Chapter 4

[27]A valuable paper by Dawkins 'On the relation of the Palæolithic to the Neolithic Period,' reaches me when correcting the proof of this volume. (Reprint fromJournal of Anthropological Society, February 1894.)

In the meantime I may remark that, if we take the Canstadt people to represent the ruder tribes of the antediluvian Cainites, the feebler folk of Truchère to represent the Sethites, and the giant race of Cro-magnon and Mentone as the equivalent of the 'mighty men' or Nephelim of Genesis who arose from the mixture of the two original stocks, we shall have a somewhat exact parallel between the men of the caves and gravels and those we have so long been familiar with in the Book of Genesis.

CHAPTER VII

THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE

There has been much confusion among anthropologists respecting the distinction of this from the preceding age. The Cro-magnon race has been classed as neanthropic, and has been confounded with a very dissimilar people which succeeded it after an interval of some duration. The gap between the disappearance of the earlier race and the arrival of the newer has thus been overlooked, and no account has been taken of the great intervening faunal and geographical changes. This has arisen from neglecting or being unable to appreciate the geological part of the evidence; and the somewhat lamentable result has been that it is difficult for the ordinary reader to arrive at any certainty, in the midst of conflicting statements all based on imperfect data. In these circumstances it will be well to begin this chapter with some examples of the relations of these different races.

At Grenelle, near Paris, on the river Seine, there is a succession of old inundation beds of that river, extendingfrom the oldest part of the anthropic to modern times, and furnishing what may be regarded as a chronological series for Northern France, as many human remains have been from time to time deposited on this old eddy of the Seine and buried under newer accumulations. Belgrand has shown that in the lowest gravels of this deposit the long-headed Canstadt man is alone found. Immediately above this occur remains of the Cro-magnon type, and these are associated with and overlain by beds holding large stones or erratic blocks, a monument perhaps of the physical disturbances closing the palanthropic age. Above these the next remains are those of a race of men of smaller stature and with less elongated heads, which we shall find belong to the neanthropic age. Here, as Quatrefages points out, we have a distinct stratigraphical succession, which accords with that in other localities.

If we now turn to England we may select from other examples the Cresswell caves, so carefully explored by Dawkins and Mello, and in which we have well-ascertained evidence from fossils as well as from superposition. Without going into the details as to the several chambers and passages in these caverns, we find as the result of the whole the following succession in ascending order:

1. White calcareous sand, a deposit from water, but with no animal remains.

2. Stiff red clay with blocks of limestone, and in places underlaid by a ferruginous sand. These beds,of which the red clay is the principal, contain bones of rhinoceros leptorhinus, hippopotamus, bison, bear, hyena and fox, but no human remains. Dawkins, however, shows that in other caves farther south some rude flint implements show that man had already appeared in England, though he may not have made his way as far north as Yorkshire.

3. Above this lies a stratum of red sandy cave earth, in which occur the bones of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, the horse, the bison, the bear, and the hyena, but the leptorhine rhinoceros is gone. The bones are gnawed by hyenas, and there are rude quartzite implements. Over this, and representing the later part of the palanthropic age, corresponding to some of the French, Belgian, and Lebanon caves, are an upper cave earth and breccia, rich in 'palæolithic' flint implements and bones of the animals of the mammoth age.

4. Above this, in the surface soil and disturbed portions of the underlying beds, are remains of the neanthropic period, including twelve species of modern animals, but with no trace of the great extinct quadrupeds. Connected with these were human skulls of the same type found in the ancient burial barrows of England, and belonging to races still extant. The Cresswell caves give no bones of palæocosmic men, but they very well show the succession of the early period of mild climate, the later severe climate, the extinction of the old animals contemporary with the earliest men, and the finalsuccession of modern men and animals to the now insular Britain, which, in the times represented by the beds one, two, and three above mentioned, was a part of the mainland of Europe.

