum, and barley, Hordeum distichum, and flat round cakes of
bread; and at Robbenhausen and elsewhere Hordeum hexastichum in
fine ears, the same kind of barley which is found associated with
Egyptian mummies, showing clearly that in the stone period the
lake-dwellers cultivated all these cereals, besides having
domesticated the dog, the ox, the sheep, and the goat.

Carbonised apples and pears of small size, such as still grow in
the Swiss forests, stones of the wild plum, seeds of the raspberry
and blackberry, and beech-nuts, also occur in the mud, and
hazel-nuts in great plenty.

Near Morges, on the Lake of Geneva, a settlement of the bronze
period, no less than forty hatchets of that metal have been dredged
up, and in many other localities the number and variety of weapons
and utensils discovered, in a fine state of preservation, is truly
astonishing.

It is remarkable that as yet all the settlements of the bronze
period are confined to Western and Central Switzerland. In the more
eastern lakes those of the stone period alone have as yet been
discovered.

The tools, ornaments, and pottery of the bronze period in
Switzerland bear a close resemblance to those of corresponding age
in Denmark, attesting the wide spread of a uniform civilisation
over Central Europe at that era. In some few of the Swiss aquatic
stations a mixture of bronze and iron implements has been observed,
but no coins. At Tiefenau, near Berne, in ground supposed to have
been a battle-field, coins and medals of bronze and silver, struck
at Marseilles, and of Greek manufacture, and iron swords, have been
found, all belonging to the first and pre-Roman division of the age
of iron.

In the settlements of the bronze era the wooden piles are not so
much decayed as those of the stone period; the latter having wasted
down quite to the level of the mud, whereas the piles of the bronze
age (as in the Lake of Bienne, for example) still project above it.

Professor Rutimeyer of Basle, well-known to palaeontologists as the
author of several important memoirs on fossil vertebrata, has
recently published a scientific description of great interest of
the animal remains dredged up at various stations where they had
been embedded for ages in the mud into which the piles were driven.
* (* "Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz" Basel 1861.)

These bones bear the same relation to the primitive inhabitants of
Switzerland and some of their immediate successors as do the
contents of the Danish "kitchen-middens" to the ancient fishing and
hunting tribes who lived on the shores of the Baltic.

The list of wild mammalia enumerated in this excellent treatise
contains no less than twenty-four species, exclusive of several
domesticated ones: besides which there are eighteen species of
birds, the wild swan, goose, and two species of ducks being among
them; also three reptiles, including the eatable frog and
freshwater tortoise; and lastly, nine species of freshwater fish.
All these (amounting to fifty-four species) are with one exception
still living in Europe. The exception is the wild bull (Bos
primigenius), which, as before stated, survived in historical
times. The following are the mammalia alluded to:--The bear (Ursus
arctos), the badger, the common marten, the polecat, the ermine,
the weasel, the otter, wolf, fox, wild cat, hedgehog, squirrel,
field-mouse (Mus sylvaticus), hare, beaver, hog (comprising two
races, namely, the wild boar and swamp-hog), the stag (Cervus
elaphus), the roe-deer, the fallow-deer, the elk, the steinbock
(Capra ibex), the chamois, the Lithuanian bison, and the wild bull.
The domesticated species comprise the dog, horse, ass, pig, goat,
sheep, and several bovine races.

The greater number, if not all, of these animals served for food,
and all the bones which contained marrow have been split open in
the same way as the corresponding ones found in the shell-mounds of
Denmark before mentioned. The bones both of the wild bull and the
bison are invariably split in this manner. As a rule, the lower
jaws with teeth occur in greater abundance than any other parts of
the skeleton--a circumstance which, geologists know, holds good in
regard to fossil mammalia of all periods. As yet the reindeer is
missing in the Swiss lake-settlements as in the Danish
"kitchen-middens," although this animal in more ancient times
ranged over France, together with the mammoth, as far south as the
Pyrenees.

A careful comparison of the bones from different sites has shown
that in settlements such as Wangen and Moosseedorf, belonging to
the earliest age of stone, when the habits of the hunter state
predominated over those of the pastoral, venison, or the flesh of
the stag and roe, was more eaten than the flesh of the domestic
cattle and sheep. This was afterwards reversed in the later stone
period and in the age of bronze. At that later period also the tame
pig, which is wanting in some of the oldest stations, had replaced
the wild boar as a common article of food. In the beginning of the
age of stone, in Switzerland, the goats outnumbered the sheep, but
towards the close of the same period the sheep were more abundant
than the goats.

The fox in the first era was very common, but it nearly disappears
in the bronze age, during which period a large hunting-dog,
supposed to have been imported into Switzerland from some foreign
country, becomes the chief representative of the canine genus.

A single fragment of the bone of a hare (Lepus timidus) has been
found at Moosseedorf. The almost universal absence of this
quadruped is supposed to imply that the Swiss lake-dwellers were
prevented from eating that animal by the same superstition which
now prevails among the Laplanders, and which Julius Caesar found in
full force amongst the ancient Britons.* (* "Commentaries" lib 5
chapter 12.)

That the lake-dwellers should have fed so largely on the fox, while
they abstained from touching the hare, establishes, says Rutimeyer,
a singular contrast between their tastes and ours.

