[209] Address to Anthropological section of the American Association, 1882.
Perhaps one of the most curious examples of this is the cave at Sorde, in the western Pyrenees. On the floor of this cave lay a human skeleton, covered with fallen blocks of stone. With it were found forty canine teeth of the bear, and three of the lion, perforated for suspension, and several of these teeth are skilfully engraved with figures of animals, one bearing the engraved figure of an embroidered glove. This necklace, no doubt just such a trophy of the chase as would now be worn by a red Indian hunter, though more elaborate, must have belonged to the owner of the skull, who would appear to have perished by a fall of rock, or to have had his body covered after death with stones. In the deposit near and under these remains were flint flakes. Above the skull were several feet of refuse, stones, and bones of the horse, reindeer, etc., and "Palæolithic" flint implements, and above all were placed the remains of thirty skulls and skeletons with beautifully chipped flint implements, some of them as fine as any of later age. After the burial of these the cave seems to have been finally closed with large stones. The French explorers of this cave refer the lower and upper skulls to the same race, that of Cromagnon; but others consider the upper remains as "Neolithic," though there is no reason why a man who possessed a necklace of beautifully carved teeth should not have belonged to a tribe which used well-made stone implements, or why the weapons buried with the dead should have been no better than the chips and flakes left by the same people in their rubbish heaps. In any case the interment and this applies also to the Mentone caves recalls the habits of American aborigines. In some of these cases we have even deposits of red oxide of iron, representing the war paint of the ancient hunter.
Widely different opinions have been held by archæologists as to the connection of the Palanthropic and Neanthropic ages. It suits the present evolutionist and exaggerated uniformitarianism of our day to take for granted that the two are continuous, and pass into each other. But there are stubborn facts against this conclusion. Let us take, for example, the area represented by the British Islands and the neighbouring continent. In the earlier period Britain was a part of the mainland, and was occupied by the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and other animals, now locally or wholly extinct. The human inhabitants were of a large-bodied and coarse race not now found anywhere. In the later period all this is changed. Britain has become an island. Its gigantic Post-glacial fauna has disappeared. Its human inhabitants are now small in stature and delicate in feature, and represented to this day by parts of the population of the south of Wales and Ireland. They buried their dead in the peculiar cemeteries known as long barrows, and their implements and weapons are of a new type, previously unknown. All this shows a great interval of physical and organic mutation. In connection with this we have the high-level gravel and rubble, which Prestwich has shown to belong to this stage, and which proves a subsidence even greater than that to be inferred from the present diminution of the land area. Knowing as we do that the close of the Glacial period was not more than 8,000 years ago, and deducting from this the probable duration of the Palanthropic age on the one hand, and that of modern history on the other, we must admit that the interval left for the great physical and faunal changes above referred to is too small to permit them to have occurred as the result of slow and gradual operations. Considerations of this kind have indeed some of the best authorities on the subject, as Cartailhac, Forel, and de Mortillet, to hold that there is "an immense space, a great gap, during which the fauna was renewed, and after which a new race of men suddenly made its appearance, and polished stone instead of chipping it, and surrounded themselves with domestic animals."[210] There is thus, in the geological history of man an interval of physical and organic change, corresponding to that traditional and historical deluge which has left its memory with all the more ancient nations. Thus our men of the Palanthropic, Post-glacial or Mammoth age are the same we have been accustomed to call Antediluvians, and their immediate successors are identical with the Basques and ancient Iberians, a non-Aryan or Turanian people who once possessed nearly the whole of Europe, and included the rude Ugrians and Laps of the north, the civilized Etruscans of the south, and the Iberians of the west, with allied tribes occupying the British Islands. This race, scattered and overthrown before the dawn of authentic history in Europe by the Celts and other intrusive peoples, was unquestionably that which succeeded the now extinct Palæocosmic race, and constituted the men of the so-called "Neolithic period," which thus connects itself with the modern history of Europe, from which it is not separated by any physical catastrophe like that which divides the older men of the mammoth age and the widely spread continents of the Post-glacial period from our modern days. This identification of the Neolithic men with the Iberians, which the writer has also insisted on, Dawkins deserves credit for fully elucidating, and he might have carried it farther, to the identification of these same Iberians with the Berbers, the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the Caribbean and other tribes of eastern and central America. On these hitherto dark subjects light is now rapidly breaking, and we may hope that much of the present obscurity will soon be cleared away.
[210] Quatrefages, "The Human Species." The interval should not, however, be placed after the reindeer period, as this animal occurs in both ages.
Supposing, then, that we may apply the term Anthropic to that portion of the Kainozoic period which intervenes between the close of the Glacial age and the present time, and that we admit the division of this into two portions, the earlier, called the Palanthropic, and the later, which still continues, the Neanthropic, it will follow that one great physical and organic break separates the Palanthropic age from the preceding Glacial, and a second similar break separates the two divisions of the Anthropic from each other. This being settled, if we allow say 2,500 years from the Glacial age for the first peopling of the world and the Palanthropic age, and if we consider the modern history of the European region and the adjoining parts of Asia and Africa to go back for 5,000 years, there will remain a space of from 500 to 1,000 years for the destruction of the Palæocosmic men and the re-peopling of the old continent by such survivors as founded the Neocosmic peoples. These later peoples, though distinct racially from their predecessors, may represent a race contemporary with them in some regions in which it was possible to survive the great cataclysm, so that we do not need to ask for time to develop such new race.[211]
[211] For details of the physical characters of the older races of men I may refer to the works mentioned below, or to the writings of Dawkins and Quatrefages.
We cannot but feel some regret that the grand old Palæocosmic race was destined to be swept away by the flood, but it was no doubt better for the world that it should be replaced by a more refined if feebler race. When we see how this has, in some of its forms, reverted to the old type, and emulated, if not surpassed it in filling the earth with violence, we may, perhaps, congratulate ourselves on the extinction of the giant races of the olden time.
References:—"Fossil Men," London, 1880. The Antiquity of Man, Princeton Review. "Pre-historic Man in Egypt and the Lebanon," Trans. Vict. Institute, 1884. Pre-historic Times in Egypt and Palestine, North American Review, June and July, 1892.