FLINT FLAKES OF TWO TYPES FROM PALANTHROPIC AND NEANTHROPIC CAVES IN THE LEBANON

But perhaps the most interesting views of the succession of early men and the gap between the palanthropic and neanthropic periods are presented by the Belgian caves explored by Schmerling and Dupont. The latter has excavated more than sixtycaverns, and has carefully noted the mode of occurrence of their contents, collecting at the same time a vast number of bones and implements, now admirably arranged in the museum of Brussels. In Belgium the earlier anthropic period has been characterised as that of the mammoth. The beginning of the neanthropic is still a reindeer age, though that animal was apparently becoming rare. It existed, as we know, in Central Europe till the time of Cæsar.

RESTORATION OF THE SEPULCHRAL CAVE OF FRONTAL, BELGIUM (after Dupont)1. and 2. Gravel and clay of mammoth age. 3. Surface of modern accumulation of angular stones and clay. (D) Slab closing the sepulchre. (S) Platform for funeral feasts. (F) Hearth. (R) Rock forming the walls of the cavern.

The caves of Furfooz, and especially that of Frontal, are among the most instructive. Dupont has found that in many caves the older remains of the mammoth age are contained in or covered by a diluvial or inundation mud,[28]which seems to be the closing deposit of this age. Now in the Frontal cave this mud remained undisturbed and extended out into a platform in front of the cave. The cave itself had been used as a place of burial, and as many as sixteen skeletons were found in it, with flint implements, perforated shells, flat pieces of sandstone with sketches of figures scratched on them, and an earthen vase. All these lay above the original palanthropic mud floor, and belonged to new tribes which probably knew nothing of their predecessors, whose bones were covered by the inundation mud below. On the platform in front of the cave was a hearth with the ashes of funeral feasts, and around this were found a multitude of bones of animals, of the modern species of the country. The people who used this cave as a sepulchre had evidently arrived in Belgium after the palæocosmic men and the mammoth were not only extinct, but their remains were buried in muddy deposits; though the reindeerand even the wild horse still existed, and the time was long before the dawn of any authentic history in that part of the world. These men have somewhat shorter heads than the old Cro-magnon race, and they are of smaller stature, and with finer and more delicate features. In these respects they resemble the men of the dolmens and long barrows of France and England, and the existing Auvergnats and Basques, and also the Lapps of the far north. Dupont observes that their materials for implements and ornaments came almost entirely from regions to the southward, and hence he infers commerce with tribes in that direction and the existence of enemies in the north. I should rather infer that the men of Frontal had immigrated into Belgium from the south, and that they were a small and poor outlying tribe of a greater people living south of them. Dupont also remarks on their evident care of the dead, a characteristic of the early neocosmic men, their belief in a future life, and the absence of warlike weapons, whence he infers that they were a mild and pacific race—a conclusion which makes against the idea entertained by some, that they may have displaced the formidable palæocosmic men by conquest.

[28]Sometimes with angular stones—argile à blocaux.

Similar illustrations are afforded by the caves and rock-shelters of France, Switzerland, and Syria, and have convinced many of the ablest archæologists of the existence of a decided break between the palanthropic and neanthropic ages. In such a case also it is to be observed that a few decided, positive factsare of more value than any number of examples in which, from local circumstances, the succession may be obscure or uncertain.

The above examples relate to the men of the older neanthropic age, the men of the so-called neolithic or polished stone age of archæologists. These men can be shown to be identical with the oldest populations of postdiluvian Europe, peoples whose descendants exist to-day in many parts of Western Europe, though they have been more or less displaced or mixed with later intrusive races. These people have gone on without any physical cataclysm, or change of fauna, or geographical or climatal changes of any magnitude, into the ages of bronze and iron and of the modern civilisation. Thus, while the palæocosmic men passed away abruptly and have left no certain successors, those who succeeded them pass on without a break into the existing populations of the world.

