The Meeting-Place of Geology and History Part 10

Palestine thus presents a prehistoric past parallel with the earlier years of Egypt. It has, however, a still earlier period, for in Palestine, as stated in a previous chapter, we have evidence of the existence of man long before the dispersion of the sons of Noah. To appreciate this evidence, we must go back, as in the case of Egypt, to the pre-human period. All along the coast of Palestine, from Jaffa to the northern limit of old Phnicia, the geological traveller sees evidence of a recent submergence, in the occurrence of sandstone, gravel, and limestone with sh.e.l.ls and other marine remains of species still living in the Mediterranean. These are the relics of that pleistocene submergence already referred to, in which the Nile valley was an arm of the sea and Africa was an island. No evidence has been found of the residence of man in Palestine in this period, when, as the sea washed the very bases of the hills, and the plains were under water, it was certainly not very well suited to his abode. The climate was also probably more severe than at present, and the glaciers of Lebanon must have extended nearly to the sea. This was the time of the so-called glacial period in Western Europe.

This, however, was succeeded by that post-glacial period in which, as already explained, the area of the Mediterranean was much smaller than at present, and the land encroached far upon the bed of the sea. This, the second continental period, is that in which man makes his first undoubted appearance in Europe, and we have evidence of the same kind in Syria, to which I have already directed attention in the description of the caverns of the Lebanon, in Chapter IV.

That the occupancy of these caves is very ancient is proved by the fact that the old Egyptian conquerors, who cut a road for themselves over these precipices before the Exodus, seem to have found them in the same state as at present, while farther south ancient Syrian tombs are excavated in similar bone breccias. But there is better evidence than this. The bones and teeth in these caves belong not to the animals which have inhabited the Lebanon in historic times, but to creatures like the hairy rhinoceros and the bison, now extinct, which could not have lived in this region since the comparatively modern period in which the Mediterranean resumed its dominion over that great plain between Phnicia and Cyprus. This we know had been submerged long before the first migrations of the Hamites into Phnicia, even before the entrance of those comparatively rude tribes which seem to have inhabited the country before the Phnician colonisation.[86] Unfortunately no burials of these early men have yet been found, and perhaps the Lebanon caves were only their summer sojourns on hunting expeditions. They were, however, probably of the same stock with the races (the Cro-magnon and Canstadt) of the so-called mammoth age in Western Europe, who have left similar remains. Thus we can carry man in the Lebanon back to that absolutely prehistoric age which preceded the Noachian Deluge and the dispersion of the Noachidae.[87]

[86] Some of these tribes also lived in caves, as that of Ant Elias, but the animals they consumed are those now living in the Lebanon.

[87] Dawson, _Trans. Vict. Inst.i.tute_, May 1884; also _Modern Science in Bible Lands_.

If in imagination we suppose ourselves to visit the caves of the Nahr-el-Kelb pa.s.s, when they were inhabited by these early men, we should find them to be tall muscular people, clothed in skins, armed with flint-tipped javelins and flint hatchets, and cooking the animals caught in the chase in the mouths of their caves. They were probably examples of the ruder and less civilised members of that powerful and energetic antediluvian population which had apparently perfected so many arts, and the remains of whose more advanced communities are now buried in the silt of the sea bottom. If we looked out westward on what is now the Mediterranean, we should see a wide wooded or gra.s.sy plain as far as eye could reach, and perhaps might discern vast herds of elephant, rhinoceros, and bison wandering over these plains in their annual migrations. Possibly on the far margin of the land we might see the smoke of antediluvian towns long ago deeply submerged in the sea.

The great diluvial catastrophe which closed this period, and finally introduced the present geographical conditions, we have seen good reason to identify with the historical Deluge, and the old peoples of the age of the mammoth and rhinoceros were antediluvians, and must have perished from the earth before the earliest migration of the Beni Noah.

Putting together the results referred to in the preceding pages, we may restore the prehistoric ages of the Eastern Mediterranean under the following statements:

1. In the period immediately preceding human occupancy, the land of Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia partic.i.p.ated in the great pleistocene depression, accompanied by a rigorous climate.

2. The next stage was one of continental elevation, in which the borders of the Mediterranean were dry land, and vast plains in this basin, and even in the Western Atlantic, were open to human migration. In this age palaeocosmic men took up their abode all over Western Asia, Europe, and Northern Africa, and probably occupied broad lands since submerged. At this period the region was inhabited by the mammoth, rhinoceros, bison, and other large animals now altogether or locally extinct.

3. The earlier part of this post-glacial or antediluvian period was one of mild climatal conditions, followed by a slight return of the conditions of the previous glacial age.

4. The period was terminated by a great submergence, accompanied with vast destruction of animal and human life; and of comparatively short duration, corresponding to the historical Deluge.

5. From this depression the more limited continents of the modern period were elevated, and man again overspread them from his primitive seats in the Euphratean region, as recorded in the tenth chapter of Genesis.

6. In this early migration the Biblical Hamites, forming one of the groups of men vaguely known as Turanian, first spread themselves over Palestine and Egypt, and founded the early Phnician, Canaanite, Mizraimite, and Cus.h.i.+te tribes and nations.

