The World Before the Deluge Part 37

Implements of stone and flint have been continually turning up during the last century and a half in all parts of the world. In the neighbourhood of Gray's Inn Lane, in 1715, a flint spear-head was picked up, and near it some Elephants' bones. In the alluvium of the Wey, near Guildford, a wedge-shaped flint-tool was found in the gravel and sand, in which Elephants' tusks were also found. Under the cliffs at Whitstable an oval-shaped flint-tool was found in what had probably been a fresh-water deposit, and in which bones of the Bear and Elephant were also discovered. Between Herne Bay and Reculver five other flint-tools have been found, and three more near the top of the cliff, all in fresh-water gravel. In the valley of the Ouse, at Beddenham, in Bedfords.h.i.+re, flint-implements, like those of St. Acheul, mixed with the bones of Elephant, Rhinoceros, and Hippopotamus, have been found, and near them an oval and a spear-shaped implement. In the peat of Ireland great numbers of such implements have been met with. But nowhere have they been so systematically sought for and cla.s.sified as in the Scandinavian countries.

The peat-deposits of those countries--of Denmark especially--are formed in hollows and depressions, in the northern drift and Boulder clay, from ten to thirty feet deep. The lower stratum, of two or three feet in thickness, consists of _sphagnum_, over which lies another growth of peat formed of aquatic and marsh plants. On the edge of the bogs trunks of Scotch firs of large size are found--a tree which has not grown in the Danish islands within historic times, and does not now thrive when planted, although it was evidently indigenous within the human period, since Steenstrup took with his own hands a flint-implement from beneath the trunk of one. The sessile variety of the oak would appear to have succeeded the fir, and is found at a higher level in the peat. Higher up still, the common oak, _Quercus robur_, is found along with the birch, hazel, and alder. The oak has in its turn been succeeded by the beech.

Another source from which numerous relics of early humanity have been taken is the midden-heaps (Kjokken-modden) found along the Scandinavian coast. These heaps consist of castaway sh.e.l.ls mixed with bones of quadrupeds, birds, and fishes, which reveal in some respects the habits of the early races which inhabited the coast. Scattered through these mounds are flint-knives, pieces of pottery, and ashes, but neither bronze nor iron. The knives and hatchets are said to be a degree less rude than those of older date found in the peat. Mounds corresponding to these, Sir Charles Lyell tells us, occur along the American coast, from Ma.s.sachusetts and Georgia. The bones of the quadrupeds found in these mounds correspond with those of existing species, or species which have existed in historic times.

By collecting, arranging, and comparing the flint and stone implements, the Scandinavian naturalists have succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng a chronological succession of periods, which they designate--1. The Age of Stone; 2. The Age of Bronze; 3. The Age of Iron. The first, or Stone period, in Denmark, corresponded with the age of the Scotch fir, and, in part, of the sessile oak. A considerable portion of the oak period corresponded, however, with the age of _bronze_, swords made of that metal having been found in the peat on the same level with the oak. The _iron_ age coincides with the beech. a.n.a.logous instances, confirmatory of these statements, occur in Yorks.h.i.+re, and in the fens of Lincolns.h.i.+re.

The traces left indicate that the aborigines went to sea in canoes scooped out of a single tree, bringing back deep-sea fishes. Skulls obtained from the peat and from tumuli, and believed to be contemporaneous with the mounds, are small and round, with prominent supra-orbital ridges, somewhat resembling the skulls of Laplanders.

The third series of facts (_Lake-dwellings_, or _lacustrine habitations_) consisted of the buildings on piles, in lakes, and once common in Asia and Europe. They are first mentioned by Herodotus as being used among the Thracians of Paeonia, in the mountain-lake Prasias, where the natives lived in dwellings built on piles, and connected with the sh.o.r.e by a narrow causeway, by which means they escaped the a.s.saults of Xerxes. Buildings of the same description occupied the Swiss lakes, in the mud of which hundreds of implements, like those found in Denmark, have been dredged up. In Zurich, Moosseedorf near Berne, and Lake Constance, axes, celts, pottery, and canoes made out of single trees, have been found; but of the human frame scarcely a trace has been discovered. One skull dredged up at Meilen, in the Lake of Zurich, was intermediate between the Lapp-like skull of the Danish tumuli and the more recent European type.

The age of the different formations in which these records of the human race are found will probably ever remain a mystery. The evidence which would make the implements formed by man contemporaneous with the Mammoth and other great Mammalia would go a great way to prove that man was also pre-glacial. Let us see how that argument stands.

At the period when the upper Norwich Crag was deposited, the general level of the British Isles is supposed to have been about 600 feet above its present level, and so connected with the European continent as to have received the elements of its fauna and flora from thence.