We must, however, here guard ourselves from a misconception which has apparently unconsciously deceived many writers on this subject. It by no means follows from the facts insisted on above that there are no direct links of connection between palæocosmic and neocosmic men. The ancestors of the latter must have existed through the palanthropic period, and wherever they were living they may have had the same characters which distinguish them at a later time, and which persist to this day. There would therefore be nothing contradictory to ourgeneral view in finding that the small, fine-featured men who succeeded the giants of the olden time were in some more genial parts of the world extant from the first. Nay, it may even appear that they were similar to the Truchère race, and that still more primitive people whose bones are yet unknown, and who inhabited Europe in the early mild period preceding the mammoth age. Neither is there anything anomalous in the occasional reappearance of characters similar to those even of the Canstadt race at the present time, not because any modern men are direct descendants of this race, but because under certain conditions these characters tend to be reproduced. Let us put the case conjecturally as follows:

The original men who peopled the northern continents after the first glacial period were of small stature, agile, and well formed, with mild and pleasing countenance and heads of the medium (mesitocephalic) type. They were dwellers in a warm climate and subsisted on fruits. As population increased and men became hunters and fishermen, and wandered widely over the world, a large-boned, coarse-featured, and savage type of man arose, such as we find in the older caves and gravels, and weapons of kinds not needed in primitive times were invented. In this state of affairs, when the coarser and stronger races had made themselves masters of the world, and had perhaps partially intermixed with the older and more peaceful peoples, a great diluvial catastrophe occurred, which swept away the greaterpart of men. The survivors were of the old and unmodified stock, and it was they who repeopled the new world, finding possibly here and there some survivors of the former population, or themselves locally relapsing into a similar state. In this case all the seeming paradoxes and contradictions which have perplexed archæologists would be easily explained. We might even find occasional captives of the primitive small race among the interments of the old giants, and we might find new races of superior physical power arising in the new world and again intruding on the feebler race.

In closing our notice of this period we may proceed to connect it with actual history in the British Islands. When the Romans invaded Britain they found in it two races of men physically very distinct, one of them the aborigines, who had made their way to the island as its first population after the close of the mammoth age, the others apparently a later intrusion. They are known to English antiquaries from their modes of burial as the men of the long and the round barrows or funeral mounds. The first of these are beyond doubt the kinsmen of our little men of the Trou de Frontal, in Belgium. They are thus described by Greenwell and Taylor[29]:

[29]Greenwell,British Barrows; Taylor,Origin of the Aryans.

They were of feeble build, short stature, dark complexion, and somewhat long skull. They buried their dead in long barrows or mounds with interior chambers and passages; some of these are as much as400 feet in length, and resemble artificial caves; and there can be no doubt that, as in Belgium, they buried their dead in caves when these were accessible; and the laborious construction of the long barrows when caves failed is an indication of the great importance they attached to the secure and decent sepulture of the dead. No trace of metal is found in their barrows, and but little pottery, but it is believed that they had at a very early time domesticated sheep and cattle and practised agriculture. These people are now identified with the people of the south and west of England, called by the Romans Silures. They were the builders of the cromlechs, dolmens, and other megalithic structures so common in various parts of the old continent. Their type survives to this day in the small dark people of parts of Wales and the south and west of Ireland, and in parts of the Hebrides. Their physical characters connect them with the primitive populations of the hills of Central France, with the Basques of the Pyrenees, the Corsicans, the Berbers of Africa, and the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the term Iberian has been applied to the whole group. Their language was originally not Aryan, but Turanian. They represent not merely a new race still surviving, but a distinct advance in practical civilisation over that of the peoples of the palanthropic age, in Europe at least.

At the time of the Roman conquest this primitive race had been replaced in the east of England and south of Scotland by a wholly different people, supposedto be identical with the Celtæ of the Romans. They were tall, muscular, with broader and shorter heads, fair complexion, and light-coloured hair. They buried their dead in round barrows or mounds, and seem at a very early period to have possessed bronze, and so to have introduced what has been termed the bronze age into Britain. At the time of the Roman invasion, however, they already possessed iron weapons. These people were Aryan in speech, allied to the Gauls and Belgæ, and the ancestors of the so-called Celtic populations of the British Islands.