Even in the earliest settlements, as already hinted, several
domesticated animals occur, namely, the ox, sheep, goat, and dog.
Of the three last, each was represented by one race only; but there
were two races of cattle, the most common being of small size, and
called by Rutimeyer Bos brachyceros (Bos longifrons, Owen), or the
marsh cow, the other derived from the wild bull; though, as no
skull has yet been discovered, this identification is not so
certain as could be wished. It is, however, beyond question that at
a later era, namely, towards the close of the stone and beginning
of the bronze period, the lake-dwellers had succeeded in taming
that formidable brute the Bos primigenius, the Urus of Caesar,
which he described as very fierce, swift, and strong, and scarcely
inferior to the elephant in size. In a tame state its bones were
somewhat less massive and heavy, and its horns were somewhat
smaller than in wild individuals. Still in its domesticated form,
it rivalled in dimensions the largest living cattle, those of
Friesland, in North Holland, for example. When most abundant, as at
Concise on the Lake of Neufchatel, it had nearly superseded the
smaller race, Bos brachyceros, and was accompanied there for a
short time by a third bovine variety, called Bos trochoceros, an
Italian race, supposed to have been imported from the southern side
of the Alps. (Caesar "Commentaries" lib 5 chapter 12.) This
last-mentioned race, however, seems only to have lasted for a short
time in Switzerland.

The wild bull (Bos primigenius) is supposed to have flourished for
a while in a wild and tame state, just as now in Europe the
domestic pig co-exists with the wild boar; and Rutimeyer agrees
with Cuvier and Bell,* (* "British Quadrupeds" page 415.) in
considering our larger domestic cattle of northern Europe as the
descendants of this wild bull, an opinion which Owen disputes.* (*
"British Fossil Mammal." page 500.)

In the later division of the stone period, there were two tame
races of the pig, according to Rutimeyer; one large, and derived
from the wild boar, the other smaller, called the "marsh-hog," or
Sus scrofa palustris. It may be asked how the osteologist can
distinguish the tame from the wild races of the same species by
their skeletons alone. Among other characters, the diminished
thickness of the bones and the comparative smallness of the ridges,
which afford attachment to the muscles, are relied on; also the
smaller dimensions of the tusks in the boar, and of the whole jaw
and skull; and, in like manner, the diminished size of the horns of
the bull and other modifications, which are the effects of a
regular supply of food, and the absence of all necessity of
exerting their activity and strength to obtain subsistence and
defend themselves against their enemies.

A middle-sized race of dogs continued unaltered throughout the
whole of the stone period; but the people of the bronze age
possessed a larger hunting-dog, and with it a small horse, of which
genus very few traces have been detected in the earlier
settlements--a single tooth, for example, at Wangen, and only one
or two bones at two or three other places.

In passing from the oldest to the most modern sites, the
extirpation of the elk and beaver, and the gradual reduction in
numbers of the bear, stag, roe, and freshwater tortoise are
distinctly perceptible. The aurochs, or Lithuanian bison, appears
to have died out in Switzerland about the time when weapons of
bronze came into use. It is only in a few of the most modern
lake-dwellings, such as Noville and Chavannes in the Canton de Vaud
(which the antiquaries refer to the sixth century), that some
traces are observable of the domestic cat, as well as of a sheep
with crooked horns and with them bones of the domestic fowl.

After the sixth century, no extinction of any wild quadruped nor
introduction of any tame one appears to have taken place, but the
fauna was still modified by the wild species continuing to diminish
in number and the tame ones to become more diversified by breeding
and crossing, especially in the case of the dog, horse, and sheep.
On the whole, however, the divergence of the domestic races from
their aboriginal wild types, as exemplified at Wangen and
Moosseedorf, is confined, according to Professor Rutimeyer, within
narrow limits. As to the goat, it has remained nearly constant and
true to its pristine form, and the small race of goat-horned sheep
still lingers in some alpine valleys in the Upper Rhine; and in the
same region a race of pigs, corresponding to the domesticated
variety of Sus scrofa palustris, may still be seen.

Amidst all this profusion of animal remains extremely few bones of
Man have been discovered; and only one skull, dredged up from
Meilen, on the Lake of Zurich, of the early stone period, seems as
yet to have been carefully examined. Respecting this specimen,
Professor His observes that it exhibits, instead of the small and
rounded form proper to the Danish peat-mosses, a type much more
like that now prevailing in Switzerland, which is intermediate
between the long-headed and short-headed form. (Rutimeyer "Die
Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz" page 181.)

So far, therefore, as we can draw safe conclusions from a single
specimen, there has been no marked change of race in the human
population of Switzerland during the periods above considered.

It is still a question whether any of these subaqueous repositories
of ancient relics in Switzerland go back so far in time as the
kitchen-middens of Denmark, for in these last there are no
domesticated animals except the dog, and no signs of the
cultivation of wheat or barley; whereas we have seen that, in one
of the oldest of the Swiss settlements, at Wangen, no less than
three cereals make their appearance, with four kinds of domestic
animals. Yet there is no small risk of error in speculating on the
relative claims to antiquity of such ancient tribes, for some of
them may have remained isolated for ages and stationary in their
habits, while others advanced and improved.

We know that nations, both before and after the introduction of
metals, may continue in very different stages of civilisation, even
after commercial intercourse has been established between them, and
where they are separated by a less distance than that which divides
the Alps from the Baltic.