By some great change, a period of depression occurred, in which all the country north of the mouth of the Thames and the Bristol Channel was placed much below the present level. Moel Tryfaen experienced a submergence of at least 1,400 feet, during which it received the erratic blocks and other marks, indicative of floating icebergs, which have been described in a former chapter. The country was raised again to something like its original level, and again occupied by plants, Molluscs, Fishes and Reptiles, Birds, and Mammifera. Again subsidence takes place, and, after several oscillations, the level remains as we now find it. The estimated time required for these various changes is something enormous, and might have extended the term to double the number of years. The unit of the calculation is the upward rate of movement observed on the Scandinavian coast; applied to the oscillation of the ancient coast of Snowdonia, the figures represent 224,000 years for the several oscillations of the glacial period. Adding the pre-glacial period, the computation gives an additional 48,000 years. But, let us repeat, the figures and data are somewhat hypothetical.

With regard to the St. Acheul beds--said to be the most ancient formation in which the productions of human hands have been found--they are confessedly older than the peat-beds, and the time required for the production of other peat-beds of equal thickness has been estimated at 7,000 years. The antiquity of the gravel-beds of St. Acheul may be estimated on two grounds:--1. General elevation above the level of the valley. 2. By estimating the animal-remains found in the gravel-beds, and not in the peat. The first question implies the denudation of the valley below the level of the gravel, or the elevation of the whole plateau. Each of these operations would involve an incalculable time, for want of data. In the second case, judging from the slow rate at which quadrupeds have disappeared in historic times, the extinct Mammoth and other great animals must have occupied many centuries in dying out, for the notion that they died out suddenly from sharp and sudden refrigeration, is not generally admitted.

With regard to the three ages of stone, bronze, and iron, M. Morlot has based some calculations upon the condition of the delta of Tiniere, near Villeneuve, which lead him to a.s.sign to the oldest, or stone period, an age of 5,000 to 7,000 years, and to the bronze period from 3,000 to 4,000. We may, then, take leave of this subject with the avowal that, while admitting the probability that an immense lapse of time would be required for the operations described, we are, in a great measure, without reliable data for estimating its actual extent.

The opinion which places the creation of man on the banks of the Euphrates in Central Asia is confirmed by an event of the highest importance in the history of humanity, and by a crowd of concordant traditions, preserved by different races of men, all tending to confirm it. We speak of the Asiatic deluge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 200.--Mount Ararat.]

The Asiatic deluge--of which sacred history has transmitted to us the few particulars we know--was the result of the upheaval of a part of the long chain of mountains which are a prolongation of the Caucasus. The earth opening by one of the fissures made in its crust in course of cooling, an eruption of volcanic matter escaped through the enormous crater so produced. Volumes of watery vapour or steam accompanied the lava discharged from the interior of the globe, which, being first dissipated in clouds and afterwards condensing, descended, in torrents of rain, and the plains were drowned with the volcanic mud. The inundation of the plains over an extensive radius was the immediate effect of this upheaval, and the formation of the volcanic cone of Mount Ararat, with the vast plateau on which it rests, altogether 17,323 feet above the sea, the permanent result. The event is graphically detailed in the seventh chapter of Genesis.

11. "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

12. "And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights."

17. "And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

18. "And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

19. "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that _were_ under the whole heaven, were covered.

20. "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

21. "And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

22. "All in whose nostrils _was_ the breath of life, of all that _was_ in the dry land, died.

23. "And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained _alive_, and they that _were_ with him in the ark.

24. "And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days."

All the particulars of the Biblical narrative here recited are only to be explained by the volcanic and muddy eruption which preceded the formation of mount Ararat. The waters which produced the inundation of these countries proceeded from a volcanic eruption accompanied by enormous volumes of vapour, which in due course became condensed and descended on the earth, inundating the extensive plains which now stretch away from the foot of Ararat. The expression, "the earth," or "all the earth" as it is translated in the Vulgate, which might be implied to mean the entire globe, is explained by Marcel de Serres, in a learned book ent.i.tled "La Cosmogonie de Mose," and other philologists, as being an inaccurate translation. He has proved that the Hebrew word _haarets_, incorrectly translated "all the earth," is often used in the sense of _region_ or _country_, and that, in this instance, Moses used it to express only the part of the globe which was then peopled, and not its entire surface. In the same manner "_the mountains_" (rendered "_all the mountains_" in the Vulgate), only implies all the mountains known to Moses. Similarly, M. Glaire, in the "Christomathie Hebraque," which he has placed at the end of his Grammar, quotes the pa.s.sage in this sense: "The waters were so prodigiously increased, that the highest mountains of the vast horizon were covered by them;" thus restricting the mountains covered by the inundation to those bounded by the horizon.

