The Meeting-Place of Geology and History

by Sir John William Dawson

'If we identify the antediluvians of Genesis with the oldest men known to geological and archæological science, the parallelism is somewhat marked in physical characteristics and habits of life, and also in their apparently sudden and tragical disappearance from Europe and Western Asia, along with several of the large mammalia which were their contemporaries. If the Deluge is to be accepted as historical, and if a similar great break interrupts the geological history of man, separating extinct races from those which still survive, why may we not correlate the two? If the Deluge was misused in the early history of geology, by employing it to account for changes which took place long before the advent of man, this should not cause us to neglect its legitimate uses, with reference to the early human period. It is evident that if this correlation be accepted as probable, it must modify many views now held as to the antiquity of man. In that case the modern gravels and silts, spread over the plateaus between the river valleys, will be accounted for, not by any greater overflow of the existing streams, but by the abnormal action of currents of water diluvial in their character. Further, since the historical Deluge must have been of very limited duration, the physical changes separating the deposits containing the remains of palæocosmic men from those of later date would in like manner be accounted for, not by the slow processes imagined by extreme uniformitarians, but by causes of a more abrupt and cataclysmic character.' [39]

[39] See also Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood, and papers by Professor Prestwich in Journal Geol. Society and Trans. Royal Society and by Andrews, Winchell, and others in America.

We may proceed to inquire as to whether the position which we have now reached is likely to be permanent, or may represent merely one shifting phase of opinion. For this purpose we may formulate these conclusions in a few general statements, merely referring to the evidence on which they are based, as any complete discussion of this would necessarily be impossible within the limits of this work. We may first summarise the present position of the matter as indicated by historical and scientific research, altogether independently of the Bible. [40]

[40] See articles by the author in The Contemporary Review, December 1889, and in The Magazine of Christian Literature, October 1890.

1. The recent discovery of the Chaldean deluge tablets has again directed attention to the statements of Berosus respecting the Babylonian tradition of a great flood, and these statements are found to be borne out in the main by the contents of the tablets. There is thus a twofold testimony as to the occurrence of a deluge in that Babylonian plain which the Old Testament history represents as the earliest seat of antediluvian man. As Lenormant has well shown, the tradition exists in the ancient literature of India, Persia, Phœnicia, Phrygia, and Greece, and can be recognised in the traditions of Northern and Western Europe and of America, while the Egyptians had a similar account of the destruction of men, but apparently not by water, though their idea of a submerged continent of Atlantis probably had reference to the antediluvian world. Thus we find this story widely spread over the earth, and possessed by members of all the leading divisions of mankind. This does not necessarily prove the universality of the Deluge, though every distinct people naturally refers it to its own country. It shows, however, the existence of some very early common source of the tradition, and the variations are not more than were to have been expected in the different channels of transmission.

2. Parallel with this historical evidence lies the result of geological and archæological research, which has revealed to us the remains and works of prehistoric men, racially distinct from those of modern times, and who inhabited the earth at a period when its animal population was to a great extent distinct from that at present existing, and when its physical condition was also in many respects different. Thus in Europe and Asia, and to some extent also in America, we have evidence that the present races of men were preceded by others which have passed away, and this at the same time with many important species of land animals, once the contemporaries of man, but now known only as fossils. These ancient men are those called by geologists later pleistocene, or post-glacial, or the men of the cave and gravel deposits, or of the age of the mammoth, and who have been designated by archæologists palæolithic men, or, more properly, palæocosmic men, since the character of their stone implements is only one not very important feature of their history, and implements of the palæolithic type have been used in all periods, and indeed are still used in some places.

3. The prevalence among geologists of an exaggerated and unreasonable uniformitarianism, which refused to allow sufficient prominence to sudden cataclysms arising from the slow accumulation of natural forces, and which was a natural reaction from the convulsive geology of an earlier period, has caused the idea to be generally entertained that the age of palæocosmic men was of vast duration, and passed only by slow gradations and a gradual transition into the new conditions of the modern period. This view long was, and still is, an obstacle to any rational correlation of the geological and traditional history of man. Recently, however, new views have been forced on geologists, and have led many of the most sagacious observers and reasoners to see that the palanthropic period is much nearer to us than we had imagined. The arguments for this I have referred to in previous pages, and need not reiterate them, here. A few leading points may, however, be noted. One of these is the small amount of physical or organic change which has occurred since the close of the palanthropic period. Another is the more rapid rate of erosion and deposition by rivers in the modern period than had previously been supposed. Another is the striking fact that a large number of mammals, like the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, seem to have perished simultaneously with the palæocosmic men, and this by some sudden catastrophe. [41] It has also been shown by Pictet and Dawkins that all the extant mammals of Europe already existed in the post-glacial age, but along with many others now altogether or locally extinct. Thus there seems to have been the removal over the whole northern hemisphere of a number of the largest mammals, while a selected number survived and no additions were made. Again, while at one time it was supposed that the remains of palæocosmic man and his contemporaries were confined to caverns and river alluvia, it is now known that they occur also on high plateaus and water-sheds, in beds of gravel and silt which must have been deposited there under conditions of submergence and somewhat active current drift, perhaps in some cases aided by floating ice. [42] Lastly, while, as must naturally be the case, in some places the remains of ancient and more modern men are mixed, or seem to pass into each other, in others, as in the Swiss, Belgian and Lebanon caves and in the superficial deposits, there is a distinct separation, implying an interval accompanied by physical change between the time of the earlier and later men.

[41] Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood.

[42] Prestwich on deposits at Ightham, Kent, Journal Geological Society, May 1889.

Such considerations as these, the force of which is most strongly felt by those best acquainted with the methods of investigation employed by geologists and archæologists, are forcing us to conclude: (1) That there are indicated in the latest geological formations two distinct human periods, an earlier and a later, characterised by differences of faunæ and of physical conditions, as well as by distinct races of men. (2) That these two periods are separated by a somewhat rapid physical change of the nature of submergence, or by a series of changes locally sudden and generally not long-continued. (3) That it is not improbable that this greatest of all revolutions in human affairs may be the same that has so impressed itself on the memory of the survivors as to form the basis of all the traditions and historical accounts of the Deluge.