If the preceding arguments were well founded this would appear reasonable enough. But in view of the fallacious character of the prior reasoning, we must halt at this claim. There are many and conclusive reasons for rejecting this unproven claim. For it is unproven. It is only inference and assumption.
1. These men of the cave do not necessarily represent man in a course of progress, for we find to-day the same classes of people with their stone tools and pottery and living as prehistoric man lived. There to-day exist men in every stage of the supposed progress from the cave man to the highest in civilization. Such remains could be had in any burial place of these savage peoples. Prehistoric man, so-called, is still with us and we can interview him as to his state and history.
2. We have seen that modern man has not developed in brain capacity above prehistoric man. It is also true that he has not developed physically. Dana tells us that the skeleton found at Mentone compares favorably with the best modern men. Indeed we have degenerated in many respects. We have almost lost the sense of smell as compared with savage peoples or even animals. Our teeth are certainly not improving. If we are to find perfect specimens we do not look at the most advanced classes but to the reverse. Those who live to extreme old age are generally in the lowly ranks. But why has physical development ceased at all? Why are there not some superior beings by this time? But alas, there are no marks or indications of wings or halos on either the great saints or scientists of the day.
We are told that while physical evolution has ceased among men, evolution now works along mental lines of progress. This is a radical shifting of the ground of evolution, for heretofore all this has been not only omitted but discarded. If evolution is anything, it is physical. Nor does Evolution give any account of the causes of the stoppage of physical development and the change to mental evolution. We will also show later that this supposed progress has not been such as claimed.
11. ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
Evolution asserts that a vast antiquity for man has been proven by remains that have been found. It is commonly said that these remains are hundreds of thousands of years old. But the claims for these vast periods are now being greatly reduced and generally discredited. Dr. Zahm says of these speculations: "We could not give a better illustration of the extremes to which the unguided human intellect is subject than the vacillating and extravagant notions of the antiquity of man." (Bible Science and Faith, p. 315.) The age of the peat beds of Abbeville, in France, in which human remains were found, was once estimated at 20,000 years. The estimate has been reduced to a fifth of that age. The remains of the animals found with man are supposed to prove his extreme antiquity. The remains of the mammoth were once cited as such proof. But the mammoth has been found in such a state of preservation that its flesh has been fed to the dogs.
The enormous ages which have been credited to these remains are well illustrated by the discovery of a skeleton at New Orleans while digging for the gas works. From the depth of the stratum in which it was found it was estimated by scientists at the age of 57,000 years. Soon after, the gunwale of the skeleton's Kentucky flat boat was found in the same stratum, and the age therefore of the remains was reduced from 57,000 to 50 years. The evidences from peat bogs, stalagmite formations, stone, iron and bronze tools are all now considered unreliable by scientists. So many exposures of mistakes in the estimate of age from these have been made, that the whole is looked upon with suspicion. Instance after instance might be given.
It has been claimed that we can arrange these past races in an ascending order as they worked in stone, bronze, or iron, in their successive history. This is a false theory. We have all these "ages" existing to-day. On the other hand, Dr. Livingstone found no stone age in Africa. Dr. Schliemann found in the ruins of Troy the bronze age below the stone age. The early Egyptians used bronze, the later ones stone tools. In the Chaldean tombs all these are found together. Europe had the metal age while America had the stone age. (Creation and Evolution. Prof. Townsend.)
These prehistoric races to which Evolution points us as representing man in his early state, do not represent that early world. They are found at the outer limits of the world and not at the acknowledged center whence man came. They are, in short, what we find to-day at the outlying regions of earth. They therefore, are exceptional peoples and not representative of the world at that time, or now.
The dynasties of Egypt were once cited against the Bible narrative, but these have been reduced to moderate figures. A thousand years was taken off by one discoverer recently from the age of the middle kingdom. There is a question whether the Egyptian dynasties were successive or in some cases contemporary. There is also the well-known fact that the Egyptians had years of varying length. They often counted dynasties by years of three months and also of a month! Dr. Flinders Petrie lately discovered in the tombs of the kings, preceding the first dynasty of Egypt at Abydos, Grecian pottery of Mycean clay, and this in a tomb estimated to date from 5,400 B. C.! (Atlantic Monthly, October, 1900.)