The attempts of the Swiss geologists and archaeologists to estimate
definitely in years the antiquity of the bronze and stone periods,
although as yet confessedly imperfect, deserve notice, and appear
to me to be full of promise. The most elaborate calculation is that
made by M. Morlot, respecting the delta of the Tiniere, a torrent
which flows into the Lake of Geneva near Villeneuve. This small
delta, to which the stream is annually making additions, is
composed of gravel and sand. Its shape is that of a flattened cone,
and its internal structure has of late been laid open to view in a
railway cutting 1000 feet long and 32 feet deep. The regularity of
its structure throughout implies that it has been formed very
gradually, and by the uniform action of the same causes. Three
layers of vegetable soil, each of which must at one time have
formed the surface of the cone, have been cut through at different
depths. The first of these was traced over a surface of 15,000
square feet, having an average thickness of 5 inches, and being
about 4 feet below the present surface of the cone. This upper
layer belonged to the Roman period, and contained Roman tiles and a
coin. The second layer, followed over a surface of 25,000 square
feet, was 6 inches thick, and lay at a depth of 10 feet. In it were
found fragments of unvarnished pottery and a pair of tweezers in
bronze, indicating the bronze epoch. The third layer, followed for
35,000 square feet, was 6 or 7 inches thick and 19 feet deep. In it
were fragments of rude pottery, pieces of charcoal, broken bones,
and a human skeleton having a small, round and very thick skull. M.
Morlot, assuming the Roman period to represent an antiquity of from
sixteen to eighteen centuries, assigns to the bronze age a date of
between 3000 and 4000 years, and to the oldest layer, that of the
stone period, an age of from 5000 to 7000 years.

Another calculation has been made by M. Troyon to obtain the
approximate date of the remains of an ancient settlement built on
piles and preserved in a peat-bog at Chamblon, near Yverdun, on the
Lake of Neufchatel. The site of the ancient Roman town of
Eburodunum (Yverdun), once on the borders of the lake, and between
which and the shore there now intervenes a zone of newly-gained dry
land, 2500 feet in breadth, shows the rate at which the bed of the
lake has been filled up with river sediment in fifteen centuries.
Assuming the lake to have retreated at the same rate before the
Roman period, the pile-works of Chamblon, which are of the bronze
period, must be at the least 3300 years old.

For the third calculation, communicated to me by M. Morlot, we are
indebted to M. Victor Gillieron, of Neuveville, on the Lake of
Bienne. It relates to the age of a pile-dwelling, the mammalian
bones of which are considered by M. Rutimeyer to indicate the
earliest portion of the stone period of Switzerland, and to
correspond in age with the settlement of Moosseedorf.

The piles in question occur at the Pont de Thiele, between the
lakes of Bienne and Neufchatel. The old convent of St. Jean,
founded 750 years ago, and built originally on the margin of the
Lake of Bienne, is now at a considerable distance from the shore,
and affords a measure of the rate of the gain of land in seven
centuries and a half. Assuming that a similar rate of the
conversion of water into marshy land prevailed antecedently, we
should require an addition of sixty centuries for the growth of the
morass intervening between the convent and the aquatic dwelling of
Pont de Thiele, in all 6750 years. M. Morlot, after examining the
ground, thinks it highly probable that the shape of the bottom on
which the morass rests is uniform; but this important point has not
yet been tested by boring. The result, if confirmed, would agree
exceedingly well with the chronological computation before
mentioned of the age of the stone period of Tiniere. As I have not
myself visited Switzerland since these chronological speculations
were first hazarded, I am unable to enter critically into a
discussion of the objections which have been raised to the two
first of them, or to decide on the merits of the explanations
offered in reply.

IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS OR CRANNOGES.

The lake-dwellings of the British isles, although not explored as
yet with scientific zeal, as those of Switzerland have been in the
last ten years, are yet known to be very numerous, and when
carefully examined will not fail to throw great light on the
history of the bronze and stone periods.

In the lakes of Ireland alone, no less than forty-six examples of
artificial islands, called crannoges, have been discovered. They
occur in Leitrim, Roscommon, Cavan, Down, Monaghan, Limerick,
Meath, King's County, and Tyrone.* (* W.M. Wylie "Archaeologia"
volume 38 1859 page 8.) One class of these "stockaded islands," as
they have been sometimes called, was formed, according to Mr. Digby
Wyatt, by placing horizontal oak beams at the bottom of the lake,
into which oak posts, from 6 to 8 feet high, were mortised, and
held together by cross beams, till a circular enclosure was
obtained.

A space of 520 feet diameter, thus enclosed at Lagore, was divided
into sundry timbered compartments, which were found filled up with
mud or earth, from which were taken "vast quantities of the bones
of oxen, swine, deer, goats, sheep, dogs, foxes, horses, and
asses." All these were discovered beneath 16 feet of bog, and were
used for manure; but specimens of them are said to be preserved in
the museum of the Royal Irish Academy. From the same spot were
obtained a great collection of antiquities, which, according to
Lord Talbot de Malahide and Mr. Wylie, were referable to the ages
of stone, bronze, and iron.* (* W.M. Wylie "Archaeologia" volume 38
1859 page 8, who cites "Archaeological Journal" volume 6 page 101.)

In Ardekillin Lake, in Roscommon, an islet of an oval form was
observed, made of a layer of stones resting on logs of timber.
Round this artificial islet or crannoge thus formed was a stone
wall raised on oak piles. A careful description has been put on
record by Captain Mudge, R.N., of a curious log-cabin discovered by
him in 1833 in Drumkellin bog, in Donegal, at a depth of 14 feet
from the surface. It was 12 feet square and 9 feet high, being
divided into two stories each 4 feet high. The planking was of oak
split with wedges of stone, one of which was found in the building.
The roof was flat. A staked enclosure had been raised round the
cabin, and remains of other similar huts adjoining were seen but
not explored. A stone celt, found in the interior of the hut, and a
piece of leather sandal, also an arrow-head of flint, and in the
bog close at hand a wooden sword, give evidence of the remote
antiquity of this building, which may be taken as a type of the
early dwellings on the Crannoge islands.

