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Updated: May 14, 2025
But of late years we have obtained convincing proofs, as we shall see in the sequel, that the mammoth, and many other extinct mammalian species very common in caves, occur also in undisturbed alluvium, embedded in such a manner with works of art, as to leave no room for doubt that Man and the mammoth coexisted; Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of Man.
Laing such a towering advantage over them all. "An authority like Prestwich," who "cannot be accused of theological bias," influenced, however, by a servile astronomical bias, "reduces to 20,000 years a period to which Lyell and modern geologists assign a duration of more than 200,000 years;" which "shows in what a state of uncertainty we are as to this vitally important problem;" for this time assigned by Prestwich "would be clearly insufficient to allow for the development of Egyptian civilization, as it existed 5,000 years ago, from savage and semi-animal ancestors; as is proved to be the case with the horse, stag, elephant, ape," and so on.
The only British cave from which implements resembling those of Amiens have been obtained, since the attention of geologists has been awakened to the importance of minutely observing the position of such relics relatively to the associated fossil mammalia, is that recently opened near Wells in Somersetshire.
Geologists have imagined that they could tell us what was going on at all parts of the earth's surface during a given epoch; they have talked of this deposit being contemporaneous with that deposit, until, from our little local histories of the changes at limited spots of the earth's surface, they have constructed a universal history of the globe as full of wonders and portents as any other story of antiquity.
Yet it is precisely because we do not encounter at every step the evidence of such gradations from one state of the organic world to another, that so many geologists have embraced the doctrine of great and sudden revolutions in the history of the animate world.
In an hour they were on their way again, and towards sunset they had reached the foot of Manitou Mountain. Abruptly from the plain rose this mighty mound, blue and white upon a black base. A few straggling pines grew near its foot, defying latitude, as the mountain itself defied the calculations of geographers and geologists. A halt was called.
I have spoken of the first of these periods, the Azoic, as having been absolutely devoid of life, and I believe this statement to be strictly true; but I ought to add that there is a difference of opinion among geologists upon this point, many believing that the first surface of our globe may have been inhabited by living beings, but that all traces of their existence have been obliterated by the eruptions of melted materials, which not only altered the character of those earliest stratified rocks, but destroyed all the organic remains contained in them.
The German and many English and French geologists distinguish four sheets and three interglacial epochs. The exact number does not concern us, but the repeated spread of the ice is a point of some importance. The various sheets differed considerably in extent.
It has also been stated, that the gneiss and mica tract of Bohemia contains some seams of grawacke, in which are organic remains; but British geologists have not as yet attached much importance to this statement. We have to look a little higher in the series for indubitable traces of organic life.
Many geologists believe that he reached Europe as early as the extinct mammals with which he was contemporaneous there, but how far back in time this would carry his advent it is impossible to say. Coming now to the consideration of more immediate human relics, the bones of man himself, it must be said that well-authenticated remains of palæolithic or early neolithic man are not numerous.
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