Nothing occurs, therefore, in the description given by Moses, to hinder us from seeing in the Asiatic deluge a means made use of by G.o.d to chastise and punish the human race, then in the infancy of its existence, and which had strayed from the path which he had marked out for it. It seems to establish the countries lying at the foot of the Caucasus as the cradle of the human race; and it seems to establish also the upheaval of a chain of mountains, preceded by an eruption of volcanic mud, which drowned vast territories entirely composed, in these regions, of plains of great extent. Of this deluge many races besides the Jews have preserved a tradition. Moses dates it from 1,500 to 1,800 years before the epoch in which he wrote. Berosus, the Chaldean historian, who wrote at Babylon in the time of Alexander, speaks of a universal deluge, the date of which he places immediately before the reign of Belus, the father of Ninus.

The _Vedas_, or sacred books of the Hindus, supposed to have been composed about the same time as Genesis, that is, about 3,300 years ago, make out that the deluge occurred 1,500 years before their time. The _Guebers_ speak of the same event as having occurred about the same date.

Confucius, the celebrated Chinese philosopher and lawgiver, born towards the year 551 before Christ, begins his history of China by speaking of the Emperor named Jas, whom he represents as making the waters flow back, which, _being raised to the heavens_, washed the feet of the highest mountains, covered the less elevated hills, and inundated the plains. Thus the Biblical deluge (PLATE x.x.xIII.) is confirmed in many respects; but it was local, like all phenomena of the kind, and was the result of the upheaval of the mountains of western Asia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: x.x.xIII.--The Asiatic Deluge.]

A deluge, quite of modern date, conveys a tolerably exact idea of this kind of phenomena. We recall the circ.u.mstances the better to comprehend the true nature of the ravages the deluge inflicted upon some Asiatic countries in the Quaternary period. At six days' journey from the city of Mexico there existed, in 1759, a fertile and well-cultivated district, where grew abundance of rice, maize, and bananas. In the month of June frightful earthquakes shook the ground, and were continued unceasingly for two whole months. On the night of the 28th September the earth was violently convulsed, and a region of many leagues in extent was slowly raised until it attained a height of about 500 feet over a surface of many square leagues. The earth undulated like the waves of the sea in a tempest; thousands of small hills alternately rose and fell, and, finally, an immense gulf opened, from which smoke, fire, red-hot stones and ashes were violently discharged, and darted to prodigious heights. Six mountains emerged from this gaping gulf; among which the volcanic mountain Jorullo rises 2,890 feet above the ancient plain, to the height of 4,265 feet above the sea.

At the moment when the earthquake commenced the two rivers _Cuitimba_ and _San Pedro_ flowed backwards, inundating all the plain now occupied by Jorullo; but in the regions which continually rose, a gulf opened and swallowed up the rivers. They reappeared to the west, but at a point very distant from their former beds.

This inundation reminds us on a small scale of the phenomena which attended the deluge of Noah.

Besides the deposits resulting from the partial deluges which we have described as occurring in Europe and Asia during the Quaternary epoch there were produced in the same period many new formations resulting from the deposition of _alluvia_ thrown down by seas and rivers. These deposits are always few in number, and widely disseminated. Their stratification is as regular as that of any which belong to preceding periods; they are distinguished from those of the Tertiary epoch, with which they are most likely to be confounded, by their situation, which is very frequently upon the sh.o.r.es of the sea, and by the predominance of sh.e.l.ls of a species identical with those now living in the adjacent seas.

A marine formation of this kind, which, after const.i.tuting the coast of Sicily, princ.i.p.ally on the side of Girgenti, Syracuse, Catania, and Palermo, occupies the centre of the island, where it rises to the height of 3,000 feet, is amongst the most remarkable of the great Quaternary European productions. It is chiefly formed of two great beds; the lower a bluish argillaceous marl, the other a coa.r.s.e but very compact limestone, both containing sh.e.l.ls a.n.a.logous to those of the present Mediterranean coast. The same formation is found in the neighbouring islands, especially in Sardinia and Malta. The great sandy deserts of Africa, as well as the argillo-arenaceous formation of the steppes of Eastern Russia, and the fertile Tchornozem, or "_black earth_" of its southern plains, have the same geological origin; so have the Travertines of Tuscany, Naples, and Rome, and the Tufas, which are an essential const.i.tuent of the Neapolitan soil.

The pampas of South America--which consist of an argillaceous soil of a deep reddish-brown colour, with horizontal beds of marly clay and calcareous tufa, containing sh.e.l.ls either actually living now in the Atlantic, or identical with fresh-water sh.e.l.ls of the country--ought surely to be considered as a Quaternary deposit, of even greater extent than the preceding.