CROMLECH AT FONTANACCIA, CORSICA (after De Mortillet)

CHAPTER VIII

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY

The time was when the earlier books of the Hebrew Scriptures stood almost alone in their notices of the creation and antediluvian times, and when critics could quietly take for granted that they were altogether mythical. This state of things has now passed away from the minds of the better informed, and it may be profitable before proceeding farther to glance for a moment at some of the recent corroborations, if they may be so called, of the Bible history from altogether unexpected quarters.

In the first place, there can now be no doubt that the order of creation, as revealed to the author of the first chapter of Genesis, corresponds with the results of astronomical and geological research in a manner which cannot be accidental.[30]This old document thus stands in the position of a prophecy which has been fulfilled in its details. Besides this, the discoveryof the similar though not identical Chaldean creation tablets throws a remarkable and interesting side-light on the whole question. The Chaldean tablets are unquestionably very ancient, and borrowed from still older documents from which they are alleged to have been copied. But they and the Genesis narrative are independent of each other. Neither can have been copied from the other. Thus there must have been a still more ancient common source of the narrative, and, as I have elsewhere urged,[31]the greater simplicity and monotheistic character of the Hebrew document entitle it to the palm of the higher antiquity.

[30]For evidence of this I may be permitted to refer to my work,The Origin of the World.

[31]Modern Science in Bible Lands.

With reference to the antediluvian age and the Deluge, while the Bible is here only in accord with almost universal tradition, and this in reference to an event which if it occurred at all must have fixed itself in the memory of the survivors, it is in remarkable accordance with very ancient Chaldean writings commemorative of the same event. Some principal points of this accordance are the following. The Chaldean account implies that the anger of the gods, or some of them, against an evil race of men was the cause of the catastrophe. It gives it a universal character, so far as the sphere of observation extended. It represents the survivors as saved in a ship or ark. It represents Hasisadra, its Noah, as sending out birds to ascertain the subsidence of the waters. Inall these points and many others the Chaldean account agrees with the Biblical in representing antediluvian men, or some of them, as civilised, possessing domestic animals, and competent to construct large ships.

When we leave the Deluge and come to the postdiluvian or neanthropic period, similar coincidences occur. The foundation of a primitive Cushite or Akkadian kingdom in the Euphratean valley, the dispersion of men according to their families and their languages, the early kingdoms contemporary with Abraham, mentioned in the narrative of his campaign to recover the captives taken from the cities of the plain, the extremely early use of the arrow-headed characters in Asia, of the hieroglyphic writing in Egypt, and of a proto-Phœnician or early Hebrew alphabet among the Mineans of ancient Arabia, tend at once to vindicate the Bible history, and to show how at a very early period this history may have been rendered permanent in written documents. On all these grounds scientific archæologists are beginning to attach more value than formerly to the Hebrew annals, and to recognise them as true historical accounts of the times to which they relate.

It may seem rash to make such a statement at a time when it is well known that many divines of repute avow themselves as believers in the theory that the earlier Biblical books are of comparatively late composition. But Science will have her way in a matter of this kind, whatever literature or criticismmay say, and she is beginning strongly to lift her voice against the destructive criticism of the Pentateuch. In a recent article, Professor Sayce, one of the best-informed experts in these subjects, uses the following language:

'Naturally, the "higher criticism" is disinclined to see its assumptions swept away along with the conclusions which are based upon them, and to sit humbly at the feet of the newer science. At first, the results of Egyptian or Assyrian research were ignored; then they were reluctantly admitted, so far as they did not clash with the preconceived opinions of the "higher" critics. It was urged, unfortunately with too much justice, that the decipherers were not, as a rule, trained critics, and that in the enthusiasm of research they often announced discoveries which proved to be false or only partially correct. But it must be remembered, on the other side, that this charge applies with equal force to all progressive studies, not excluding the "higher criticism" itself.

