THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.*
SIR CHARLES LYELL'S new editions derive part of their value from the circumstance that the author's mind is clear and comprehensive rather than original. If the grace of intellectual modesty can be in excess, Sir Charles Lyell may be held to have too much of it to permit him to do the highest kind of scientific work. He is seldom or never inventive. The intrepid and penetrating glance of genius, when its motto is nil mortalibus arduum est, and it tries now to burn its way through the coil of complicated questions, now to cast revealing gleams upon the future course of discovery, is not his. We can call to mind no writer of his calibre who is so little of a dogmatist, who has so little tenacity of opinion or obstinacy of prejudice. But he is the most industrious and intel- ligent of compilers, and he rejoices in the suggestive thought, or the important generalisation, or the valuable discovery, of another man, as unaffectedly as if it were his own. He is ever eager and athirst for new truth. He cares for no consistency except that of going forward. His new editions, therefore, have, to a large extent, the character of new books. For geology in particular Sir Charles's method is eminently suitable. Geology is the least exact of the sciences, the science in which there is pre-eminently little that is precisely and finally settled. A real science, and one of the noblest of the sciences, we believe it to be. Its progress within the last hundred years has been magnificent. It has already brought about, and that in an entirely legitimate manner, changes no less than revolutionary in various departments of human knowledge. But in relation to the problems with which it has still to grapple, to the work it has yet to do, its labours and achievements have been but a preparation. It has made it impossible for any educated man to hold that belief respecting the time at which this world was created which the great body of educated men held two hundred years ago. It has absolutely demonstrated the existence of pain and death on our planet millions of years before the appearance of man, thus break- ing up the foundations of theological systems which lay like ramparts of rock or ice in the way of spiritual progress. But what is all this compared with that which lies before the geologist? It is a problem of geological science to state the • The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man; with an Outline of Glacial and Post-Tertiary Geology, and Remarks on the Origin of Species, with Special Reference to Man's First Appearance on the Earth. By Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., MA., F.B.S. Fourth Edition. London : Murray. 1873.
number of years or ages during which the several formations, Silurian, Carboniferous, Cretaceous, and so on, were being formed ; and no geologist in Europe would pretend to give, within a hundred thousand years, the chronology even of the middle Tertiaries. It is a problem of geological science to restore, to the eye of intellect and imagination, the successive surfaces of the earth from the Laurentian period until now ; and we doubt whether five geologists of eminence could be found who would agree in laying down a map of the northern hemisphere during that Glacial period which is the mere threshold, if it can be called so much as that, of the geological past. When we think of the tens of thousands of fossils which geologists have discovered, restored, classified, thus vastly extending the boundaries of zoological and botanical science,—of the extent to which they have determined the order of succession among strata,—of the comprehensiveness with which they have surveyed the surface rocks of our continents and islands, we admire and wonder at such a record of progress ; when we reflect upon the long list of questions which geology still asks without being able to answer, we feel as if it were but beginning to be a science.
Under these circumstances, it is, we submit, a real advantage for a geological writer, or at least for his readers, that he should be more of a narrator than of a speculative thinker, that he should have an alert and open intelligence for advances made in the science, and that it should be his aim rather to present a lucid statement of facts than to construct theories. In Sir Charles Lyell's new editions we are sure to find accurate statements of what has been done in relation to their subject-matter since the last previous editions appeared, and no man could more lucidly or impartially estimate the effect of new discoveries upon his own former views. During the ten years which have elapsed since the appearance of the third edition of the Antiquity of Man, a good deal of new light has been thrown upon the subject, and several "corrections and improvements" have been made in the fourth edition. Sir John Lubbock has written upon "Prehistoric Man," and Mr. John Evans on "Ancient Stone Implements ; " Professor Geikie has been fighting a hard battle in defence of a theory of his as to the rise of the surface of a part of our island in post-Roman times, a battle which Sir Charles and we think he has not gained ; there have been fresh explorations of caverns containing bone-breccia in Belgium, England, and elsewhere ; research has been active, and specula- tion perhaps still more active, on the crag-formation of Norfolk and Suffolk ; there has been much discussion on the Glacial period, and on ice-action generally ; and "one very important addition," Sir Charles believes, has been made to those facts on which "ad- vocates of transmutation" rest their arguments. Of all this we have due account in the edition before us, and the author is per- suaded that the effect of the new materials has, on the whole, been to strengthen the position as to the antiquity of man which he formerly took up. The candid reader will, we think, agree with him, but many parts of the subject are still involved in an obscurity which is not likely to be speedily dissipated. Men of high ability, of fervent scientific zeal and thirst for knowledge, and of indomitable energy, in England, Scotland, Denmark, Belgium, France, and Switzerland, have been endeavouring for more than half a century to trace the earliest footsteps of man in Europe, and, piecing the information obtained with the results of analogous researches in other parts of the world, to frame a scientific hypo- thesis as to the time when the human being first became a denizen of our planet. In the course of their operations, theories formerly held have been swept away. It is impossible to maintain that the appearance of man on earth took place four thousand years ago, six thousand years ago, or at any date approaching these in nearness to our own time. But the admirable inquirers to whom we have referred have been rewarded by dispelling error rather than by revealing truth. They have been able to tell us with perfect conclusiveness when man did not come first upon earth, but they confess themselves unable to say, within an indefi- nite number of ages, when he did come.
