A Manual of the Antiquity of Man

J. P. MacLean

A Manual of the Antiquity of Man

Published by Good Press, 2019

[email protected]

EAN 4064066173074

Table of Contents

PREFACE.

A MANUAL

ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER II.

GLACIAL EPOCH.

CHAPTER III.

GLACIAL EPOCH—CONTINUED.

CHAPTER IV.

PRE-GLACIAL EPOCHS.

CHAPTER V.

CONDITION OF MAN IN THE EARLIEST TIMES.

CHAPTER VI.

INTER-GLACIAL EPOCH.

CHAPTER VII.

CONDITION OF MAN IN THE INTER-GLACIAL.

CHAPTER VIII.

REINDEER EPOCH.

CHAPTER IX.

MAN OF THE REINDEER EPOCH.

CHAPTER X.

NEOLITHIC EPOCH.

CHAPTER XI.

MAN OF THE NEOLITHIC.

CHAPTER XII.

BRONZE EPOCH.

CHAPTER XIII.

IRON EPOCH.

CHAPTER XIV.

TRACES OF MAN IN AMERICA.

CHAPTER XV.

WRITTEN HISTORY.

CHAPTER XVI.

LANGUAGE.

CHAPTER XVII.

UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE.

GLOSSARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND DIFFICULT TERMS USED IN THIS VOLUME.

INDEX.

PREFACE.

Table of Contents

In lecturing upon the Antiquity of Man I have found the minds of the people prepared to receive the evidences, and ready to believe the conclusions of the geologists. I have felt the need of a popular work to place in the hands of the public, that would be both instructive and welcome. The works of Lyell and Lubbock are too elaborate and too expensive to meet the popular need. My object has been to give an outline of the subject sufficient to afford a reasonable acquaintance with the facts connected with the new science, to such as desire the information but cannot pursue it further, and to serve as a manual for those who intend to become more proficient.

As the Unity of Language and the Unity of the Race are so closely connected with the subject, I have added the two chapters on these questions, hoping they will be acceptable to the reader. It was my intention to have written a more extended chapter on the relation of the Holy Scriptures to this subject, but was forced to condense, as I had done in other chapters, in order not to transcend the proposed limits of the book.

In the preparation of this work I have freely used Lyell's Antiquity of Man and Principles of Geology, Lubbock's Pre-Historic Times, Buchner's Man in the Past, Present, and Future, Figuier's Primitive Man, Wilson's Pre-Historic Man, Keller's Lake-Dwellings, the works of Charles Darwin, Dana's Manual of Geology, Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, Prichard's Natural History of Man, Pouchet's Plurality of the Human Race, and others, referred to in the margins.

I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Frank Cushing, for the ideal restoration of the Neanderthal Man. The engraving was made especially for this work. The references to Buchner are from his work entitled, Man in the Past, Present and Future.

A MANUAL

Table of Contents

OF THE

ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION.

Table of Contents

No subject, of late years, has so much engrossed the attention of geologists as the antiquity of the human race. The interest was greatly increased by the publication of Sir Charles Lyell's Antiquity of Man. This work called the attention of the public to the subject, and so great became the interest that many volumes and memoirs have been added to the list, discussing the question in various ways, and, for the most part, in such a manner as to add fresh interest and throw more light on the subject. The scientific men were slow to take advantage of the discoveries continually being made of the bones and works of man found in caves and associated with the remains' of extinct animals. It is probable, even at this late day, there would not have been so much discussion of this subject had not Sir Charles Lyell lent the weight of his great name to it. Educated men, everywhere, began to doubt the correctness of Archbishop Usher's chronology, and so complete has been the revolution of opinion that it is almost impossible to find an intelligent man who would limit the period of man's existence to 6,000 years.

To Aimé Boué, a French geologist, must be attributed the honor of having been the first to proclaim the high antiquity of the human race; to Dr. Schmerling, the learned Belgian osteologist, on account of his laborious investigations, untiring zeal, and great work on the subject, the merited title of being the founder of the new science; to M. Boucher de Perthes, its great apostle; while to Sir Charles Lyell and Sir John Lubbock must be ascribed the honor of having made the new theory popular.

The new science soon became permanently established, and the geologists at once set about classifying the facts before them, in order to assign to them their respective places in the geological epochs. All are agreed in respect to the chronological orders, but all have not used the same nomenclature, in consequence of which more or less confusion has been the result. Sir J. Lubbock has divided pre-historic archæology into four great epochs, as follows:

"I. That of the Drift; when man shared the possession of Europe with the mammoth, the cave-bear, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and other extinct animals. This we may call the 'Palæolithic' period.

"II. The later or polished Stone Age; a period characterized by beautiful stone weapons and instruments made of flint and other kinds of stone; in which, however, we find no trace of the knowledge of any metal, excepting gold, which seems to have been sometimes used for ornaments. This we may call the 'Neolithic' period.

"III. The Bronze Age, in which bronze was used for arms and cutting instruments of all kinds.

IV. The Iron Age, in which that metal had superseded bronze for arms, axes, knives, etc.[1]

These divisions are recognized by Lyell and Tylor.

Edward Lartet has proposed the following classification:

I. THE STONE AGE.

1st. Epoch of extinct animals (or of the great bear and mammoth).

2d. Epoch of migrated existing animals (or the reindeer epoch).

3d. Epoch of domesticated existing animals (or the polished stone epoch).

II. THE METAL AGE.

1st. The Bronze Epoch.

2d. The Iron Epoch.

This mode of division is adopted by M. Figuier, in his Primitive Man, by the Museum of Saint-Germain in that portion devoted to pre-historic antiquities, and adhered to in essential points by Troyon and d'Archiac.