'The time is now come for confronting the conclusions of the "higher criticism," so far as it applies to the books of the Old Testament, with the ascertained results of modern Oriental research. The amount of certain knowledge now possessed by the Egyptologist and Assyriologist would be surprising to those who are not specialists in these branches of study, while the discovery of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets has poured a flood of light upon the ancient world, which is at once startling and revolutionary. As in the case ofGreek history, so too in that of Israelitish history, the period of critical demolition is at an end, and it is time for the archæologist to reconstruct the fallen edifice.

'But the very word "reconstruct" implies that what is built again will not be exactly that which existed before. It implies that the work of the "higher criticism" has not been in vain; on the contrary, the work it has performed has been a very needful and important one, and in its own sphere has helped us to the discovery of the truth. Egyptian or Assyrian research has not corroborated every historical statement which we find in the Old Testament, any more than classical archæology has corroborated every statement which we find in the Greek writers; what it has done has been to show that the extreme scepticism of modern criticism is not justified, that the materials on which the history of Israel has been based may, and probably do, go back to an early date, and that much which the "higher" critics have declared to be mythical and impossible was really possible and true.'

In point of fact a much stronger position might be held in favour of Genesis, and we shall find in comparing it with the monuments of the palanthropic and early neanthropic ages that its statements vindicate themselves as derived from original contemporary documents, which were under no obligations to the literature or philosophy of those later times, to which they have been relegated by some of the critics.

Let us inquire a little more in detail into the general features of these early historic notices.

For the purposes of this inquiry we may content ourselves with the consideration of the ancient Hebrew documents incorporated in the Book of Genesis, and the remains which have been preserved of the old Chaldean literature. Both of these represent an antediluvian period of long duration.[32]Both refer the primitive seats of population to the Euphratean region of Western Asia. Both terminate the antediluvian age with a great diluvial catastrophe. These are sufficient points of general agreement to make it probable that both originated in one fundamental history, or at least were based on attempts to describe the same events. Otherwise there are great differences. The Chaldean accounts have a prolix iteration, which makes it probable that they were prepared for popular and liturgic use, and may not fairly represent the original documents in possession of the priestly class. They also naturally introduce all thepersonnelof the Chaldean pantheon, and as this must have been a thing of gradual growth it gives them an air of recency, though we know that they are very old. The Hebrew version, on the other hand, is monotheistic, and has an aspect of severe simplicity in striking contrast to the florid and popular Chaldean version.

[32]Hommel has proved (Journal of the Society of Biblical Archæology, 1893), what has always been suspected, that the ten patriarchs of Berosus are the same with those of the Sethite line in Genesis.

We may first notice what history can tell of the palanthropic age, supposing this to be the same with that historically known as antediluvian. The account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis is altogether general, and has no local colouring. It evidently refers to the whole history of the making of the earth. The second chapter, on the other hand, begins at verse 4 the special history of man, and opens with a picture which is not, as some have rashly supposed, a repetition of the previous general account of creation, and still less contradictory to it, but a statement that immediately before the introduction of man the earth had been in a desolate and comparatively untenanted state, that state to which we know it had been reduced by the glacial cold and submergence.

Thus the two accounts of the creation of man, that in which he appears in his chronological position in the general development, and that in which he takes a first place, as introductory to his special history, are not contradictory, but complementary to each other; and the latter refers wholly to man and the creatures contemporary with him in the palanthropic age. It is in accordance with this, and no doubt intended by the editor to mark this distinction, that the name Elohim is used in the general narrative, and Jehovah Elohim in the special one. The failure of so many critics to notice this distinction, which must have been so plain to the primitive historian himself, is a marked illustration of theblindness of certain nineteenth-century savants, so full of their own special knowledge, yet so careless of science and common sense.

It would even seem that this distinction appeared in the Chaldean Genesis as well; for fragments of what has been called a second Chaldean Genesis have been found which seem to correspond with the statements of the second chapter of Genesis.

