The Meeting-Place of Geology and History

by Sir John William Dawson

3. As to the body of man, the case is different, but still perfectly in harmony with the idea of his higher nature. Man, as to his body, is confessedly an animal, of the earth earthy. He is also a member of the province vertebrata, and the class mammalia; but in that class he constitutes not only a distinct species and genus, but even a distinct family, or order. In other words, he is the sole species of his genus, and of his family, or order. He is thus separated, by a great gap, from all the animals nearest to him; and even if we admit the doctrine, as yet unproved, of the derivation of one species from another in the case of the lower animals, we are unable to supply the 'missing links' which would be required to connect man with any group of inferior animals. This physical distinctness has also a special significance, inasmuch as it depends on certain negative peculiarities such as the absence of clothing, of natural weapons of attack and defence, as well as on the positive properties of the erect posture, the hands adapted to various kinds of manipulation, and the special sensory gifts. Thus viewed in relation to his environment, his wants as well as his possessions in regard to structures and powers, would be fatal to any creature not possessed of his intelligence, and we cannot conceive how such privations or such gifts could spontaneously arise in nature.

4. No fact of science is more certainly established than the recency of man in geological time. Not only do we find no trace of his remains in the older geological formations, but we find no remains even of the animals nearest to him; and the conditions of the world in those periods seem to unfit it for the residence of man. If, following the usual geological system, we divide the whole history of the earth into four great periods, extending from the oldest rocks known to us, the eozoic, or archæan, up to the modern, we find remains of man, or his works, only in the latest of the four, and in the later part of this. In point of fact, there is no indisputable proof of the presence of man until we reach the early modern period. This is, no doubt, what was to have been expected on the supposition of the orderly development of the chain of animal life in the long geologic eons; but it is not by any means the only hypothesis that was possible when, for example, the Book of Genesis was written. A more fanciful cosmologist might at that time have given precedence to man, and might have supposed that the other animals were produced later, and for his benefit, or his injury. This is the view of the sacred writer himself with respect to the local group of animals intended to be in immediate association with the first man. Restricted in this way, the statement of a group of animals created with man in his earliest abode is not contradictory to the order in Genesis first, nor scientifically improbable. We have seen that in any case the deductions from geology are in harmony with the earliest revelations made to the human mind on the subject, and in accordance with all the later facts of actual history.

5. The absolute date of the first appearance of man cannot perhaps be fixed within a few years or centuries, either by human chronology or by the science of the earth. It would seem, however, that the Bible history, as well as such hints as we can gather from the history of other nations, limits us to two or three thousand years before the Deluge of Noah, while some estimates of the antiquity of man, based on physical changes or ancient history, or on philology, greatly exceed this limit. If the earliest men were those of the river gravels and caves, men of the 'mammoth age,' or of the 'palæolithic' or palæocosmic period, we can form some definite ideas as to their possible antiquity. They colonised the continents immediately after the elevation of the land from the great subsidence which closed the pleistocene or glacial period, in what has been called the 'continental' period of the post-glacial age, because the new lands then raised out of the sea exceeded in extent those which we have now. We have, as stated in a previous chapter, some measures of the date of this great continental elevation, and know that its distance from our time must fall within about eight thousand years. Many indications, both in Europe and America, lead to the belief that it is physically impossible that man could have colonised the northern hemisphere at an earlier date than this geologically recent continental period.

6. There is but one species of man, though many races and varieties; and these races or varieties seem to have developed themselves at a very early time and have shown a remarkable fixity in their later history. There is reason to believe, however, from various physiological facts, that this is a very general law of varietal forms, which are observed to appear rapidly or suddenly, and then in favourable circumstances to be propagated continuously. It would seem also to apply to the introduction of forms regarded as species, since it is not unusual to find a genus at or near its origin represented by its maximum number of specific forms.

7. The precise locality of the origin of man can be defined on probable grounds as in a temperate region, supplied with the vegetable productions most useful to him in a natural state, and free from destructive animal rivals. We can scarcely suppose that this locality can have been in any of those parts of the world in which man finds the greatest difficulty in subsisting, or becomes most degraded, though this paradoxical view has been held by some archæologists. It must rather have been in some fertile and salubrious region of the northern hemisphere; and probability as well as tradition points to those regions in South-Western Asia which have not only been the earliest historical abodes of man, but are also the centres of the animals and plants most useful to him. It is interesting to note here that Hæckel, on purely physical grounds, decides against Europe, Africa, Australia, and America, and concludes that 'most circumstances indicate Southern Asia.'

8. It is to be observed, however, that the diluvial interlude gives a double origin of man; but the historical accounts of the neocosmic dispersion, as we have already seen, refer us in this case also to the same regions of South-Western Asia. The traditions which ascribe human origin to a 'Mountain of the North' refer to the second dispersion, and coincide with the Ararat of Genesis and the 'Mountain of the North' on which the ship of Hasisadra was supposed by the Chaldeans to have grounded.

9. We are now in a position to correlate the historical Deluge with the great geographical changes which closed the palanthropic age. This, when regarded as an established fact, furnishes the solution of many of the most disputed questions of anthropology. The misuse of the Deluge in the early history of geology, in employing it to account for changes that took place long before the advent of man, certainly should not cause us to neglect its legitimate uses, when these arise in the progress of investigation. 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 rubble spread over plateaus and in river valleys, far above the reach of the present floods, may be accounted for, not by the ordinary action of the existing streams, but by the abnormal action of currents of water diluvial in their character. Further, since the historical Deluge cannot have been of very long 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 slow processes of subsidence, elevation, and erosion, but by causes of a more abrupt and cataclysmic character.

Finally, it has been the tendency of modern geological and archæological discovery to attach more and more value and importance to the ancient records of the human race, and especially to those precious documents which have been preserved to our time in the Book of Genesis.

We have merely glanced cursorily at a few of the salient points of the relation of the primitive history of man in Genesis to modern scientific discovery. Many other details might have been adduced as tending to show similar coincidences of these two distinct lines of evidence. Enough has, however, been said to indicate the remarkable manner in which the history in Genesis has anticipated modern discovery, and to show that this ancient book is in every way trustworthy, and as remote as possible from the myths and legends of ancient heathenism, while it shows the historical origin of beliefs which in more or less corrupted forms lie at the foundations of the oldest religions of the Gentiles, and find their true significance in that of the Hebrews. To the Christian the record in Genesis has a still higher value, as constituting those historical groundworks of the plan of salvation to which our Lord Himself so often referred, and on which He founded so much of His teaching.