Pleistocene

“ For similar reasons it is impossible to define strictly the upper limit of the formations of this period, and to say where the Pleistocene ends and where the Recent or Holocene period begins.
The composition and distribution of the Pleistocene fauna and flora present many points of extreme interest. The feature of greatest importance is that man existed somewhere and in some condition before and in this period ”

“ He can not imagine that man reached this full development by a sudden leap or miraculous interposition. And, therefore, he might naturally conclude that an early and less differentiated ancestor of man was living in the Miocene age, and developing upward through the Pliocene times, till he reached that highly specialized specific form which he had demonstrably attained in the later Pleistocene period. ”

“ In the Pleistocene period, we come at last upon undoubted traces of the existing specific man. The early Pleistocene strata show us no very certain evidence; but in the mid-Pleistocene we find the earliest indubitable flint flake, split by chipping, and very different in type from the workmanship of the supposed mid-Miocene man-like creature. In the later Pleistocene we get the well-known drift implements. ”

“ As the historian recognizes Ancient History, the Middle Ages, and Modern History as distinct phases in the growth of the human race, so they distinguished between what they called the Primary period, when, as they believed, no life stirred on the surface of the earth; the Secondary or middle period, when animals and plants were introduced, and the land began to assume continental proportions; and the Tertiary period, or comparatively modern geological times, when the physical features of the earth as well as its inhabitants were approaching more nearly to the present condition of things. ”

“ When we speak, for example, of the neolithic age, we merely mean a certain stage of human progress which succeeded the palæolithic,135 and preceded the bronze age, but we have no proof of the length of the interval dividing it from the one or the other. ”

“ The Pleiades furnish one of the principal links that appear to connect the beginnings of human history with that wonderful prehistoric past, where, as through a gulf of mist, we seem to perceive faintly the glow of a golden age beyond. ”

“ According to this theory, then, the Glacial Age commenced about two hundred and twenty thousand years ago. It continued, with one interruption of mild climate, for one hundred and forty thousand years, and finally passed away eighty thousand years ago.
What shall we say to these results? If true, what a wonderful antiquity is here unfolded for the human race, and what a wonderful lapse of time is included in what is known as the Paleolithic Age! How strikingly does it impress upon our minds the slow development of man! ”

“ Geology lifts off for us the veil that shrouds the past, and lays bare the monuments of successive creations that had come and gone long ere the human race began. She traces out the plan of the Divine working during a vast cycle of ages-, and points out how the past dovetails with the present, and how the existing condition of things comes in as but the last and archetypal economy in a long progressive series. ”

“ In searching back through the successive stages of human civilisation we arrive at a period when both written history and traditions fail. This prehistoric period, up to the commencement of the present century, was entirely lost in the thick veil of darkness which surrounded everything pertaining to the past history of the globe. ”

“ In order to appreciate this development, let us return, therefore, for another rapid view of prehistoric times; life in its crudest form—one day much like another—a scanty population, huddled in little groups in places naturally sheltered—the simplest physical needs to be provided for—little thought of the past or care for the future—time-reckoning reduced to the single thought of appointment—no reason for measuring intervals—in these and other respects antiquity presented the greatest possible contrast to our complicated modern life. ”

“ All of these Ages, which represent the life history of the world, left their impression on the rocks of their times, and each Age is connected with the preceding and the succeeding Age like links in a long, long chain. ”

“ When the moon shall have been king, and all stars associated with it and its reign too past, then one great period shall be accomplished. The state of the revolving world recommences, the human beings, animals, vegetables, and minerals, which existed during the first cycle, are restored to their former language, acts, dispositions, species, and appearances; the world is renovated, that is to say, forms, similar to those which passed away, reappear. ”

“ Labels like Middle Ages, Renaissance, ... are none of them earlier than the eighteenth century, which also saw the new expressions develop and development, and the fact that the significant words anachronism, [48] evolution, [48] and prehistoric, with the new perspectives they denote, only appeared during the nineteenth century may make us doubtful whether the mists of time have even yet fallen wholly from our eyes. ”

“ Following the symbolism of the Court of Ages through the first nebulous period of the world's growth, through the second, which shows the transition in successive forms of sea-plant life, the third period is reached where are illustrated the earliest forms of human, animal, reptile and bird life prevailing in the stone age. ”

“ To the Old World, whose beginnings of history were lost in the mists of the past, this vision of the New World, with its beauty of mountains, river, and forest, with its inexhaustible wealth and its races yet living in the primitive conditions of remote antiquity, was indeed a wonder hardly to be believed. ”

“ And so I cannot see that it in the least interferes with the integrity of the reason rendered to read it as follows:—Work during six periods, and rest on the seventh; for in six periods the Lord created the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh period He rested. The Divine periods may have been very great,—the human periods very small; just as a vast continent or the huge earth itself is very great, and a map or geographical globe very small. ”

“ They antedate human history by thousands of years. They are the ruins of the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age of mankind. In all of these remains there is evidence of a slow but gradual improvement as we approach the present. There are places on the earth where the evolution of human implements, from the rudest chipped stones to the comparatively finished products of historic peoples, is epitomised in the deposits of a few feet in depth. ”

“ These three principal phenomena of the ice-fields, the mammals, and the human life and industry, together establish the chronology of the Age of Man. In other words, there are four ways of keeping prehistoric time: that of geology, that of palæontology, that of anatomy, and that of human industry. Geologic events mark the grander divisions of time; palæontologic and anatomic events mark the lesser divisions; while the successive phases of human industry mark the least divisions. ”