The following is an extract from this second Chaldean or Akkadian Genesis as translated by Pinches:[33]

1 The glorious house, the house of the gods, in a glorious place had not been made;2 A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not been created;3 A brick had not been laid, a beam had not been shaped;4 A house had not been built, a city had not been constructed;5 A city had not been made, a foundation had not been made glorious;6 Niffer had not been built, Ê-kura had not been constructed;7 Erech had not been built, Ê-ana had not been constructed;8 The Abyss had not been made, Ê-ridu had not been constructed;9 (As for) the glorious house, the house of the gods, its seat had not been made—10 The whole of the lands were sea.

1 The glorious house, the house of the gods, in a glorious place had not been made;

2 A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not been created;

3 A brick had not been laid, a beam had not been shaped;

4 A house had not been built, a city had not been constructed;

5 A city had not been made, a foundation had not been made glorious;

6 Niffer had not been built, Ê-kura had not been constructed;

7 Erech had not been built, Ê-ana had not been constructed;

8 The Abyss had not been made, Ê-ridu had not been constructed;

9 (As for) the glorious house, the house of the gods, its seat had not been made—

10 The whole of the lands were sea.

This may be supposed to correspond with the Hebrew verses following:

And no plant of the field was yet in the earth.And no herb of the field had yet sprung up.For Jahveh Elohim had not caused it to rain on the earth.And there was not a man to till (irrigate) the ground.And there went up a vapour from the earth, and watered the surface of the ground.

And no plant of the field was yet in the earth.

And no herb of the field had yet sprung up.

For Jahveh Elohim had not caused it to rain on the earth.

And there was not a man to till (irrigate) the ground.

And there went up a vapour from the earth, and watered the surface of the ground.

[33]Expository Times, December 1892

This is the Hebrew idea of the condition of the great Mesopotamian plain after the pleistocene submergence, and before the appearance of man. The Chaldean version refers to the same region, but is more elaborate and artificial, and brings in the historic cities of a later time. This difference alone would induce us to suppose that the Hebrew record may be a better guide for our present comparison.

The Hebrew writer in the first place gives us to understand that a period of comparative desolation preceded the appearance of man, a great winter of destruction preparatory to a returning spring. He then proceeds to localise primeval man by placing him in Eden, the Idinu of the Chaldean accounts, which we also recognise by the geographical indications of the Euphrates and Tigris as its rivers, with two companion streams which can scarcely be other than the Karun and the Kerkhat. Thus the Bible and the Chaldean account agree in their locality for the advent of man, for Idinu was the ancient name of the plain of Babylonia. It has been objected to thislocality that much of this region is low and swampy, and has only recently become land by the encroachment of the rivers on the head of the Persian Gulf. But if our Biblical authority really refers to palanthropic man, we must bear in mind that in the post-glacial period the continents were higher than now, and the Babylonian plain must have been a dry and elevated district, in all probability forest-clad. We must also bear in mind that Eden was a region of country, and that the 'garden' or selected spot 'eastward in Eden' may have been some rich wooded island surrounded by the river streams, and producing all fruits pleasant to the taste and good for food. In any case the modern objections to the site are based on entire ignorance of its geological history, and only serve to show how much better informed the ancient writer was as to antediluvian geography than his modern critics.[34]

[34]See, for full discussion of this,Modern Science in Bible Lands, by the author.

It is scarcely necessary to say that this Biblical environment of primitive man corresponds with the requirements of the case. In a genial climate and sheltered position, and supplied with abundance of food, the first men would have the conditions necessary for comfortable existence and for multiplying in numbers.

We have also in the description of one of the rivers of Eden a hint as to a few of the wants of early man beyond mere food and shelter. We aretold that the district traversed by this river produced gold, bedolach, and the shoham stone. I have elsewhere shown that this river must be the Karun, draining the Luristan mountains, and that the productions indicated must have been 'native gold and silver, wampum beads, and jade and similar stones suitable for implements.'[35]Thus we have here a picture which may well represent the origin and early condition of our palæocosmic men. But the parallel does not end here.

[35]Modern Science in Bible Lands.