"The whole structure," says Captain Mudge, "was wrought with the
rudest kind of implements, and the labour bestowed on it must have
been immense. The wood of the mortises was more bruised than cut,
as if by a blunt stone chisel."* (* Mudge "Archaeologia" volume 26.
) Such a chisel lay on the floor of the hut, and by comparing it
with the marks of the tool used in forming the mortises, they were
found "to correspond exactly, even to the slight curved exterior of
the chisel; but the logs had been hewn by a larger instrument, in
the shape of an axe. On the floor of the dwelling lay a slab of
freestone, 3 feet long and 14 inches thick, in the centre of which
was a small pit three quarters of an inch deep, which had been
chiselled out. This is presumed to have been used for holding nuts
to be cracked by means of one of the round shingle stones, also
found there, which had served as a hammer. Some entire hazel-nuts
and a great quantity of broken shells were strewed about the
floor."

The foundations of the house were made of fine sand, such as is
found with shingle on the seashore about 2 miles distant. Below the
layer of sand the bog or peat was ascertained, on probing it with
an instrument, to be at least 15 feet thick. Although the interior
of the building when discovered was full of "bog" or peaty matter,
it seems when inhabited to have been surrounded by growing trees,
some of the trunks and roots of which are still preserved in their
natural position. The depth of overlying peat affords no safe
criterion for calculating the age of the cabin or village, for I
have shown in the "Principles of Geology" that both in England and
Ireland, within historical times, bogs have burst and sent forth
great volumes of black mud, which has been known to creep over the
country at a slow pace, flowing somewhat at the rate of ordinary
lava-currents, and sometimes overwhelming woods and cottages, and
leaving a deposit upon them of bog-earth 15 feet thick.

None of these Irish lake-dwellings were built, like those of
Helvetia, on platforms supported by piles deeply driven into the
mud. "The Crannoge system of Ireland seems," says Mr. Wylie, "well
nigh without a parallel in Swiss waters."


CHAPTER 3.

FOSSIL HUMAN REMAINS AND WORKS OF ART OF THE RECENT PERIOD--CONTINUED.

Delta and Alluvial Plain of the Nile.
Burnt Bricks in Egypt before the Roman Era.
Borings in 1851-54.
Ancient Mounds of the Valley of the Ohio.
Their Antiquity.
Sepulchral Mound at Santos in Brazil.
Delta of the Mississippi.
Ancient Human Remains in Coral Reefs of Florida.
Changes in Physical Geography in the Human Period.
Buried Canoes in Marine Strata near Glasgow.
Upheaval since the Roman Occupation of the Shores of the Firth of Forth.
Fossil Whales near Stirling.
Upraised Marine Strata of Sweden on Shores of the Baltic and the Ocean.
Attempts to compute their Age.

DELTA AND ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE NILE.

Some new facts of high interest illustrating the geology of the
alluvial land of Egypt were brought to light between the years 1851
and 1854, in consequence of investigations suggested to the Royal
Society by Mr. Leonard Horner, and which were partly carried out at
the expense of the Society. The practical part of the undertaking
was entrusted by Mr. Horner to an Armenian officer of engineers,
Hekekyan Bey, who had for many years pursued his scientific studies
in England, and was in every way highly qualified for the task.

It was soon found that to obtain the required information
respecting the nature, depth, and contents of the Nile mud in
various parts of the valley, a larger outlay was called for than
had been originally contemplated. This expense the late viceroy,
Abbas Pasha, munificently undertook to defray out of his treasury,
and his successor, after his death, continued the operations with
the same princely liberality.

Several engineers and a body of sixty workmen were employed under
the superintendence of Hekekyan Bey, men inured to the climate and
able to carry on the sinking of shafts and borings during the hot
months, after the waters of the Nile had subsided, and in a season
which would have been fatal to Europeans.

The results of chief importance arising out of this inquiry were
obtained from two sets of shafts and borings sunk at intervals in
lines crossing the great valley from east to west. One of these
consisted of no fewer than fifty-one pits and artesian borings,
made where the valley is 16 miles wide from side to side between
the Arabian and Libyan deserts, in the latitude of Heliopolis,
about 8 miles above the apex of the delta. The other line of
borings and pits, twenty-seven in number, was in the parallel of
Memphis, where the valley is only five miles broad.

Everywhere in these sections the sediment passed through was
similar in composition to the ordinary Nile mud of the present day,
except near the margin of the valley, where thin layers of
quartzose sand, such as is sometimes blown from the adjacent desert
by violent winds, were observed to alternate with the loam.

A remarkable absence of lamination and stratification was observed
almost universally in the sediment brought up from all points
except where the sandy layers above alluded to occurred. Mr. Horner
attributes this want of all indication of successive deposition to
the extreme thinness of the film of matter which is thrown down
annually on the great alluvial plain during the season of
inundation. The tenuity of this layer must indeed be extreme, if
the French engineers are tolerably correct in their estimate of the
amount of sediment formed in a century, which they suppose not to
exceed on the average 5 inches. When the waters subside, this thin
layer of new soil, exposed to a hot sun, dries rapidly, and clouds
of dust are raised by the winds. The superficial deposit, moreover,
is disturbed almost everywhere by agricultural labours, and even
were this not the case, the action of worms, insects, and the roots
of plants would suffice to confound together the deposits of two
successive years.

