Illogical Geology, the Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory

by George McCready Price

"And wrapped his corpse in winding-sheet of ice,
And sung the requiem of his shivering ghost."

Who has not read of their untainted meat now making food for dogs and wolves? Their stomachs are well filled with undigested food, showing, as one author remarks, that they "were quietly feeding when the crisis came." Dr. Hertz recently reported one not only with its stomach full of food, but with its mouth full, too. No wonder that even an orthodox geologist like Prof. Dana is compelled to say that these things prove "that the cold finally became suddenly extreme, as of a single winter's night, and knew no relenting afterward."

Here then is one very notable geological event which has taken place within the human epoch, and the only thing of its kind of which geology has an undeniable record, viz., a sudden and radical change in the earth's climate; a cosmic affair, and not a local phenomenon. I need not here attempt to discuss the how of this world catastrophe as it must have been, or the other changes inseparably involved. The fact itself is as certain as Man's own existence.

The next division of our subject, in further consideration of the changes that have taken place since Man's existence, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, relates to the changes of land and water distribution since "Middle Miocene times." And here again I shall try to take the classification of these rocks just as I find them.

The first thing which impresses us is the extremely fragmentary distribution of the Miocene and Pliocene beds. Not, however, that they are uncommon nor yet of small extent. On the contrary they are scattered over America and Eurasia—and all the rest of the globe for that matter—like the spots on a leopard, or the warts on a toad's back, till it becomes one of the unsearchable mysteries of the science how these innumerable patches can be got down under the ocean to receive their load of sediment, without deluging the surrounding regions in a similar manner. But then, to be sure, fresh-water lakes will answer the same purpose, and are particularly indicated when the proportion of plants and terrestrial animals is in excess of the true marine fossils. And so enormous fresh-water basins are described here and there, with the great mammals crowding about their margins in their zeal to become fossilized, that the mountain tops may be saved from going under once more—or perhaps I should say to enable the modern writers to get some of these strata puckered up to their full height before these "late" Tertiary deposits were made. This mountain making business is another affair that geologists would like to have take place on the installment plan, but unfortunately it seems to have been nearly all postponed till the very close of "geological time." This arrangement of fresh-water lakes saves the central Rocky Mountain region from going down again beneath the deep. But it cannot save the Alps, Juras and Appennines in Europe, nor parts of the Himalayas, and I know not what other mountains in Asia, nor the coast region of California and Oregon in America, to say nothing of large parts of the Andes in South America, with regions in Africa and Australia.

But what is the use of trying to figure out the amount of our earth which has been under the ocean since "Middle Tertiary times," and thus since Man was upon it? To save the northern half of Europe with all of Canada from again going under at the close of the "Tertiary period," geologists have spread out their continental ice sheets, and have asked them to do duty instead of water. But this is hardly sufficient, for the "upper" or "later" part of the so-called "Glacial" deposits are clearly stratified; and so they either invoke a "flood vast beyond conception," as Dana does in America for the "final event in the history of the glacier," or, as others prefer, the whole region is baptized again. As Dawson says in his "Meeting-Place of Geology and History," "No geological event is better established than the post-Pliocene submergence."

But I must not weary the reader by dwelling on this monotonous repetition of catastrophes—for must they not have been catastrophic if such ups and downs of whole continents are crowded within the human period? We may allow a number of thousands of years for Man's possible existence, but Archaeology and History alike protest against the millions of years required to explain these continental oscillations on any basis of uniformity. One such period of horror ought to be enough for us, and to understand or explain it in a truly scientific manner, we must with it correlate the sudden and world-wide change of climate already described.

One more point demands consideration ere we complete this subject of what Man has witnessed of geological change. For, according to current theory almost all the mountains have been either wholly formed or at least completed within quite "recent" times: indeed many of the greatest mountain chains have been puckered up from the position of horizontal strata wholly since "Miocene times," which for us means since Man was upon the globe.

Thus Dana in speaking of the part of Western America which has been elevated since "Miocene times," says that it—

"... probably included the whole of the Pacific mountain border, from the line of the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific coast line and outside of this line for one or more scores of miles."[91]