P A B T I I I .
H ave fossil human hones been found? The chapter entitled
“ Geology and Palaeontology in connection with human Origins,”
contributed by Dr. Usher to our preceding work, answers affirmatively;
and well-informed critics282 have conceded that his argument
is sufficiently powerful to arrest unhesitating acceptance of Cuvier’s
denial, now more than a quarter of a century old. The subsequent
discovery of fossil sirniee, equally unforeseen by the great naturalist,
in Europe, Asia, and America, has put a new face on the matter:
“ In fact,” wrote Morton in 1851,283 “ I consider geology to have
already decided this question in the affirmative.” So does Prof.
Agassiz.281
How, either fossil remains of man have been discovered, or they
have not.
Archæology no longer permitting us to trammel human antiquity
by any chronological limits,—having, to-speak outright, before my
eyes neither fear of an imaginary date of “ creation,” nor of a hypothetical
“ deluge” —I approach this inquiry with indifference as to
the result, so long as errors may be exploded, or truth elicited : and, to
begin, it strikes me that here again, as above argued in regard to
“ species,” much ink might have been spared by previously settling
the signification of the term “ fossil.” , I know286 the alleged criteria
by which really fossilized bones are determined ; and have inspected,
often, palæontological collections of all epochas in Paris, London,
and at our Philadelphian Academy of Natural Sciences. On every
side I read and hear doubts expressed as to whether fossil man exists •
yet, when opening standard geological works,286 I encounter, repeatedly,
“fossil human skeleton” in the same breath with “fossil
monkeys;” and then ascertain elsewhere (ubi supra) that the latter
282 P a u l d e R é m u s a t , Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Oct. 1854, p. 205:— D ’E i c h t h a l , Bulletin
de la Société de Géographie, Année 1855, Jan. and Feb., p. 59 M a u r y , Athenoeum ’français,
12 Août, 1854; p. 741; R i q o l l o t , Mémoire sur des Instruments en Silex, &c Amiens 8vo'
1854; p p . 19, 20.
283 Types of Mankind, p. 3 2 6 Morton’s ined. MSS.” : — H a m i l t o n S m i t h , Nat. Hist,
of the human Species, pp. 99-102.
284 °P- cil-K P- 352. . 285 Op. cit., p. 346.
286 M a n t e l l , Petrifactions and their Teachings, British Museum, London, 12mo, 1851 ; p p .
464, 483 ;—Ibid., Wonders of Geology, London, 12mo, 6th ed., 1848; I, pp. 86-90, 258-9__
Ibid., Medals of Creation, London, 12mo, 1844; pp. 861-3 : — M a e t in , Natural History of
Mammiferems Animals, Man and Monkeys, London, 8vo, 1841 ; pp. 832—6 354W- SiE
C h a r l e s L t e l l (Principles of Geology, London, 8th ed., 1850; pp. 142, 734), however, makes
clear distinctions between “ Guadeloupe skeletons” and “ fossil monkeys.”
. r ~ _ ™ p s i ueposns,—one leeis inclined
to ask, how a single adjective comes to designate two osseous states
denied to be identical ? “ H n’y plus que les Anglais, ou l’école de
Londres says Boué,287 “ qui s’écartent souvent du langage classique.
Gomme on juge l’éducation d’un individu par son parler, de
meme on peut etre tenté de prendre le style du géologue comme
thermomètre de son savoir.”
It is, indeed, through popular currency of a word which, used
exoterically when talking with theologers, implies that man is recent,
m the biblical sense ; or, when esoterically employed among scientific
men, means that man is very ancient in ethnological, alluvial, botanical,
and other senses,—that the real question of human antiquity upon
earth has been obfuscated.
Thus, every one knows that the presence of “ animal matter, and
S ÜÜfc 1PÎ 0Sphate of iime” (Lyel")in the Guadaloupe skeletons at
the British Museum, no less than in the Galerie d’Anthropologie of the
Museum at Pans, combine with other data to invalidate their antiquity;
but, on the other hand, the presence: of animal matter—even
to “ the marrow itself—sometimes preserved in the state of a fatty
substance, burning with a light flame” 288—does not the more bring
t e Irish fossil elk (Elaphus hibernicus) within the limits of chronology,
nor make the human body, bones, and implements, found with
this extinct quadruped, the less ancient.
As a contemporary 2891 with mastodons, mammoths, and carnivora
ot the caves and ossuaries in the ascending scale of time, and with
man in the descending, this Irish fossil stay links the elder and the
old stages of the mammiferous series, amid which mankind possess
a place, uncertain as to epoch, but certain as to fact.290
Nor is this fossil Hibernian stag (or elk, which, Hamilton Smith
ays, lived as late as the 8th century), the only instance of the extinc-
on o genera and “ species ” since man has occupied our chiliad-
times-transforming planet. I refer not to Elephas primigenius, or to
rhinoceros tichorinus; neither to ursus or canis spelæus, nor to bos prise
s, equus, and many other genera291 among which human remains
occur : if their coetaneousness is recognized by some, it is contested
J others ; so here the cases may be left open : but such examples as
p. ™ f° ya9‘ Oé0l°d-> I P- 419:—A in s w o r t h , Researches in Assyria, &c., London, 8vo, 1838 ;
^ Op. cit. .—M a n t e l l ’s Address to the Archoeological Institute at Oxford, 1850
1 ro c h T r, MAT ’ ? " ° SSemenS HUmaim “ * * 0 uwa9e* * rnain <1 Hommes 'enfoui, dan.
^ Paris, 8™,7852 ; pi“ 3 T ' °miT | J 8 § TaPP0TlS di VAnU°l° * g « * -
* See what Dr. Meigs has quoted from a late paper by Mr. Denny (supra, p. 289).
H a m il t o n S m i t h , op. cit., pp. 95-6.
32