All the remains of organic bodies, such as land-shells, and the
bones of quadrupeds, found during the excavations belonged to
living species. Bones of the ox, hog, dog, dromedary and ass were
not uncommon, but no vestiges of extinct mammalia. No marine shells
were anywhere detected; but this was to be expected, as the
borings, though they sometimes reached as low as the level of the
Mediterranean, were never carried down below it--a circumstance
much to be regretted, since where artesian borings have been made
in deltas, as in those of the Po and Ganges, to the depth of
several hundred feet below the sea level it has been found,
contrary to expectation, that the deposits passed through were
fluviatile throughout, implying, probably, that a general
subsidence of those deltas and alluvial formations has taken place.
Whether there has been in like manner a sinking of the land in
Egypt, we have as yet no means of proving; but Sir Gardner
Wilkinson infers it from the position in the delta on the shore
near Alexandria of the tombs commonly called Cleopatra's Baths,
which cannot, he says, have been originally built so as to be
exposed to the sea which now fills them, but must have stood on
land above the level of the Mediterranean. The same author adduces,
as additional signs of subsidence, some ruined towns, now half
under water, in the Lake Menzaleh, and channels of ancient arms of
the Nile submerged with their banks beneath the waters of that same
lagoon.

In some instances, the excavations made under the superintendence
of Hekekyan Bey were on a large scale for the first 16 or 24 feet,
in which cases jars, vases, pots and a small human figure in burnt
clay, a copper knife, and other entire articles were dug up; but
when water soaking through from the Nile was reached the boring
instrument used was too small to allow of more than fragments of
works of art being brought up. Pieces of burnt brick and pottery
were extracted almost everywhere, and from all depths, even where
they sank 60 feet below the surface towards the central parts of
the valley. In none of these cases did they get to the bottom of
the alluvial soil. It has been objected, among other criticisms,
that the Arabs can always find whatever their employers desire to
obtain. Even those who are too well acquainted with the sagacity
and energy of Hekekyan Bey to suspect him of having been deceived,
have suggested that the artificial objects might have fallen into
old wells which had been filled up. This notion is inadmissible for
many reasons. Of the ninety-five shafts and borings, seventy or
more were made far from the sites of towns or villages; and
allowing that every field may once have had its well, there would
be but small chance of the borings striking upon the site even of a
small number of them in seventy experiments.

Others have suggested that the Nile may have wandered over the
whole valley, undermining its banks on one side and filling up old
channels on the other. It has also been asked whether the delta
with the numerous shifting arms of the river may not once have been
at every point where the auger pierced.* (* For a detailed account
of these sections, see Mr. Horner's paper in the "Philosophical
Transactions" for 1855 to 1858.) To all these objections there are
two obvious answers:--First, in historical times the Nile has on
the whole been very stationary, and has not shifted its position in
the valley; secondly, if the mud pierced through had been thrown
down by the river in ancient channels, it would have been
stratified, and would not have corresponded so closely with
inundation mud, we learn from Captain Newbold that he observed in
some excavations in the great plain alternations of sand and clay,
such as are seen in the modern banks of the Nile; but in the
borings made by Hekekyan Bey, such stratification seems scarcely in
any case to have been detected.

The great aim of the criticisms above enumerated has been to get
rid of the supposed anomaly of finding burnt brick and pottery at
depths and places which would give them claim to an antiquity far
exceeding that of the Roman domination in Egypt. For until the time
of the Romans, it is said, no clay was burnt into bricks in the
valley of the Nile. But a distinguished antiquary, Mr. S. Birch,
assures me that this notion is altogether erroneous, and that he
has under his charge in the British Museum, first, a small
rectangular baked brick, which came from a Theban tomb which bears
the name of Thothmes, a superintendent of the granaries of the god
Amen Ra, the style of art, inscription, and name, showing that it
is as old as the 18th dynasty (about 1450 B.C.); secondly, a brick
bearing an inscription, partly obliterated, but ending with the
words "of the temple of Amen Ra." This brick, decidedly long
anterior to the Roman dominion, is referred conjecturally, by Mr.
Birch, to the 19th dynasty, or 1300 B.C. Sir Gardner Wilkinson has
also in his possession pieces of mortar, which he took from each of
the three great pyramids, in which bits of broken pottery and of
burnt clay or brick are embedded.

M. Girard, of the French expedition to Egypt, supposed the average
rate of the increase of Nile mud on the plain between Assouan and
Cairo to be five English inches in a century. This conclusion,
according to Mr. Horner, is very vague, and founded on insufficient
data; the amount of matter thrown down by the waters in different
parts of the plain varying so much that to strike an average with
any approach to accuracy must be most difficult. Were we to assume
six inches in a century, the burnt brick met with at a depth of 60
feet would be 12,000 years old.

Another fragment of red brick was found by Linant Bey, in a boring
72 feet deep, being 2 or 3 feet below the level of the
Mediterranean, in the parallel of the apex of the delta, 200 metres
distant from the river, on the Libyan side of the Rosetta branch.*
(* Horner "Philosophical Transactions" 1858.) M. Rosiere, in the
great French work on Egypt, has estimated the mean rate of deposit
of sediment in the delta at 2 1/4 inches in a century;* (*
Description de l'Egypte "Histoire Naturelle" tome 2 page 494.) were
we to take 2 1/2 inches, a work of art 72 feet deep must have been
buried more than 30,000 years ago. But if the boring of Linant Bey
was made where an arm of the river had been silted up at a time
when the apex of the delta was somewhat farther south, or more
distant from the sea than now, the brick in question might be
comparatively very modern.

