It would be premature to correlate what is yet known of the Palæocosmic age with historical periods; but the tendency of the facts accumulated is, I think, toward the identification of the Palæocosmic men with the Antediluvians; and their Neocosmic successors, whether of the reindeer age, of the Danish shell-mounds, or the Swiss lake habitations, with Postdiluvian and still existing tribes.
Fig. 190.—Flint Implement found in Kent’s Cavern, Torquay, under four feet of cave mud and one foot of stalagmite.—After Pengelly.
After what has been already said, it will be unnecessary to dwell upon the characteristics of the first race of men known to us. They were rude and uncivilised, in so far as outward appliances are concerned; but they are confessedly altogether men, and in no respect akin to apes, and their volume of brain is rather greater than that of the average European of to-day; so that they must have had quite as much natural sagacity and capacity for culture, and, like the modern and historic Turanian nations, they were probably superior to the average European in the instinct for art and construction. Thus if we suppose these men derived from apes by any process of gradual change, we must look for their brute ancestors, not in the Pliocene or Miocene, but in the Eocene itself. This causes us to recur to the doctrine of critical periods, when many species were introduced together, alternating with periods of decay and extinction. Post-glacial man appears at the end of a time of sifting and trial, a time in which a vast number of species succumbed to great physical reverses. No very great number of species came in with him, and in the early period of his history there was a decadence or destruction either by the diluvial cataclysm or gradually. Out of ninety-eight species of mammals contemporary with early man in Europe, forty-one
Fig. 191.—Bone Harpoon (Palæocosmic), from Périgord Cavern. are wholly or locally extinct, and none have been introduced except those brought by man himself. Thus man stands alone, the grand product of his period and a lord of creation, for whom great preparatory changes were made, and multitudes of lower animals swept away to make room for him. According to our sacred Scriptures, this change is still imperfect, and great additional ameliorations would have taken place but for a moral catastrophe not within the domain of geology—the fall of man. If we identify the Palæocosmic men with the Antediluvians of the same venerable record, the roving tribes whose remains are known to us represent that part of the race of Cain of whom Jubal was the father, the nomads dwelling in tents, as distinguished from the settled agricultural peoples. In this case, also, the catastrophe which destroyed these rude and lawless men was that which culminated in the deluge of Noah, which may represent the extinction of the last great body of this primitive race, whose arts, handed down to the physically inferior men of Postdiluvian times, astonish us by their early development in Chaldæa and in Egypt.
If man is so recent geologically, he may still be very old historically; and the question remains, Have we any facts bearing on the absolute antiquity of man? For the properly historical aspect of this question, I may refer to the excellent work of Canon Rawlinson on the Origin of Nations,[89] which shows conclusively that the historic origin of all the great nations of antiquity extends backward less than 4,400 years from our time. Beyond this we have, however, the Palæocosmic or Antediluvian men; and their extension backward seems limited geologically only by the close of the Glacial period, while many hold that the Genealogy in Genesis does not require us to limit very narrowly their antiquity. The date of the Glacial period is, however, at present very uncertain. On the one hand, some geologists, like Lyell, have supposed it may be as far back as 200,000 years ago. Others, like Croll, are contented with the more moderate estimate of 80,000 years. On the other hand, the calculations of Andrews, based on the recession of the American lakes, those of Winchell on the recession of the Falls of St. Anthony, and the recent surveys of the recession of the Falls of Niagara, reduce the time to from 7,000 to 10,000 years. It is impossible in the present state of knowledge to settle these disputes; but one may refer in the sequel to some of the evidences which have been adduced in favour of great antiquity. Since the publication of the second edition of this work Prof. Prestwich, in a paper read before the Geological Society,[90] has brought forward other reasons which induce him to conclude that the close of the Glacial epoch occurred “from 8,000 to 10,000 years since.” It is true, he admits, on geological evidence still in dispute, that man may have existed in Europe before that time, and he also admits, on historical, not geological evidence, the existence of “Neolithic” man in Asia, “at an earlier date than 4,000 B.C.” Still the repudiation, by so good an authority, of the exaggerated antiquity which it has been the fashion, since the rise of Darwinian evolution, to assign to man, contrary to the geological evidence, is a satisfactory indication of a return to more rational views; and when geologists get rid of the fiction of a continental ice-sheet, still farther progress in this direction may be expected.
We may, I think, at once take it for granted, that none of the Neocosmic races date farther back than the origin of the great eastern nations. There are certainly no geological evidences requiring a greater antiquity, for in their time the land had attained to its present configuration, and the changes which have occurred in the succession of forests and the growth of peat are such as our experience in America shows to be possibly quite modern. There is besides no doubt that these people, from the Reindeer men of France and Belgium to the people of the Swiss lakes, are modern races, whose descendants still live in Europe. We can thus limit our inquiry to the Palæocosmic men; and with respect to them we know only what may be gathered from a consideration of the physical changes which have occurred since they lived.
In Europe a great number of considerations have been adduced as evidence of their high antiquity; and these deserve careful attention, though I think it will be found that they are all liable to serious objections or great abatements on geological grounds.