AU the stepping - stones by which we make our way from the present into the past converge towards a remoter anti- quity than used to be claimed for our race. No single fact, or series of facts, may be in itself conclusive as to man's antiquity, but it is almost impossible that the cumula- tive proof should mislead. Danish turf-bog-6 and shell-mounds, lake-dwellings, river-deltas, cave-breccias, Egyptian burnt bricks, and Irish flint arrow-heads, all tell the same tale. In Denmark the tree which most widely prevails at present is the beech. It is found in the uppermost layer of the peat-bogs, when found at all. As we descend in the peat, the oak becomes extremely common,—
the beech has well nigh superseded it in the Denmark of to-day. Lower still we have the Scotch fir in great abundance, a tree which is not now, and never has been in historical times, in- digenous in Denmark. Sir Charles Lyell considers it certain that man lived in Denmark at the time when Scotch firs grew on the margins of the lakes or swamps which subsequently became peat-bogs, for Steenstrup took with his own hands a flint implement from below a buried trunk of Scotch fir in a peat-bog in Denmark. To the age of stone instruments succeeded an age of bronze instruments, and to the age of bronze the still-existing age of iron. These ages are marked by no hard-and-fast line, the first generation which used bronze continuing to make occa- sional use of stone, and the generations which used iron occasionally using bronze ; but the changes, though gradual, became at length complete, and the ages of stone, bronze, and iron are believed to have had a general correspondence to the periods of the fir, the oak, and the beech. With the evidence of the Danish peat-bogs may be taken the evidence of the Danish " kitchen-middens." These are mounds seen at certain points along the shores of nearly all the Danish islands, consisting of cast-away shells of the oyster, cockle, and other edible mollusca, mixed up with bones of mammalia, birds, and fish. Scattered through the whole are flint knives, hatchets, and other stone, horn, wood, and bone implements, as well as charcoal, cinders, and fragments of coarse pottery. No implements of bronze or of iron are found in the mounds. Two facts prove them to have been formed at a time when the geographical condition of Den- mark was different from the present. First, the oysters, mussels, cockles, and periwinkles in the mounds are not only of living species, but of the full size. In the adjoining seas these shell-fish do not now attain the full size, the waters of the Baltic being too brackish, owing to the influx of rivers and the comparative exclu- sion of the Atlantic. In the next place, the mounds occur on the eastern, not on the western shores of the islands, a circumstance accounted for by the supposition that the mounds which lined the western shores have been eaten away by the advancing ocean. There are no bones of any domesticated animal except the dog, and the wild animals are of species which either exist at present in Europe, or are known to have existed in historical times. The probable age of the kitchen-middens and of the stone period in Den- mark is not less than ten thousand years. But this is only a guess. The hunters of the old Danish fir-woods and the fishermen of the mounds existed before the age of bronze and the age of iron, but who can say how recent is the time at which these began ? Steemitrup holds that the iron age did not begin till the third century. Homer and his warriors knew of iron, but they used bronze far more gene- rally. It seems to us in the last degree unlikely that, when Achilles and Hector were hewing at each other in bronze, the dwellers in the Danish islands had got beyond instruments of flint. Their skulls prove them to have been pretty like the Laplanders of to-day. Sir Charles Lyell does not say whether the Laplanders make kitchen-middens, but if they do, and if the rate at which these ac- cumulate can be ascertained, some rough calculation might be made as to the time required for the growth of the Danish mounds. We are not favoured, however, even with so much as this of an approximation to a unit of time to be applied to the stone period. The argument from change of climate and coast-line is equally incomplete and inconclusive. Ocean has been making sport with the Danish coast from time immemorial, but we have no information as to when the changes which the force of the tides and winds has effected have occurred. We know not how slight and subtle may be the change in climate which makes it impossible for a particular species of tree or plant to thrive. We cannot prove that the Danish firs, and subsequently the Danish oaks, took a long time for their successive disap- pearances. Of course each period may have lasted a hundred thousand years, or ten times as many, and the decay may in each instance have been spread over thousands of years ; but it is not impossible that the changes in climate were sudden, and the changes in vegetation correspondingly sudden. An allowance of ten