We are now approaching so near to our own age, that we can, as it were, trace the hand of Nature in her works. Professor Ramsay shows, in the Memoirs of the Government Geological Survey, that beds nearly a mile in thickness have been removed by denudation from the summit of the Mendip Hills, and that broad areas in South Wales and the neighbouring counties have been denuded of their higher beds, the materials being transported elsewhere to form newer strata. Now, no combination of causes has been imagined which has not involved submersion during long periods, and subsequent elevation for periods of longer or shorter duration.

We can hardly walk any great distance along the coast, either of England or Scotland, without remarking some flat terrace of unequal breadth, and backed by a more or less steep escarpment--upon such a terrace many of the towns along the coast are built. No geologist now doubts that this fine platform, at the base of which is a deposit of loam or sandy gravel, with marine sh.e.l.ls, had been, at some period, the line of coast against which the waves of the ocean once broke at high water. At that period the sea rose twenty, and thirty, and some places a hundred feet higher than it does now. The ancient sea-beaches in some places formed terraces of sand and gravel, with littoral sh.e.l.ls, some broken, others entire, and corresponding with species in the seas below; in others they form bold projecting promontories or deep bays. In an historical point of view, this coast-line should be very ancient, though it may be only of yesterday in a geological sense--its origin ascending far beyond written tradition. The wall of Antoninus, raised by the Romans as a protection from the attacks of the Caledonians, was built, in the opinion of the best authorities, not in connection with the old, but with the new coast-line. We may, then, conclude that in A.D. 140, when the greater part of this wall was constructed, the zone of the ancient coast-line had attained its present elevation above the actual level of the sea.

The same proofs of a general and gradual elevation of the country are observable almost everywhere: in the estuary of the Clyde, canoes and other works of art have been exhumed, and a.s.signed to a recent period.

Near St. Austell, and at Carnon, in Cornwall, human skulls and other relics have been met with beneath marine strata, in which the bones of whales and still-existing species of land-quadrupeds were imbedded. But in the countries where hard limestone rocks prevail, in the ancient Peloponnesus, along the coast of Argolis and Arcadia, three and even four ranges of ancient sea-cliffs are well preserved, which Messrs.

Boblaye and Verlet describe as rising one above the other, at different distances from the present coast, sometimes to the height of 1,000 feet, as if the upheaving force had been suspended for a time, leaving the waves and currents to throw down and shape the successive ranges of lofty cliffs. On the other hand, some well-known historical sites may be adduced as affording evidence of the subsidence of the coast-line of the Mediterranean in times comparatively modern. In the Bay of Baiae, the celebrated temple of Serapis, at Puzzuoli, near Naples, which was originally built about 100 feet from the sea, and at or near its present level, exhibits proofs of having gradually sunk nineteen feet, and of a subsequent elevation of the ground on which the temple stands of nearly the same amount.

So, also, about half a mile along the sea-sh.o.r.e, and standing at some distance from it, in the sea, there are the remains of buildings and columns which bear the name of the Temples of the Nymphs and of Neptune.

The tops of these broken columns are now nearly on a level with the surface of the water, which is about five feet deep.

With respect to the littoral deposits of the Quaternary period, they are of very limited extent, except in a few localities. They are found on the western coast of Norway, and on the coasts of England. In France, an extensive bed of Quaternary formation is seen on the sh.o.r.es of the ancient Guienne, and on other parts of the coast, where it is sometimes concealed by trees and shrubs, or by blown sand, as at Dax in the Landes, where a steep bank may be traced about twelve miles inland, and parallel with the present coast, which falls suddenly about fifty feet from a higher platform of the land, to a lower one extending to the sea.

In making some excavations for the foundations of a building at Abesse, in 1830, it was discovered that this fall consisted of drift-sand, filling up a steep perpendicular cliff about fifty feet high, consisting of a bed of Tertiary clay extending to the sea, a bed of limestone with Tertiary sh.e.l.ls and corals, and, at the summit, the Tertiary sand of the Landes. The marine beds, together with the alluvium of the rivers, have given rise to those deposits which occur more especially near the mouths of rivers and watercourses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 201.--Sh.e.l.l of Planorbis corneus.]

EPILOGUE.

Having considered the past history of the globe, we may now be permitted to bestow a glance upon the future which awaits it.

Can the actual state of the earth be considered as definitive? The revolutions which have fas.h.i.+oned its surface, and produced the Alps in Europe, Mount Ararat in Asia, the Cordilleras in the New World--are they to be the last? In a word, will the terrestrial sphere for ever preserve the form under which we know it--as it has been, so to speak, impressed on our memories by the maps of the geographers?