The experiments instituted by Mr. Horner at the pedestal of the
fallen statue of King Rameses at Memphis, in the hope of obtaining
an accurate chronometric scale for testing the age of a given
thickness of Nile sediment, are held by some experienced
Egyptologists not to be satisfactory, on the ground of the
uncertainty of the rate of deposit accumulated at that locality.
The point sought to be determined was the exact amount of Nile mud
which had accumulated there since the time when that statue is
supposed by some antiquaries to have been erected. Could we have
obtained possession of such a measure, the rate of deposition might
be judged of, approximately at least, whenever similar mud was
observed in other places, or below the foundations of those same
monuments. But the ancient Egyptians are known to have been in the
habit of enclosing with embankments the areas on which they erected
temples, statues, and obelisks, so as to exclude the waters of the
Nile; and the point of time to be ascertained, in every case where
we find a monument buried to a certain depth in mud, as at Memphis
and Heliopolis, is the era when the city fell into such decay that
the ancient embankments were neglected, and the river allowed to
inundate the site of the temple, obelisk, or statue.

Even if we knew the date of the abandonment of such embankments,
the enclosed areas would not afford a favourable opportunity for
ascertaining the average rate of deposit in the alluvial plain; for
Herodotus tells us that in his time those spots from which the Nile
waters had been shut out for centuries appeared sunk, and could be
looked down into from the surrounding grounds, which had been
raised by the gradual accumulation over them of sediment annually
thrown down. If the waters at length should break into such
depressions, they must at first carry with them into the enclosure
much mud washed from the steep surrounding banks, so that a greater
quantity would be deposited in a few years than perhaps in as many
centuries on the great plain outside the depressed area, where no
such disturbing causes intervened.

ANCIENT MOUNDS OF THE VALLEY OF THE OHIO.

As I have already given several European examples of monuments of
prehistoric date belonging to the Recent period, I will now turn to
the American continent. Before the scientific investigation by
Messrs. Squier and Davis of the "Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley",* (* "Smithsonian Contributions" volume 1 1847.
) no one suspected that the plains of that river had been occupied,
for ages before the French and British colonists settled there, by
a nation of older date and more advanced in the arts than the Red
Indians whom the Europeans found there. There are hundreds of large
mounds in the basin of the Mississippi, and especially in the
valleys of the Ohio and its tributaries, which have served, some of
them for temples, others for outlook or defence, and others for
sepulture. The unknown people by whom they were constructed,
judging by the form of several skulls dug out of the burial-places,
were of the Mexican or Toltec race. Some of the earthworks are on
so grand a scale as to embrace areas of 50 or 100 acres within a
simple enclosure, and the solid contents of one mould are estimated
at 20 million of cubic feet, so that four of them would be more
than equal in bulk to the Great Pyramid of Egypt, which comprises
75 million. From several of these repositories pottery and
ornamental sculpture have been taken, and various articles in
silver and copper, also stone weapons, some composed of hornstone
unpolished, and much resembling in shape some ancient flint
implements found near Amiens and other places in Europe, to be
alluded to in the sequel.

It is clear that the Ohio mound-builders had commercial intercourse
with the natives of distant regions, for among the buried articles
some are made of native copper from Lake Superior, and there are
also found mica from the Alleghenies, sea-shells from the Gulf of
Mexico, and obsidian from the Mexican mountains.

The extraordinary number of the mounds implies a long period,
during which a settled agricultural population had made
considerable progress in civilisation, so as to require large
temples for their religious rites, and extensive fortifications to
protect them from their enemies. The mounds were almost all
confined to fertile valleys or alluvial plains, and some at least
are so ancient that rivers have had time since their construction
to encroach on the lower terraces which support them, and again to
recede for the distance of nearly a mile, after having undermined
and destroyed a part of the works. When the first European settlers
entered the valley of the Ohio, they found the whole region covered
with an uninterrupted forest, and tenanted by the Red Indian
hunter, who roamed over it without any fixed abode, or any
traditionary connection with his more civilised predecessors. The
only positive data as yet obtained for calculating the minimum of
time which must have elapsed since the mounds were abandoned, have
been derived from the age and nature of the trees found growing on
some of these earthworks. When I visited Marietta in 1842, Dr.
Hildreth took me to one of the mounds, and showed me where he had
seen a tree growing on it, the trunk of which when cut down
displayed eight hundred rings of annual growth.* (* Lyell's
"Travels in North America" volume 2 page 29.) But the late General
Harrison, President in 1841 of the United States, who was well
skilled in woodcraft, has remarked, in a memoir on this subject,
that several generations of trees must have lived and died before
the mounds could have been overspread with that variety of species
which they supported when the white man first beheld them, for the
number and kinds of trees were precisely the same as those which
distinguished the surrounding forest. "We may be sure," observed
Harrison, "that no trees were allowed to grow so long as the
earthworks were in use; and when they were forsaken, the ground,
like all newly cleared land in Ohio, would for a time be
monopolised by one or two species of tree, such as the yellow
locust and the black or white walnut. When the individuals which
were the first to get possession of the ground had died out one
after the other, they would in many cases, instead of being
replaced by the same species, be succeeded (by virtue of the law
which makes a rotation of crops profitable in agriculture) by other
kinds, till at last, after a great number of centuries (several
thousand years, perhaps), that remarkable diversity of species
characteristic of North America, and far exceeding what is seen in
European forests, would be established."

MOUNDS OF SANTOS IN BRAZIL.