thousand years as the probable date of the earliest kitchen- middens' will be liberal. Bat it is certain that these Danish fishermen were not the first inhabitants of Europe. Their flint implement/ are polished, and belong to what antiquarians call the neolithic period. This was preceded, if not in Denmark, yet else- where in Europe, by a palseolithic period, during which the atone instruments were unpolished and comparatively rude. Those palmolithic people are traceable back to a very remote antiquity indeed, but again the geologists can only talk vaguely of the chronological land-marks by which their period may be dated. The evidence of the bone-brecciaa explored by Schmerling and many others in Belgian, English, and French caves seems to us to prove conclusively that men existed with the cave bear, the cave lion, and other extinct species. That the bones of the men and the bones of the bears and lions got into the caves at one and the same time is, we think, indisputable. But how either got there is a ticklish question, and when they got there is still more so. Schmerling, perfectly satisfied that man had lived along with the extinct animals, found himself pulled up in his attempts to fix dates by his inability to state the time necessary for certain modifications of surface, which he clearly perceived to have taken place, in the district where the Meuse caverns occur, since the time when the bones were immured. The difficulty which baffled Schmerling has not yet been overcome. Sir Charles Lyell says a good deal about the old loess of the Rhine, but he does not profess to solve the problems of its deposition, duration, channelling-out by rivers, and so on. That a vastly longer period is absolutely demanded in this instance than is indispensable for the production of the Danish kitchen- middens no geologist would dispute, but beyond this there is speculation, not knowledge. Very careful borings in the delta of the Nile may., we think, be held to have proved, or at least rendered it extremely probable, that man existed, and was civilised enough to burn brick, in the Valley of the Nile twelve thousand years ago.
The antiquity of man, therefore, has received the imprimatur of science, but discovery has not yet led us to the origin of our race. Professor Huxley, after examination of the most ancient human skulls, and their comparison with brains of the highest apes, concludes that "the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has proceeded need no longer be sought, by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development, in the newest tertiaries, but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of the Elephas prinzigenius than that is from us." In support of the position that man was developed from an ape, Sir Charles Lyell falls back upon the general theory of development, which he accepts in its Darwinian interpretation ; but he takes perhaps too little account of the fact that the eminent naturalist, who enunciated at the same time with Mr. Darwin the doctrine of development by natural selection, has persistently main- tained that the origin of man cannot be so accounted for. There appears to be a difference of opinion between Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Huxley as to the probable geological whereabouts of the first man. Professor Huxley says there is no use in looking for him in the newest Tertiaries. Sir Charles says that it is in strata of "Pliocene and Pleistocene date," not in "Miocene" strata, that "there will be the greatest chance of discovering hereafter some species more highly organised than the gorilla and the chimpanzee." Pleistocene strata are "the newest Tertiaries," and Miocene strata are what we naturally think of when Professor Huxley warns us to look for the first traces of man elsewhere than in the newest Tertiaries. The Pliocene period seems to be excluded by the fact of its climate not being adapted "to be the habitation of the quadrumanous mammalia." The climate of the Miocene period was, on the other hand, such as may be deemed favourable to the development of a monkey Newton or Shake- speare into the ancestor of the human race ; and whereas we have no remains of apes in Northern and Central Europe in Pliocene and Pleistocene times, no sooner do we get into the Miocene strata "than we begin to discover apes and monkeys north of the Alps and Pyrenees." Two among the species already detected "belong to the anthropomorphous class." One of them, the Dryopithecus, a gibbon or long-armed ape, about equal to man in stature, appears to have been, in physical respects at least, well enough qualified to supply the missing link. Sir Charles Lyell seems, however, to believe that it was at a period long posterior to the Miocene, in some equatorial region whose Pleistocene strata have not been explored, that "the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals," first made his appearance. The question is as yet almost purely conjectural, even if the development of man from an ape be conceded.
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