According to the history, man falls, and is expelled from Eden, is clothed with skins, and becomes an eater of animal food. Next we find murderous violence, and a consequent separation of the primitive people into two tribes, one of which migrates to a distance from the other and adopts different modes of life. Finally, we have a mixture of the two races, leading to a powerful and terrible race of half-breeds, or metis, who filled the earth with violence.[36]

[36]Genesis vi. 1-6.

MAP SHOWING THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE SITE OF EDEN AS DESCRIBED IN GENESIS

In one point only have we reason to doubt whether this old history fairly represents the palanthropic age. It notes the invention of musical instruments, the use of metals, the domestication of animals as already existing in the antediluvian period. Of these we have little or no archæological evidence. The only musical instrument of this period known is a whistle made of one of the bones of a deer's foot, and capable of sounding a tetrachord or four notes, and we have no certain evidence of metals or domesticated animals. We must bear in mind that there may have been more civilised races than those of the Cro-magnon type, and that the latter evince an artistic skill which if it had any scope for development may have led to great results. The native metals must have been known to man from the first, though they must have been rare or only locally common; and many semi-barbarous nations of later times show us that it is only a short step from the knowledge of native metals to the art of metallurgy, in so far as it consists in treating those ores that in weight and metallic lustre most resemble the metals themselves. It is also deserving of notice that no other hypothesis than that of antediluvian civilisation can account for the fact that in the dawn of postdiluvian history we find the dwellers by the Euphrates and the Nile already practising so many of the arts of civilised life. In connection with this we may place the early dawn of literature. Without insisting on the documents which the Chaldean Noah, Hasisadra, is said to have hid at Sippara before the Deluge, we have the known fact that in the earliest dawn of postdiluvian history the art of writing was known in Chaldea and in Egypt. This at once testifies to antediluvian culture, and shows that the means existed to record important events.

There is, perhaps, no one of the vagaries now current under the much abused name of evolution more opposed to facts, whether physical or historicalthan the notion that, because 3000 yearsB.C.we have evidence of an advanced civilisation in Chaldea and in Egypt, this must have been preceded by a long and uninterrupted progress through many thousands of years from a savage state. Two facts alone are sufficient to show the folly of such a supposition. First, the intervention of that great physical catastrophe which separates the palanthropic and neanthropic periods; and secondly, the testimony of history in favour of the arts of civilisation originating with great inventors, and not by any slow and gradual process of evolution. According to all history, sacred and profane, many such inventors existed even in the palanthropic and early neanthropic ages, and transmitted their arts in an advanced state to later times. The Book of Genesis testifies to this in its notices of Tubal Cain and Jubal; and the monuments of Chaldea and Egypt show that metallurgy, sculpture, and architecture were as far advanced at the very dawn of history as in any later period. It is true that Genesis represents its early inventors as mere men, albeit 'sons of God,' while they often appear as gods or demi-gods in the early history of the heathen nations; but the fact remains that then, as now, the rare appearance of God-given inventive genius is the sole cause of the greater advances in art and civilisation. Spontaneous development may produce socialistic trades' unions or Chinese stagnation, but great gifts, whether of prophecy, of song, of scientific insight,or of inventive power, are the inspiration of the Almighty.

We have in the closing part of the Bible story of the antediluvian age even an intimation of the deterioration of climate and means of subsistence towards the end of the period. Lamech, we are told, named his son Noah—rest or comfort—in the hope that by his means he should be comforted, because of the ground which the Lord had cursed. That curse provoked by the sons of man he may have recognised as fulfilled in the gradual deterioration of the climate toward the close of the palanthropic age. There are here surely some curious coincidences which might be followed farther, did space permit.

We now come to the close of the whole in the Deluge; and as this has been made in our own time the subject of much discussion, and as it contains within itself the whole kernel of the subject, it merits a separate treatment.

