THE REMOTE ANTIQUITY OF MAN NOT PROVEN: PRIMEVAL MAN NOT A SAVAGE. BY B. C. Y. LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. PREFACE. THIS work is an argument based on scientific facts, and supported by scientific opinions; in which the writer, in condensed form and plain style, has endeavoured to prove that the appearance of man on the earth was not at a remote age in the past, and that primeval man was not a savage. It may be thought presumptuous for one, who is outside the fellowship of scientific societies, to dispute conclusions arrived at by a large array of scientific celebrities; but that man is of remote antiquity is not a scientific fact, but a theory deduced from certain premises; and reasoning out a conclusion from given facts is not a monopoly of scientific discoverers, nor do they make any such claim. 'I have contented myself with giving you the facts,' said Mr. Pengelly to his audience, in his lecture at Manchester on Kent's Cavern ;' 'you are as capable of drawing the inferences as I am.' Drawing inferences, working out conclusions, is just what the writer has been doing; and the logical outcome of his reasoning is that the premises from which the remote antiquity of man is deduced will not give the conclusion. Moreover, the facts on which this theory is based are often carious or incomplete, and their evidence rendered worthless by more recent discoveries. In a notice of Dr. James Geikie's late work, the Professor in Owen's College says: "The condition of Europe outside the reach of history, and the changes by which it has come to be what it is, the appearance of man and his culture, combine to form a subject which cannot in our opinion be treated satisfactorily in the present state of knowledge. New facts are being daily brought to light. The speculations of yesterday are being tested by the discoveries of to-day, and the accumulation of materials necessary to form a sound judgment even in any one department, such for instance as that of archeology, is so great that it may well daunt the courage of the boldest writer who knows the nature of the task before him.'* The theory of man's antiquity has been peculiarly ill-fated in this respect. There has been quite a furor in the past for building up theories about man's occupation of the earth long ages back; but the speculations of one day were dissipated by the discoveries of the morrow. Two or three generations back our fathers were startled by the announcement that the Chinese chronology reached back through a period of more than two million years; and the astronomical calculations of the Hindoos, they were informed, showed the existence of man in India at a like remote time. inquiries, however, showed that these long dates were fabulous inventions. Then came an Egyptian scare. Some French savants claimed to have deciphered the hieroglyphics traced on two modern temples, and relegated them to a period many years before Egypt was in existence. Later Later on the antiquity of man was said to be proved by the discovery of the fossil men of Guadaloupe and Denise ; by the supposed fossil bones found in the coral formation of Florida; and the perforated shark's teeth found in the * Nature, Feb., 1881. crag formation in England. But these, like the earlier speculations, have all come to grief. The geological discoveries of the present time have revived the theorizing spirit, and from caves and river-gravels, from clays and peat-bogs, and tumuli, have been collected the relics which have been regarded as giving proof that man for long ages had been a denizen of the earth. But as these relics and their surroundings are being more carefully examined, and new discoveries are being made, the evidence for this antiquity is giving way. 'I have no doubt whatever,' says Mr. Mello, 'that as it has ever been in the past, the more we know of the works of the great Creator the more reason shall we have to see one and the same Divine hand in the word inscribed on the face of nature, and that in the sacred documents of our religion.' To this the writer heartily subscribes. True scientific facts, 'unassailable as rocks of granite,' will never be out of harmony with the writings of the Divine hand in the sacred documents of our religion. But suppose the writing is not traced by the Divine hand, is not inscribed on the face of nature, but is the mere conception of a human mind, in other words a theory, deduced it may be from some deposits embedded in the earth; must that conception be in agreement with the Divine word in the sacred documents? Take, for instance, the remote antiquity of man, and early man a savage. They are not inscribed on the face of nature, nor found buried under the crust of the earth, nor written on the page of history, but are conclusions, drawn not unfrequently from unsound or deficient premises, discredited by new discoveries, and rejected by some of the most cultured and logical minds in Europe and America. Yet we often hear of waiting for a reconciliation between these inferential theories and the sacred documents which relate the creation of man, and |