“ Surveyed from the special point of view furnished by this peculiar nature of man, unique in creation, all the past of our planet divides into two periods;—the period, inclusive of every age known to the geologist, during which only the Creator wrought; and the period during which man has wrought, and to which all human history belongs. In such a view we are presented with two sets of works,—those of the Creator-worker, and those of the creature-worker ”

“ Whatever antiquity may be attributed to the human race, whatever the initial date to which its first appearance may be relegated, this antiquity is but slight, this date is but modern, if we compare it with the truly incalculable ages of which geology reveals the existence. ”

“ We may compare the division of geologic time into eras, periods, and other divisions according to the dominant life of the time, to the ill-defined ages into which human history is divided according to the dominance of some nation, ruler, or other characteristic feature. ”

“ The Prehistoric and the Historic Age.—The uncounted millenniums which lie back of the time when man began to keep written records of what he thought and did and of what befell him, are called the Prehistoric Age.
The comparatively few centuries of human life which are made known to us through written records comprise the Historic Age. ”

“ Such reflections are not suggested for the first time in our own day, nor will a shallow part satisfy those who have gone thus far. "Nature hath furnished one part of the earth, and man another. The treasures of time lie high, in urns, coins, and monuments, scarce below the roots of some vegetables. Time hath endless rarities, and shows of all varieties, which reveals old things in heaven, makes new discoveries in earth, and even earth itself a discovery. That great antiquity, America, lay buried for thousands of years, and a large part of the earth is still in the urn unto us." ”

“ The study of existing nature and its changes undertaken in order to comprehend the past changes during geological ages—The uniformity of natural operations under law—Catastrophes abolished—The succession of life on the globe, and that of the tertiary ages explained—The antiquity of man and of the great ice age considered. ”

“ The Golden Age was supposed to be that period in the various stages of human civilization when the greatest simplicity existed; the fruits of the earth sprang up without cultivation, and spring was the only season. ”

“ The earliest signs of man appear about the beginning of this next period, which is conveniently broken into sections or ages marked off from each other by the degree of civilisation to which man had attained: viz. the Eolithic Age in which man makes use of only such tools as he picks up that are already shaped by Nature's hand, the Palaeolithic Age in which he chips and fashions stones to suit his purpose, the Neolithic Age in which he works stones into shape by rubbing and polishing, and the succeeding Ages of Bronze and Iron. ”

“ Now, a flourishing civilization with admirable arts, and especially a fixed literary language, presupposes ages of development and progress, so that we see the "prehistoric man" thrust thus at least one stage into "the dark backward and abysm of time." But only monuments inscribed by Nature's own hand are our helpers in the arduous task of attempting to measure by a scale of centuries the duration of the existence of "the fossil man." ”

“ Beneath the mouldering forms of the old world a new world was bursting into life; if the fifteenth century was an age of death it was an age of birth as well, of that new birth, that Renascence, from which the after life of Europe was to flow. ”

“ And as the course of human history has flowed in an unbroken stream along quiet reaches of slow change and through periods of rapid change and revolution, so with the course of geologic history. Periods of quiescence, in which revolutionary forces are perhaps gathering head, alternate with periods of comparatively rapid change in physical geography and in organisms, when new and higher forms appear which serve to draw the boundary line of new epochs. ”

“ I have said in a previous article that the general unity of character prevailing throughout these three divisions, so that, taken from the broadest point of view, each one seems a unit in time, justifies the application to them of that term, Age, by which we distinguish in human history those periods marked throughout by one prevailing tendency;—as we say the age of Egyptian or Greek or Roman civilization,—the age of stone or iron or bronze. ”

“ I want to deepen and make clear to you this consciousness that the world has had essentially a Trinity of ages—the Classical Age, the Middle Age, the Modern Age; each of these embracing races and individuals of apparently enormous separation in kind, but united in the spirit of their age,—the Classical Age having its Egyptians and Ninevites, Greeks and Romans,—the Middle Age having its Goths and Franks, Lombards and Italians,—the Modern Age having its French and English, Spaniards and Germans ”

“ Many migrations occurred the world over, new competitions arose, and the weaker stocks began to show the effects of the strenuous life. One momentous event seems to have occurred in the Pliocene, and that was the transformation of the precursor of humanity into man--the culmination of the highest line of evolution. ”

“ The first epoch is the Paleolithic, or old stone age, when the implements fashioned by man were sharp chipped flints. To this succeeded the Neolithic, or new stone age, characterized by polished stone implements, and the domestication of animals. ”

“ Just as the skilful geologist or palæontologist can reconstruct from an inspection of the strata of a quarry the animal and vegetable life of past ages, so can the historian reconstruct out of modern forms, rites, and ceremonies, often now but very shadowy and unreal, the essential and vigorous life of society as it existed ten centuries ago. ”

“ So in the history of the earth: from one point of view the era of man is not equivalent to an era, nor to an age, nor to a period, nor even to an epoch. But from another point of view it is the equivalent of the whole geological history of the earth besides. For the history of the earth finds its consummation, and its interpreter, and its significance, in man. ”

“ In thus reducing the periods of the organic history of the earth, and the neptunic strata containing petrifactions deposited during those periods into a connected system, we proceed exactly 8 like the historian who divides the history of nations into the three main divisions of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times, and each of those sections again into subordinate periods and epochs. ”