Professor Renevier, of Lausanne, has proposed a somewhat different scheme, founded upon the epochs of Swiss glaciation. It is as follows:

"I. Pre-glacial Epoch, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the elephant (Elephas antiquus), rhinoceros (R. hemitæchus), and the cave-bear (Ursus spelæus).

"II. Glacial Epoch, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the mammoth (Elephas primigenius), rhinoceros (R. tichorrhinus), cave-bear, etc.

"III. Post-glacial Epoch, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the mammoth and reindeer (Cervus tarandus).

"IV. Last Epoch, or epoch of the Pile-buildings, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the Irish elk (Megaceros hibernicus), aurochs (Bison Europæus)," etc.[2]

Westropp divides the periods of man, in respect to his stages of civilization, as follows: Savagery, hunters, herdsmen, and agriculturists.

In the following pages a somewhat different classification has been adopted, and may be thus explained:

I. Pre-glacial Epoch; that period antedating the glaciers of the post-tertiary, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the animals of the tertiary, southern elephant (E. meridionalis), etc.

II. Glacial Epoch; that period of the post-tertiary when man was forced to contend with the great ice-fields and the floods immediately succeeding them, when the mammoth (E. primigenius), rhinoceros (R. tichorrhinus), cave-bear, etc., began to flourish.

III. Interglacial Epoch; that period between the glacial and the second advance of the ice, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the animals of the preceding epoch, and the cave bear became extinct.

IV. Reindeer Epoch; that period when the glaciers again advanced; in which man's chief food consisted of the flesh of the reindeer (C. tarandus), that animal having made its way in numerous herds as far south as the Pyrenees.

V. Neolithic Epoch; that period in which man polished his weapons of stone, and sought to domesticate certain animals, the dog, etc.

VI. Bronze Epoch; that period characterized by weapons and implements being made chiefly of bronze.

VII. Iron Epoch; that period in which bronze was generally superseded by iron.

This classification, on the whole, seems to be the best that could be devised, for the reason it attempts to place the evidences of the existence of man in their relative geological positions.

Other methods have misled the student. There was no universal Stone, Bronze, or Iron Age. The classification given by Lubbock applies to Europe, but is too general. I have adopted the word Neolithic for want of a better term, although the signification of the word is appropriate to the period it is intended to represent.

These various epochs are not sharply defined, the one from the other; but one merges into the other by gradual progression covering a period of thousands of years. The growth of the various plants and animals, and their retreat or final extinction, have also been very slow.

An outline of the history of the discoveries which led to a careful investigation of the question, and which resolved the question into a science, is not only one of interest but also of importance to the careful thinker seeking information on the subject.

Prior to the study of the ancient implements the people had so little notion of the nature and signification of the stone axes and weapons of earlier and later times that they were regarded with superstitious fear and hope, and as productions of lightning and thunder. Hence for a long time they were called thunderbolts even by the learned. … As late as the year 1734 when Mahndel explained in the Academy of Paris that these stones were human implements, he was laughed at, because he had not proved that they could not have been formed in the clouds.[3]

As early as the year 1700, a human skull was dug out of the calcareous tuff of Constatt, in company with the bones of the mammoth. It is preserved in the Natural History Museum at Stuttgart.

In the year 1715, an Englishman named Kemp found in London, by the side of elephants' teeth, a stone hatchet, similar to those which have been subsequently found in great numbers in different parts of the world. This hatchet is still preserved in the British Museum.

In 1774, in the cavern of Gailenreuth, Bavaria, J. F. Esper discovered some human bones mingled with the remains of extinct animals.

In 1797, unpolished flint axes were dug out in great numbers from a brick-field near Hoxne, county of Suffolk, where they occurred at a depth of twelve feet, mingled with the bones of extinct species of animals. They were gathered up and thrown by basketsful upon the neighboring road. In the year 1801, before the Society of Antiquaries, John Frere read a paper upon them, in which he stated that they pointed to a very remote period. This communication, short as it was, contained the essence of all subsequent discoveries and speculations as to the antiquity of man. But the society regarded the subject as of no importance.

During the construction of a canal (1815–1823) in Hollerd, there was found, near Maestricht, in the loess, a human jaw in company with the bones of extinct animals. This bone is preserved in the museum at Leyden.

In 1823, Aimé Boué disinterred portions of a human skeleton from ancient undisturbed loess near Lahr, a small village nearly opposite Strasbourg. These bones were placed in the care of Cuvier, but, having been neglected, are now lost.

In the same year, Dr. Buckland, an English geologist, published his Reliquiæ Diluvianæ, a work principally devoted to a description of the Kirkdale Cave. The author combined all the known facts which favored the coexistence of man, with the extinct animals.

In 1828, M. Tournal and M. Christol explored numerous caverns in the south of France. In the cavern of Bize, Tournal found human bones and teeth, and fragments of rude pottery, together with the bones of both living and extinct species of animals, imbedded in the same mud and breccia, cemented by stalagmite. The human bones were in the same chemical condition as those of the extinct species.

M. Christol found in the cavern of Pondres, near Nimes, some human bones in the same mud with the bones of an extinct hyena and rhinoceros.

In 1833, Dr. Schmerling explored the two bone-caverns of Engis and Enghihoul (Belgium). In the former he found the Engis skull (now in the museum of the University of Liége), at a depth of nearly five feet, under an osseous breccia. The earth also contained the teeth of rhinoceros, horse, hyena, and bear, and exhibited no marks of disturbance. He also found the skull of a young person imbedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. It was entire, but so fragile, that it fell to pieces before it was extracted. In the cave of Enghihoul he found numerous bones belonging to three human individuals, mingled with the bones of extinct animals. In these caves