I will next say a few words respecting certain human bones embedded
in a solid rock at Santos in Brazil, to which I called attention in
my "Travels in North America" in 1842.* (* Volume 1 page 200.) I
then imagined the deposit containing them to be of submarine
origin--an opinion which I have long ceased to entertain. We learn
from a memoir of Dr. Meigs that the River Santos has undermined a
large mound, 14 feet in height, and about 3 acres in area, covered
with trees, near the town of St. Paul, and has exposed to view many
skeletons, all inclined at angles between 20 and 25 degrees, and
all placed in a similar east and west position.* (* Meigs
"Transactions of the American Philosophical Society" 1828 page 285.
) Seeing, in the Museum of Philadelphia, fragments of the
calcareous stone or tufa from this spot, containing a human skull
with teeth, and in the same matrix, oysters with serpulae attached,
I at first concluded that the whole deposit had been formed beneath
the waters of the sea, or at least, that it had been submerged
after its origin, and again upheaved; also, that there had been
time since its emergence for the growth on it of a forest of large
trees. But after reading again, with more care, the original memoir
of Dr. Meigs, I cannot doubt that the shells, like those of eatable
kinds, so often accumulated in the mounds of the North American
Indians not far from the sea, may have been brought to the place
and heaped up with other materials at the time when the bodies were
buried. Subsequently, the whole artificial earthwork, with its
shells and skeletons, may have been bound together into a solid
stone by the infiltration of carbonate of lime, and the mound may
therefore be of no higher antiquity than some of those above
alluded to on the Ohio, which, as we have seen, have in like manner
been exposed in the course of ages to the encroachments and
undermining action of rivers.

DELTA OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

I have shown in my "Travels in North America" that the deposits
forming the delta and alluvial plain of the Mississippi consist of
sedimentary matter, extending over an area of 30,000 square miles,
and known in some parts to be several hundred feet deep. Although
we cannot estimate correctly how many years it may have required
for the river to bring down from the upper country so large a
quantity of earthy matter--the data for such a computation being as
yet incomplete--we may still approximate to a minimum of the time
which such an operation must have taken, by ascertaining
experimentally the annual discharge of water by the Mississippi,
and the mean annual amount of solid matter contained in its waters.
The lowest estimate of the time required would lead us to assign a
high antiquity, amounting to many tens of thousands of years
(probably more than 100,000) to the existing delta.

Whether all or how much of this formation may belong to the recent
period, as above defined, I cannot pretend to decide, but in one
part of the modern delta near New Orleans, a large excavation has
been made for gas-works, where a succession of beds, almost wholly
made up of vegetable matter, has been passed through, such as we
now see forming in the cypress swamps of the neighbourhood, where
the deciduous cypress (Taxodium distichum), with its strong and
spreading roots, plays a conspicuous part. In this excavation, at
the depth of sixteen feet from the surface, beneath four buried
forests superimposed one upon the other, the workmen are stated by
Dr. B. Dowler to have found some charcoal and a human skeleton, the
cranium of which is said to belong to the aboriginal type of the
Red Indian race. As the discovery in question had not been made
when I saw the excavation in progress at the gas-works in 1846, I
cannot form an opinion as to the value of the chronological
calculations which have led Dr. Dowler to ascribe to this skeleton
an antiquity of 50,000 years. In several sections, both natural in
the banks of the Mississippi and its numerous arms, and where
artificial canals had been cut, I observed erect stumps of trees,
with their roots attached, buried in strata at different heights,
one over the other. I also remarked, that many cypresses which had
been cut through, exhibited many hundreds of rings of annual
growth, and it then struck me that nowhere in the world could the
geologist enjoy a more favourable opportunity for estimating in
years the duration of certain portions of the Recent epoch.* (*
Dowler cited by Dr. W. Usher in Nott and Gliddon's "Types of
Mankind" page 352.)

CORAL REEFS OF FLORIDA.

Professor Agassiz has described a low portion of the peninsula of
Florida as consisting of numerous reefs of coral, which have grown
in succession so as to give rise to a continual annexation of land,
gained gradually from the sea in a southerly direction. This growth
is still in full activity, and assuming the rate of advance of the
land to be one foot in a century, the reefs being built up from a
depth of 75 feet, and that each reef has in its turn added ten
miles to the coast, Professor Agassiz calculates that it has taken
135,000 years to form the southern half of this peninsula. Yet the
whole is of Post-Tertiary origin, the fossil zoophytes and shells
being all of the same species as those now inhabiting the
neighbouring sea.* (* Agassiz in Nott and Gliddon ibid. page 352.)
In a calcareous conglomerate forming part of the above-mentioned
series of reefs, and supposed by Agassiz, in accordance with his
mode of estimating the rate of growth of those reefs, to be about
10,000 years old, some fossil human remains were found by Count
Pourtales. They consisted of jaws and teeth, with some bones of the
foot.

RECENT DEPOSITS OF SEAS AND LAKES.

I have shown, in the "Principles of Geology," where the recent
changes of the earth illustrative of geology are described at
length, that the deposits accumulated at the bottom of lakes and
seas within the last 4000 or 5000 years can neither be
insignificant in volume or extent. They lie hidden, for the most
part, from our sight; but we have opportunities of examining them
at certain points where newly-gained land in the deltas of rivers
has been cut through during floods, or where coral reefs are
growing rapidly, or where the bed of a sea or lake has been heaved
up by subterranean movements and laid dry.

As examples of such changes of level by which marine deposits of
the Recent period have become accessible to human observation, I
have adduced the strata near Naples in which the Temple of Serapis
at Pozzuoli was entombed.* (* "Principles of Geology" Index
"Serapis.") These upraised strata, the highest of which are about
25 feet above the level of the sea, form a terrace skirting the
eastern shore of the Bay of Baiae. They consist partly of clay,
partly of volcanic matter, and contain fragments of sculpture,
pottery, and the remains of buildings, together with great numbers
of shells, retaining in part their colour, and of the same species
as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea. Their emergence can
be proved to have taken place since the beginning of the sixteenth
century. [Note 5.]

