INTRODUCTION.

crown of the innovator is a crown of thorns.' The famous antiquary wreathed his brows with such a crown, which wounded him more than once.

The idea was suggested, however, and since it was true, nothing could prevent its ultimate triumph, which is now complete.

More than twenty years elapsed before the discovery of M. Boucher de Perthes was allowed to come before the areopagus of the Institute. It is said that Cuvier refused to accept it; and this may easily be believed of a savant who had laid down the principle that man, the last born of creation, could never have been contemporary with those lost species whose remains lie buried in the most ancient quaternary beds. MM. Brongniart, Flourens, and Dumas, to their praise be it spoken, were the first to encourage the researches of Boucher de Perthes, and to show themselves open to conviction. The cautious and the timid, those who feared to be involved in some heresy or imposture, held aloof, and maintained that, even admitting the flints of Abbeville and of Saint-Acheul to be of human workmanship, their great antiquity would still remain a matter for dispute, so long as the precise age of the beds in which they were discovered was undetermined, so long as the virgin condition of these beds was unproven, and lastly, until not only the bones of extinct. species, but also those of the human race, should be found buried with these stone tools.

These will certainly be found, was the confident reply of the courageous author of the book on Antediluvian Antiquities, and it was not long before the event justified his prophetic words. Many such discoveries have been made, and at the present day nothing seems more surely proved than the great antiquity of the human race. However, some belated or cautious minds are still in doubt, and it is precisely those whom we seek to convince. In order to accomplish this end, modern science has neglected no means of information, has left no ground unexplored. Cyclopean monuments, cities buried under layers of five or six forests, the frozen soil of Siberia and Greenland, the

tumuli of Ohio and Scandinavia, burial caves, dolmens, and menhirs, the lake dwellings of Switzerland and Italy, the nuraghi of Sardinia, the lava and volcanoes of Auvergne, the diluvium of plains and valleys, bone caves and fossil beds, have all been investigated by the science of our day, even to the rubbish heaps formed by the refuse of the primitive kitchens of the Scandinavians, known to Danish archæologists as 'kjökkenmöddinger,' and in England as 'kitchen middens.'

Our aim in publishing this book has been to bring before the reader the numerous proofs hitherto collected of the great age of the human race, together with the details which confirm them. This forms the subject of the first part. In the second, we shall treat of the customs, the industry, the moral and religious ideas of man, such as he was before the use of metals was known to him, and we shall endeavour to trace his portrait with fidelity.

PART I.

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.

CHAPTER I.

THE PREHISTORIC AGES.

I. GENERAL NOTIONS OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE EARTH.

It seems necessary, for the better understanding of the following chapters, to give to those of our readers who are unfamiliar with geological terms, a general idea of the various stages through which our globe has passed before arriving at the condition which it now presents to our

view.

The immense majority of geologists hold that the earth was originally a mass of incandescent and fluid matter. As it gradually cooled an outer crust was formed, and the vapours dispersed in the atmosphere were condensed upon the surface of the globe, and formed the seas. At the bottom of these original seas the primary rocks and those of the transition period were deposited. These were followed by those of the tertiary period, which Lyell has divided into eocene, meiocene, and pleiocene;1

The beds of the tertiary period have been thus divided by Lyell according to the number of recent shells contained in them as compared to the fossil ones. The lowest layer, the eocene beds (ews, dawn, and Kalvós, recent), that is, the most ancient deposit of the tertiary epoch, contains only 3 species per cent. similar to those which now exist. The meiocene, or middle layer (ucîov, less, and kauós, recent) is that in which the recent shells, less numerous than in the pleiocene, are in the proportion of 17 or 20 per cent. as compared to the extinct species. The proportion increases to 40 or 50 per cent. in the upper layer, the pleiocene beds (πλîov, more, and kaós, recent). An important remark

lastly the beds of the quaternary epoch, improperly styled diluvian.1

The oldest rocks, those which were formed by the action of fire, and which have therefore received the name of plutonic, are not stratified, that is, disposed in layers, and contain no organic remains. The sedimentary or aqueous rocks contain, on the other hand, numerous remains of vital organisms, belonging to creatures more or less complex, and bearing more or less resemblance to the plants and animals of the present day as they are nearer to or farther removed from our own time.

The geologist is thus enabled to determine the relative age of a given rock by means of the fossil species of which it bears the impression or retains the débris, just as an antiquary can judge of the age of a monument by the coin he has found beneath its ruins.

But we cannot enter into the history, full of interest as it is, of the successive phases of life on the surface of the earth; suffice it to say that birds 2 and mammalia are rare in the beds of the secondary epoch, at least in Europe, and are first found in great abundance in the tertiary formations; that certain marsupials and pachydermata now completely extinct (pterodon, palæotherium, acerothe

has been made by Mr. Marsh, namely that the three layers of beds of the tertiary epoch, as they exist in America, are not the exact equivalents of the eocene, meiocene, and pleiocene of Europe, although usually so considered and known by the same names; but, in general, the fauna of each appears to be older than that of i's corresponding representative in the other hemisphere; an important fact not hitherto recognised.' (Marsh, Introduction and Succession of Vertebrate Life in America, p. 24. An address delivered before the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Nashville, Tenn., August 30, 1877.)

The words diluvium, diluvian strata, since they sometimes convey the impression that the biblical deluge created these beds, should be abandoned along with the error which has given rise to these misleading terms. The names of rocks of the fourth epoch, or post-pleiocene, have rightly been substituted for the latter, as more in harmony with the facts of geological chronology. The beds known under these names are far anterior to the historical deluge of Noah or of Deucalion.

2 Birds are already numerous in the secondary rocks in America. It was in the chalk beds of the Kansas that Marsh discovered the remarkable odontornithes, or toothed biras, which seem to establish one link between birds and reptiles, as the pterosaurians wi hout teeth (genus Pteranodelon) form the passage from reptiles to birds.

QUATERNARY ROCKS.

11

rium, &c. &c.), are the first to appear; that these are succeeded by other often colossal and extinct forms, such as the megatherium, the dinotherium, the macrotherium, the mastodon, and even monkeys (dryopithecus); finally, that later on, and in the uppermost or pleiocene beds, elephants, oxen, horses, carnivorous and quadrumanous animals begin to appear, which show much analogy with extant genera and species.

As Professor Albert Gaudry justly observes: 'The pachyderms flourished on the earth during the earlier half of the tertiary period, and only isolated examples of them are to be seen at the present day; the ruminants on the other hand lived during the second half of the tertiary period, and their order is still extremely numerous

in our own time.'1 The quaternary or diluvian beds follow the pleiocene, and their latest formations may be considered as belonging to the present epoch. We will therefore devote a few moments to the study of these beds, which are the more important to us, since they alone, as far as we yet know, are almost incontestably proved to contain the most ancient traces of the existence of man upon the earth.

QUATERNARY OR DILUVIAN ROCKS.

The diluvium of geologists.-The quaternary beds, also called diluvian, pleistocene, or still better, post-pleiocene, are composed of a series of layers or depositions of very various nature (marine, fluviatile, torrential, or glacial), formed between the end of the pleiocene period and the dawn of history. Sometimes stratified, sometimes mixed or incoherent, they contain the remains of numerous mammals, some of which of colossal size have slowly and gradually become extinct, while others, usually smaller, have survived to our own day.

The stratified deposits of which these beds are partly composed are very similar to those of the tertiary period.

'Albert Gaudry, Les enchaînements du monde animal dans les temps géologiques, p. 77, Paris, 1878.