Essay on the Theory of the Earth

by baron Georges Cuvier

Why might not the names of the signs have been given to the months at some epoch, or the names of the months to the signs, in the same arbitrary manner in which the Indians have given to their twenty-seven months twelve names, selected from among those of their lunar houses, for reasons which it is impossible at the present day to determine[239]? The absurdity which there would have been in preserving for the constellations, during 15,000 years, figures and symbolical names which no longer presented any relation with their position, would have been more evident had it been carried so far as to preserve to the months those same names which were incessantly in the mouths of the people, and whose inaptitude would be every moment perceived.

And what, besides, would all these systems come to, had the figures and the names of the zodiacal constellations been given to them without any relation to the course of the sun; as their inequality, the extension of several of them beyond the zodiac, and their manifest connection with the neighbouring constellations, seem to demonstrate was the case[240].

What would still happen, if, as Macrobius expressly says[241], each sign must have been an emblem of the sun, considered in some one of its effects or of its general phenomena, and without reference to the months when it passes, whether into the sign, or to its opposite?

Lastly, What if the names had been given in an abstract manner to the divisions of space or time, as they are now given by astronomers to what they call the signs, and had not been applied to the constellations or groups of stars, but at a period determined by chance, so that nothing could be concluded from their signification[242]?

In these suggestions there is, without doubt, enough to give an ingenuous mind a distaste for seeking to find in astronomy proofs of the antiquity of the nations. But were these alleged proofs as certain as they are vague and destitute of any satisfactory result, what could be concluded from them against the great catastrophe, which has left monuments amply demonstrative in other respects of its existence? All that can be admitted in this matter is, what some moderns have thought, that astronomy was among the number of the sciences preserved by those whom this catastrophe dispersed.

Exaggerations relative to the Antiquity of certain Mining Operations.

The antiquity of certain mining operations has also been much exaggerated. A very late writer has imagined, that the mines of the island of Elba, judging from the rubbish carried out of them, must have been wrought for more than 40,000 years; but another author, who has also examined this rubbish with attention, has reduced the period in question to a little more than 5000 years,[243] and this even on the supposition that the ancients did not extract annually more than a fourth part of the quantity of ore now wrought. But what reason could there be to suppose that the Romans, for example, who consumed so much iron in their armies, derived so little advantage from these mines? Moreover, if these mines had been wrought for even 4000 years only, how should iron have been so little known in the times of remote antiquity?

General Conclusion relative to the Period of the last Revolution.

I agree, therefore, with MM. Deluc and Dolomieu, in thinking, that if any thing in geology be established, it is, that the surface of our globe has undergone a great and sudden revolution, the date of which cannot be referred to a much earlier period than five or six thousand years ago; that this revolution overwhelmed and caused to disappear the countries which were previously inhabited by man, and the species of animals now best known; that, on the other hand, it laid dry the bottom of the last sea, and formed of it the countries which are at the present day inhabited; that it is since the occurrence of this revolution that the small number of individuals dispersed by it have spread and propagated over the newly exposed lands, and, consequently, that it is since this epoch only, that human societies have assumed a progressive march, that they have formed establishments, raised monuments, collected natural facts, and invented scientific systems.

But the countries which are at present inhabited, and which the last revolution laid dry, had already been previously inhabited, if not by men, at least by land animals, and, therefore, one preceding revolution at least had put them under water; and if we may judge by the different orders of animals the remains of which are observed in them, they had perhaps been subjected to two or three irruptions of the sea.