In the same work, as an example of a freshwater deposit of the
Recent period, I have described certain strata in Cashmere, a
country where violent earthquakes, attended by alterations in the
level of the ground, are frequent, in which freshwater shells of
species now inhabiting the lakes and rivers of that region are
embedded, together with the remains of pottery, often at the depth
of fifty feet, and in which a splendid Hindoo temple has lately
been discovered, and laid open to view by the removal of the
lacustrine silt which had enveloped it for four or five centuries.

In the same treatise it is stated that the west coast of South
America, between the Andes and the Pacific, is a great theatre of
earthquake movements, and that permanent upheavals of the land of
several feet at a time have been experienced since the discovery of
America. In various parts of the littoral region of Chile and Peru,
strata have been observed enclosing shells in abundance, all
agreeing specifically with those now swarming in the Pacific. In
one bed of this kind, in the island of San Lorenzo, near Lima, Mr.
Darwin found, at the altitude of 85 feet above the sea, pieces of
cotton-thread, plaited rush, and the head of a stalk of Indian
corn, the whole of which had evidently been embedded with the
shells. At the same height, on the neighbouring mainland, he found
other signs corroborating the opinion that the ancient bed of the
sea had there also been uplifted 85 feet since the region was first
peopled by the Peruvian race. But similar shelly masses are also
met with at much higher elevations, at innumerable points between
the Chilean and Peruvian Andes and the sea-coast, in which no human
remains have as yet been observed. The preservation for an
indefinite period of such perishable substances as thread is
explained by the entire absence of rain in Peru. The same articles,
had they been enclosed in the permeable sands of an European raised
beach, or in any country where rain falls even for a small part of
the year, would probably have disappeared entirely [Note 6.]

In the literature of the eighteenth century, we find frequent
allusion to the "era of existing continents," a period supposed to
have coincided in date with the first appearance of Man upon the
earth, since which event it was imagined that the relative level of
the sea and land had remained stationary, no important geographical
changes having occurred, except some slight additions to the deltas
of rivers, or the loss of narrow strips of land where the sea had
encroached upon its shores. But modern observations have tended
continually to dispel this delusion, and the geologist is now
convinced that at no given era of the past have the boundaries of
land and sea, or the height of the one and depth of the other, or
the geographical range of the species inhabiting them, whether of
animals or plants, become fixed and unchangeable. Of the extent to
which fluctuations have been going on since the globe had already
become the dwelling-place of Man, some idea may be formed from the
examples which I shall give in this and the next nine chapters.

UPHEAVAL SINCE THE HUMAN PERIOD OF THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF
SCOTLAND. [NOTE 7.]

It has long been a fact familiar to geologists, that, both on the
east and west coasts of the central part of Scotland, there are
lines of raised beaches, containing marine shells of the same
species as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea.* (* R.
Chambers "Sea Margins" 1848 and papers by Mr. Smith of Jordan Hill
"Memoirs of the Wernerian Society" volume 8 and by Mr. C. Maclaren.
) The two most marked of these littoral deposits occur at heights
of about 50 and 25 feet above high-water mark, that of 50 feet
being considered as the more ancient, and owing its superior
elevation to a continuance of the upheaving movement. They are seen
in some places to rest on the boulder clay of the glacial period,
which will be described in future chapters.

In those districts where large rivers, such as the Clyde, Forth,
and Tay, enter the sea, the lower of the two deposits, or that of
25 feet, expands into a terrace fringing the estuaries, and varying
in breadth from a few yards to several miles. Of this nature are
the flat lands which occur along the margin of the Clyde at
Glasgow, which consist of finely laminated sand, silt, and clay.
Mr. John Buchanan, a zealous antiquary, writing in 1855, informs us
that in the course of the eighty years preceding that date, no less
than seventeen canoes had been dug out of this estuarine silt, and
that he had personally inspected a large number of them before they
were exhumed. Five of them lay buried in silt under the streets of
Glasgow, one in a vertical position with the prow uppermost as if
it had sunk in a storm. In the inside of it were a number of marine
shells. Twelve other canoes were found about 100 yards back from
the river, at the average depth of about 19 feet from the surface
of the soil, or 7 feet above high-water mark; but a few of them
were only 4 or 5 feet deep, and consequently more than 20 feet
above the sea-level. One was sticking in the sand at an angle of 45
degrees, another had been capsized and lay bottom uppermost; all
the rest were in a horizontal position, as if they had sunk in
smooth water.* (* J. Buchanan "Report of the British Association"
1855 page 80; also "Glasgow, Past and Present" 1856.)

Almost every one of these ancient boats was formed out of a single
oak-stem, hollowed out by blunt tools, probably stone axes, aided
by the action of fire; a few were cut beautifully smooth, evidently
with metallic tools. Hence a gradation could be traced from a
pattern of extreme rudeness to one showing great mechanical
ingenuity. Two of them were built of planks, one of the two, dug up
on the property of Bankton in 1853, being 18 feet in length, and
very elaborately constructed. Its prow was not unlike the beak of
an antique galley; its stern, formed of a triangular-shaped piece
of oak, fitted in exactly like those of our day. The planks were
fastened to the ribs, partly by singularly shaped oaken pins, and
partly by what must have been square nails of some kind of metal;
these had entirely disappeared, but some of the oaken pins
remained. This boat had been upset, and was lying keel uppermost,
with the prow pointing straight up the river. In one of the canoes,
a beautifully polished celt or axe of greenstone was found, in the
bottom of another a plug of cork, which, as Mr. Geikie remarks,
"could only have come from the latitudes of Spain, Southern France,
or Italy."* (* Geikie, "Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society" volume 18 1862 page 224.)

There can be no doubt that some of these buried vessels are of far
more ancient date than others.