III.
The Polished-stone Epoch; or, the Epoch of Tamed Animals.
[CHAPTER I.]
The European Deluge—The Dwelling-place of Man during the Polished-stone Epoch—The Caves and Rock-shelters still used as Dwelling-places—Principal Caves belonging to the Polished-stone Epoch which have been explored up to the present Time—The Food of Man during this period.
Aided by records drawn from the bowels of the earth, we have now traversed the series of antediluvian ages since the era when man first made his appearance on the earth, and have been enabled, though but very imperfectly, to reconstruct the history of our primitive forefathers. We will now leave this epoch, through the dark night of which science seeks almost in vain to penetrate, and turn our attention to a period the traces of which are more numerous and more easily grasped by our intelligence—a period, therefore, which we are able to characterise with a much greater degree of precision.
A great catastrophe, the tradition of which is preserved in the memory of all nations, marked in Europe the end of the quaternary epoch. It is not easy to assign the exact causes for this great event in the earth's history; but whatever may be the explanation given, it is certain that a cataclysm, caused by the violent flowing of rushing water, took place during the quaternary geological epoch; for the traces of it are everywhere visible. These traces consist of a reddish clayey deposit, mixed with sand and pebbles. This deposit is called in some countries red diluvium, and in others grey diluvium. In the valley of the Rhone and the Rhine it is covered with a layer of loamy deposit, which is known to geologists by the name of loess or lehm, and as to the origin of which they are not all agreed. Sir Charles Lyell is of opinion that this mud was produced by the crushing of the rocks by early Alpine glaciers, and that it was afterwards carried down by the streams of water which descended from these mountains. This mud covers a great portion of Belgium, where it is from 10 to 30 feet in thickness, and supplies with material a large number of brickfields.
This deposit, that is the diluvial beds, constitutes nearly the most recent of all those which form the earth's crust; in many European countries, it is, in fact the ground trodden under the feet of the present population.
The inundation to which the diluvium is referred closes the series of the quaternary ages. After this era, the present geological period commences, which is characterised by the almost entire permanency of the vertical outline of the earth, and by the formation of peat-bogs.
The earliest documents afforded us by history are very far from going back to the starting-point of this period. The history of the ages which we call historical is very far from having attained to the beginning of the present geological epoch.