PRIMITIVE MAN. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO MODERN THEORIES AS TO HIS ORIGIN (continued).
In the previous chapter we have seen that, on general grounds, evolution as applied to man is untenable; and that the theory of creation is more rational and less liable to objection. We may now consider how the geological and zoological conditions of man’s advent on the earth accord with evolution; and I think we shall find, as might be expected, that they oppose great if not fatal difficulties to this hypothesis.
One of the first and most important facts with reference to the appearance of man, is that he is a very recent animal, dating no farther back in geological time than the Post-glacial period, at the close of the Tertiary and beginning of the Modern era of geology. Further, inasmuch as the oldest known remains of man occur along with those of animals which still exist, and the majority of which are probably not of older date, there is but slender probability that any much older human remains will ever be found. Now this has a bearing on the question of the derivation of man, which, though it has not altogether escaped the attention of the evolutionists, has not met with sufficient consideration.
Perhaps the oldest; known human skull is that which has been termed the “Engis” skull, from the cave of Engis, in Belgium. With reference to this skull, Professor Huxley has candidly admitted that it may have belonged to an individual of one of the existing faces of men. I have a cast of it on the same shelf with the skulls of some Algonquin Indians, from the aboriginal Hochelaga, which preceded Montreal; and any one acquainted with cranial characters would readily admit that the ancient Belgian may very well have been an American Indian; while on the other hand his head is not very dissimilar from that of some modern European races. This Belgian man is believed to have lived before the mammoth and the cave bear had passed away, yet he does not belong to an extinct species or even variety of man.
Further, as stated in a previous chapter, Pictet catalogues ninety-eight species of mammals which inhabited Europe in the Post-glacial period. Of these fifty-seven still exist unchanged, and the remainder have disappeared. Not one can be shown to have been modified into a new form, though some of them have been obliged, by changes of temperature and other conditions, to remove into distant and now widely separated regions. Further, it would seem that all the existing European mammals extended back in geological time at least as far as man, so that since the Post-glacial period no new species have been introduced in any way. Here we have a series of facts of the most profound significance. Fifty-seven parallel lines of descent nave in Europe run on along with man, from the Post-glacial period, without change or material modification of any kind. Some of them extend without change even farther back. Thus man and his companion-mammals present a series of lines, not converging as if they pointed to some common progenitor, but strictly parallel to each other. In other words, if they are derived forms, their point of derivation from a common type is pushed back infinitely in geological time. The absolute duration of the human species does not affect this argument. If man has existed only six or seven thousand years, still at the beginning of his existence he was as distinct from lower animals as he is now, and shows no signs of gradation into other forms. If he has really endured since the great Glacial period, and is to be regarded as a species of a hundred thousand years' continuance, still the fact is the same, and is, if possible, less favourable to derivation.
Similar facts meet us in other directions. I have for many years occupied a little of my leisure in collecting the numerous species of molluscs and other marine animals existing in a sub-fossil state in the Post-pliocene clays of Canada, and comparing them with their modern successors. I do not know how long these animals have lived. Some of them certainly go far back into the Tertiary; and recent computations would place even the Glacial age at a distance from us of more than a thousand centuries. Yet after carefully studying about two hundred species, and, of some of these, many hundreds of specimens, I have arrived at the conclusion that they are absolutely unchanged. Some of them, it is true, are variable shells, presenting as many and great varieties as the human race itself; yet I find that in the Post-pliocene even the varieties of each species were the same as now, though the great changes of temperature and elevation which have occurred, have removed many of them to distant places, and have made them become locally extinct in regions over which they once spread. Here again we have an absolute refusal, on the part of all these animals, to admit that they are derived, or have tended to sport into new species. This is also, it is to be observed, altogether independent of that imperfection of the geological record of which so much is made; since we have abundance of these shells in the Post-pliocene beds, and in the modern seas, and no one doubts their continued descent. To what does this point? Evidently to the conclusion that all these species show no indication of derivation, or tendency to improve, but move back in parallel lines to some unknown creative origin.