Quaternary

“ All that we have are the marks that man has left on Nature, who, in her incessant action burying these marks under accumulations of successive strata, gives us a kind of relative chronology. It is now admitted by science that the life of man crosses the whole Quaternary period, and if we can measure the duration of that period we shall be able to fix approximately the age of our race. ”

“ The first thing raising a strong presumption, if not giving proof, that man existed in the Tertiary, was the fact that from all explored parts of the world came in more and more evidence that in the earlier Quaternary man existed in different, strongly marked races and in great numbers. ”

“ Hence sound analogical reasoning justifies the expectation that, when we obtain the remains of Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene Anthropidæ, they will present us with the like series of gradations, notwithstanding the fact, if it be a fact, that the Quaternary men, like the Quaternary horses, differ in no essential respect from those which now live. ”

“ When he rushed on the world and its woes,—
’Twas the manner of Primitive Man!
But the mild anthropologist,—he’s
Not recent inclined to suppose
Flints Palæolithic like these,
Quaternary bones such as those!
In Rhinoceros, Mammoth and Co.’s,
First epoch, the Human began,
Theologians all to expose,—
’Tis the mission of Primitive Man. ”

“ This evidence is now generally accepted by geologists as Antiquity carrying back the existence of man into the period of the f Quatcr- post-glacial drift, in what is now called the Quaternary nary Man> period. ”

“ A. de Lapparent, on the other hand (Traité de géologie', 5th ed., 1906) , treats the Era moderne or Quaternaire as a great time division equivalent in value to the Tertiary, Secondary, &c., which is so far represented only by a first epoch, the Pleistocene. ”

“ 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. ”

“ May they not be the truths of a former world, of which we receive the dim outshadowing in the present, like the faint lights of a distant Pharos, seen through the mists of the wide ocean?
Man treads upon the wreck of antiquity. In times which are so long past, that the years between them cannot be numbered by the aids of our science, geology [Pg 356] teaches us that forms of life existed perfectly fitted for the conditions of the period. These performed their offices in the great work; they passed away, and others succeeded to carry on the process of building a world for man. ”

“ AS my own knowledge of and interest in anthropology are confined to the great outlines, rather than to the special details of the science, I propose to give a very brief and general sketch of the modern doctrine as to the Antiquity and Origin of Man, and to suggest certain points of difficulty which have not, I think, yet received sufficient attention.
Many now present remember the time (for it is little more than twenty years ago) when the antiquity of man, as now understood, was universally discredited. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here we may leave this brief sketch of the Eocene, or lowest beds of the Tertiary. A new creation has been introduced to our view; and although we still wait for the coming of man—the lord and interpreter of all—the contemplation of these successive acts and centres of creation fills our minds with renewed admiration and reverence of Him for whom, and by whom, and to whom are all things. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They enlarge at the same time our conception of the antiquity, not only of the living species of animals and plants but of their present geographical distribution, and throw light on the chronological relations of these species to the earliest date yet ascertained for the existence of the human race. ”

“ Under the sanction of two such illustrious Saints and 299 Doctors we need not hesitate to proceed in our attempt to reconcile the Inspired narrative of the Creation with the doctrine of the Antiquity of the Earth, as set forth by the advocates of Geology. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The six thousand years of human history form but a portion of the geologic day that is passing over us: they do not extend into the yesterday of the globe, far less touch the myriads of ages spread out beyond. Dr. Chalmers had taught, more than a quarter of a century previous to this time, that the Scriptures do not fix the antiquity of the earth. "If they fix anything," he said, "it is only the antiquity of the human species." ”

“ The antiquities of the old world, buried for so many ages in midnight oblivion, had remained through a long course of centuries, the standing enigma of Time. With the help even of some imperfect records from the archives of ancient history, and the aid of what seemed to be a fair line of tradition, the origin and purpose of many of them, and the hidden meaning of their hieroglyphical embellishments, had continued to be an inexplicable mystery quite down to our own times. ”

“ We are apt to think of the Middle Ages as if they were the companion-piece to Antiquity; but no such ideal correspondence exists between the two periods. Antiquity is all of a piece, and the Middle Ages, on the contrary, are heterogeneous and chaotic. For Antiquity is the steady and uniform development of civilization in one direction and with one meaning; there are great differences between its various epochs, but they are as the differences between the budding, the blossoming, and the fading stages of one plant: life varies, but is one. ”

“ The first consequence of this is that we become able to make the largest and most general comparison of human conditions which has ever been possible to humanity, nor does this [Pg 25] ability regard the present alone. The unveiling of the treasures of the past, the interpretation of its experience and doctrine which we owe to the scholar and archæologist, enable us to compare remote antiquity with the things of the last minute. The work of antiquarian science culminates in the discovery of the prehistoric 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. ”

“ It would be worth while, indeed, discussing whether the classical scholar of some old foundation derives the sense of antiquity, that knowledge that we are parts of a pattern, the threads of which pass out on either side of us, which forms so human, so tolerant a basis for his ideas and his actions, more from the study of Homer and Catullus than from the tranquillising presence on every side of him of old buildings, gothic arches and cloisters, and curious quadrangles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So in speculations as to the origin and evolution of the human race, history affords the standard from which we start, through the successive 6 stages of prehistoric, neolithic, and palæolithic man, until we pass into the wider ranges of geological time. ”

“ Beyond question, this new land "within" is the home, the cradle, of the human race, and viewed from the standpoint of the discoveries made by us, must of necessity have a most important bearing on all physical, paleontological, archaeological, philological and mythological theories of antiquity. ”

“ Thus the ancient civilisations tended, so to speak, towards eternity, towards the manufacture of things which, if not eternal in the precise meaning of the word, should last a long time, should conquer the ages, and should succeed in conveying to distant posterity a supreme image of their past existence. ”

“ Oriental Cosmogony—Hymns of the Vedas—Institutes of Menù—Doctrine of the successive destruction and renovation of the world—Origin of this doctrine—Common to the Egyptians—Adopted by the Greeks—System of Pythagoras—Of Aristotle—Dogmas concerning the extinction and reproduction of genera and species—Strabo's theory of elevation by earthquakes—Pliny—Concluding Remarks on the knowledge of the Ancients.
Oriental Cosmogony.—The earliest doctrines of the Indian and Egyptian schools of philosophy agreed in ascribing the first creation of the world to an omnipotent and infinite Being. ”

“ For a while the old influence of theological rule held even these venturous explorers to the ancient landmarks of human origin. By and by, the same impulse which had before led men to examine the proofs of physical creation induced them to consider the evidence of their own advent upon earth. ”

“ We may perhaps trace this misleading habit of thought to the influence of the professors of natural science over the students of Stone Age and Bronze Age antiquities. Because nature moves by steady progression and develops on even lines—nihil facit per sal-tum—it seems to have been assumed that the works of man’s hands have developed in the same way, in a regular and even scheme all over the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ However slight the fibres by which the present is rooted in the past, to observe them is to realise the continuity of human development—the most important, the most obvious, and the most neglected of the lessons that history can teach. It is true that the roots, however strong and however deeply set, are insufficient to account for the characteristics of the plant which springs from them. ”

“ Nor hath man any original production from the earth, or elsewhere, as some have believed; but hath always been, as he now is, co-existent with the world, whereof he is a part. "Nature and generation govern all things."
LUCIAN.—Such were the opinions of nearly all the wise men of antiquity. Theology, in its ridiculous pretensions to knowledge about the origin of time, has utterly infatuated the minds of its dupes, by instilling false notions concerning it; and limiting, comparatively within the duration of a moment, the existence of the material universe! ”