Gideon Algernon Mantell

“ Other discoveries of a like nature justify the conclusion, that at a period nearly as remote as historic chronology will permit us to assume, there must have been a human population spread over the British Isles. Their rude canoes, for the most part formed out of an oaken trunk, have been found in various parts of the country many feet below the accumulated alluvium, and accompanied with the rude tools of the fabricators, proving them to be the work of the aboriginal races, destitute of metallurgic arts, and supplying their simple wants with imperfect implements of horn and flint. ”

“ Fossil Human Skeletons.—About forty years ago, great interest was excited by the unexpected discovery of several human skeletons, male and female, in hard limestone, on the north-east coast of the Isle of Guadaloupe; and a specimen found on board a French vessel, captured by one of our cruizers, and presented to the British Museum, afforded English naturalists an opportunity of investigating the nature and age of this first known example of the bones of Man in a fossil state. ”

“ On this point the geologist may therefore be well content to close the volume of the earth's physical history, and open that divine record which has for its subject the moral and religious nature of man. ”

“ Fossil human bones, therefore, may occur in an earthy or a porous state, like those of mammalia imbedded in loose sand or earth; or of a dark brown colour, from an impregnation of iron, and retaining a large proportion of animal matter, as are those of the Moa, Irish Elk, and Mastodon, found in morasses and turbary deposits; or they may be permeated by carbonate of lime and have the medullary cavities lined with spar, like the bones of Carnivora found beneath the stalactitic floors of caverns ”

“ It is these modern deposits that constitute the fields of research which the antiquary and the geologist may explore with mutual advantage; for they abound in objects of the highest importance, relating to the interesting problem as to the contemporaneous existence of the human race, and certain species and genera of animals now only known by their fossil remains. ”

“ The bones of the Irish Elk occur in the beds of marl which underlie the peat-bogs, and are generally very perfect, being stained more or less deeply by tannin and iron, and sometimes partially incrusted with pale blue phosphate of iron: even the marrow occasionally remains in the state of a fatty substance, which will burn with a clear lambent flame. Groups of skeletons have been found crowded together in a small space, with the skulls elevated and the antlers thrown back upon the shoulders, as if a herd of deer had fled for shelter, or been driven into a morass and perished on the spot. ”

“ From what has been advanced, the archæologist will therefore perceive that the occurrence of the remains of man with those of extinct species of animals, in a deposit that is covered by a thick layer of solid rock, must not be regarded as certain proof that the human bones are of as high antiquity as those of the quadrupeds with which they are associated. ”

“ Human remains imbedded with those of the fossil Elk of Ireland.—Of the extinct terrestrial mammalia of the British Isles, the gigantic Deer, commonly known as the fossil Irish Elk, is one of the most remarkable, from its magnitude and the abundance and excellent state of preservation of its remains. ”

“ A bed of hard, solid stalagmite, from one to four feet thick, is spread over the ossiferous loam, and covered with a thin layer of earth, with here and there patches of charcoal mixed with human bones, and coarse earthen vessels.
On breaking through the sparry floor, the red loam, containing teeth and bones, is brought to view; and imbedded in it, and at a depth of several feet, and intermingled with remains of extinct hears and carnivora, there have been discovered several flint knives, arrow and spear-heads, and fragments of pottery. ”

“ The facts brought forward in the course of this argument, demonstrate the existence of Man at that remote period when the Irish Elk, and other extinct species and genera of terrestrial mammalia, whose remains occur in the superficial alluvial deposits, inhabited the countries of Europe; and as the Irish Elk was contemporaneous with the Mastodon, Mammoth, and the Carnivora of the caverns, it seems not improbable that sooner or later human remains may be dis- covered coeval with the bones of those animals. ”

“ Their chief features would be the works of man—hewn stones, and statues of bronze and marble, and instruments of iron; and human remains would be more common than those of animals on the greatest part of the surface. The columns of Pæstum or of Agrigentum, and the bridges of iron and granite of the Thames, would offer a striking contrast to the bones of the crocodiles and colossal saurians, in the older rocks; or even to those of the mammoth or elephant in the diluvial strata. ”

“ Notwithstanding, therefore, the occurrence in the Eocene system of existing genera and species of mammalia—even of that race which approaches nearest to man in its physical organization, the Quadrumana, or monkey tribes—I conceive we have no just grounds for assuming that physical evidence will be obtained, by which the existence of the human race, and consequently of the present order of things, may be traced back to that remote era ”

“ And whoever reflects on this subject, must be convinced that the present order of things, and the comparatively recent existence of man as the master of the globe, are as certain as the destruction of a different order, and the extinction of numerous animal forms, of which no living types now remain on the surface of our planet. ”

“ Kent's Hole, Banwell Cave, and indeed all the ossiferous caverns I have examined, are mere fissures in limestone rocks that have been filled with drift while submerged in shallow water, and into which the limbs and carcases of the quadrupeds were floated by currents; for the bones, though broken, are very rarely waterworn, and consequently must have been protected by the muscles and soft parts. Upon the emergence of the land, of which the raised beds of shingle afford proof, the fissures were elevated above the waters, and gradually drained ”

“ If we will attempt such a retrospect, we must look at all these things as evidence of the origin and end of man's being; and when we do thus comprehend in one view the whole of the argument, it is impossible for us to arrive at an origin homogeneous with the present order of things. ”

“ They may also be invested with stalactite if buried in fissures or caves of limestone; or with travertine if exposed to the action of streams highly charged with carbonate of lime, like the so-called petrifying springs of Derby- shire; or impacted in ferruginous conglomerate, if deposited with implements of iron, or in a soil charged with chalybeate waters; and these effects may be produced in the course of a very brief period;—a few years, or even months, will often suffice for the formation of a compact, durable mass, in which bones, pottery, and coins, and other substances may be imbedded. ”

“ In the ancient sedimentary rocks, the remains of the animals and plants which inhabited the land, the rivers, and the seas, when those strata were deposited, occur in such abundance and variety, that the naturalist can readily determine the characters of the terrestrial and marine faunas and floras which prevailed in those remote eras. ”

“ And as the bones of man differ in no respect in their structure and chemical composition from those of mammalia, they must undergo the same changes when subjected to like physical conditions; hence the skeletons of men and animals deposited in the same stratum will be found in a similar state of mineralization. ”

“ A slight inspection detected the nature of this specimen: it was not a flint, but an aggregation of fine siliceous sand that had been converted into compact sandstone by a solution of iron derived from the nail, which had served as a nucleus to the sand that had gradually accumulated around it. The facts described by Kirwan and Knight doubtless admit of the same explanation; the narrators having mistaken a sandstone of modern formation for a genuine flint nodule. ”