CHAPTER IX

THE DELUGE OF NOAH

To the older men of this generation, who have followed the changes of scientific and historical opinion, the story of the Deluge, old though it is, has passed through a variety of phases like the changes of a kaleidoscope, and which may afford an instructive illustration of the modifications of belief in other, and some of them to us more important, matters, whether of history or of religion, which have presented themselves in like varied aspects, and may be variously viewed in the future.

As children we listened with awe and wonder to the story of the wicked antediluvians, and of their terrible fate and the salvation of righteous Noah, and received a deep and abiding impression of the enormity of moral evil and of the just retribution of the Great Ruler of the Universe. A little later, though the idea that all the fossil remains imbedded in the rocks are memorials of the Deluge had passed away from the minds of the betterinformed, we read with interest the wonderful revelations of the bone-caves described by Buckland, and felt that the antediluvian age had become a scientific reality. But later still all this seemed to pass away like a dream. Under the guidance of Lyell we learned that even the caves and gravels must be of greater age than the historical Deluge, and that the remains of men and animals contained in them must have belonged to far-off æons, antedating perhaps even the Biblical creation of man, while the historical Deluge, if it ever occurred, must have been an affair so small and local that it had left no traces on the rocks of the earth. At the same time Biblical critics were busy with the narrative itself, showing that it could be decomposed into different documents, that it bore traces of a very recent origin, that it was unhistorical, and to be relegated to the same category with the fairy-tales of our infancy. Again, however, the kaleidoscope turns, and the later researches of geology into the physical and human history of the more recent deposits of the earth's crust, the discoveries of ancient Assyrian or Chaldean records of the Deluge, and the comparison of these with the ancient history of other nations, rehabilitate the old story; and as we study the new facts respecting the so-called palæolithic and neolithic men, the clay tablets recovered from the libraries of Nineveh by George Smith, the calculations of Prestwich and others respecting the recency of the glacial period, and the historical gatherings of Lenormant, we findourselves drifting back to the faith of our childhood, or may congratulate ourselves on having adhered to it all along, even when the current of opinion tended strongly to turn us away.

In illustration of the present aspects of the question I make two extracts, one from Lenormant'sBeginnings of History, another from a recent work of my own.

'We are,' says Lenormant, 'in a position to affirm that the account of the Deluge is a universal tradition in all branches of the human family, with the sole exception of the black race, and a tradition everywhere so exact and so concordant cannot possibly be referred to an imaginary myth. No religious or cosmogonic myth possesses this character of universality. It must necessarily be the reminiscence of an actual and terrible event, which made so powerful an impression upon the imaginations of the first parents of our species that their descendants could never forget it. This cataclysm took place near the primitive cradle of mankind, and previous to the separation of the families from whom the principal races were to descend, for it would be altogether contrary to probability and to the laws of sound criticism to admit that local phenomena exactly similar in character could have been reproduced at so many different points on the globe as would enable one to explain these universal traditions, or that these traditions should always have assumed an identical form, combined with circumstances whichneed not necessarily have suggested themselves to the mind in such a connection.'[37]

[37]Les Origines de l'Histoire.Brown's translation.

On the geological side, the following may be accepted as a summary of facts:[38]

[38]Modern Science in Bible Lands, 1888, pp. 244, 245, 251, 252.

'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, or 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 now have. We have some measures of the date of this great continental elevation. Many years ago, Sir Charles Lyell used the recession of the Falls of Niagara as a chronometer, estimating their cutting power as equal to one foot per annum. He calculated the beginning of the process, which dates from the post-glacial elevation, to be about thirty thousand years ago. More recent surveys have shown that the rate is three times as great as that estimated by Lyell, and also that a considerable part of the gorge was merely cleaned out by the river since the pleistocene age. In this way the age of the Niagara gorge becomes reduced to perhaps seven or eight thousand years. Other indications of similar bearingare found both in Europe and America, and lead to the belief that it is physically impossible that man could have colonised the northern hemisphere at an earlier date. These facts render necessary an entire revision of the calculations based on the growth of stalagmite in caves, and other uncertain data which have been held to indicate a greater lapse of time.

'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 intheir 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]

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