7. In early historic times Semitic peoples, Hebrews and others from the east, and Mongoloid peoples from the north, migrated into Palestine and dominated and mixed with the primitive tribes, finally penetrating into Egypt and establis.h.i.+ng there the dominion known as that of the Hyksos.

The historical Moabites, Ammonites, Ishmaelites, and Hitt.i.tes were peoples of this character, having a substratum of Hamite blood with aristocracies of Semitic or Tartar origin.

It will be observed that while archaeological evidence tends to ill.u.s.trate and corroborate that wonderful collection of early historical doc.u.ments contained in the Book of Genesis, and to prove their great antiquity, on the other hand these doc.u.ments prove to be the most precious sources of information as to the antediluvian age, the great Flood, the earliest dispersion of men, the old Nimrodic empire, the connections of Asiatic and African civilisation, and other matters connected with the origins of the oldest nations, respecting which we have little other written history.

We thus learn that, relatively to Bible history, there is no prehistoric age, since it carries us back beyond the Deluge to the origin of man, so that we might properly restrict this term in its narrower signification to those parts of the world not covered by this primitive history. It is true that a tide of criticism hostile to the integrity of Genesis has been rising for some years; but it seems to beat vainly against a solid rock, and the ebb has now evidently set in. The battle of historical and linguistic criticism may indeed rage for a time over the history and date of the Mosaic law, but in so far as Genesis is concerned it has been practically decided by scientific exploration.

Since writing the preceding pages I have met with a remarkable paper by Mr. Horatio Hale in the _Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada_.[88] It is one which should commend itself to the study of every Biblical scholar and archaeologist; but is contained in a periodical which perhaps meets the eyes of few of them. In this paper he maintains the importance of language as a ground of anthropological cla.s.sification, and then uses his wide knowledge of the languages of American aborigines, and other rude races, to show that the grammatical complexity and logical perfection of these languages implies a high intellectual capacity in their original framers, and that where such complex and perfect languages are spoken by very rude tribes like the Australian aborigines, they originated with cultivated and intellectual peoples--in the case of the Australian, with the civilised primitive Dravidians of India. He thus shows that languages, like alphabets, have undergone a process of degradation, so that those of modern times are less perfect exponents of thought than those which preceded them, and that primitive man in his earliest state must have been endowed with as high intellectual powers as any of his descendants.

[88] Vol. IX. Sec. II. 1891.

On similar grounds he shows that it is not in the outlying barbarous races that we are to look for truly primitive man, since here we have merely degraded types, and that the primitive centres of man and language must have been in the old historic lands of Western Asia and Northern Africa. On this view the time necessary for the development of the arts of civilisation and of extensive colonisation would not be great. 'In five centuries a single human pair planted in a fertile oasis might have given origin to a people of five hundred thousand souls, numerous enough to have sent out emigrations to the nearest inviting lands.' The same lapse of time would have sufficed to develop agriculture, to domesticate animals, and to make some progress in architectural and other arts of life. He quotes the remarkable pa.s.sage of Reclus[89] as to the agency of woman in the inventions of early art, and shows that this accords with more modern experience among the less civilised nations. It is obvious that all this tends to bring scientific anthropology into the closest relation with the old Biblical history, though Hale, in deference, perhaps, to modern prejudices, does not refer to this.

[89] _Primitive Folk_ (Contemporary Science Series), p. 58.

In the pa.s.sage quoted by Hale, Reclus says: 'It is to woman that mankind owes all that has made us men.' Following this hint of the ingenious French writer, we may imagine the first man and woman inhabiting some fertile region, rich in fruits and other natural products, and subsisting at first on the uncultivated bounty of nature. With the birth of their first child, perhaps before, would come the need of shelter either in some dry cavern or booth of poles and leaves or bark, carpeted perhaps with moss or boughs of pine. This would be the first 'home,'

with the woman for its housekeeper. We may imagine the man bringing to it the lamb or kid whose dam he had killed, and the woman, with motherly instinct, pitying the little orphan and training it to be a domestic pet, the first of tamed animals. She, too, would store grain, seeds and berries for domestic use, and some of these germinating would produce patches of grain, or shrubs, or fruit trees around the hut. Noticing these and protecting them, she would be the first gardener and orchardist. The woman and her children might add to the cultivated plants or domesticated quadrupeds and birds; and the man would be induced, in the intervals of hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, to guard, protect, and fence them.

When the boys grew up, to one of them might be a.s.signed the care of the sheep and goats, to the other the culture of the little farm, while they might aid their father in erecting a better and more artistic habitation, the first attempt at architecture, and in introducing artificial irrigation to render their field more fertile. Is not this little romance of M. Elie Reclus perfectly in harmony with the old familiar story in Genesis, and also with the most recent results of modern science?

CHAPTER XIII

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

It may be well, in conclusion, to sum up the general truths we have arrived at in relation to the place of man in the great and long-continued drama of the earth's geological history.

1. We have found no link of derivation connecting man with the lower animals which preceded him. He appears before us as a new departure in creation, without any direct relation to the instinctive life of the lower animals. The earliest men are no less men than their descendants, and up to the extent of their means, inventors, innovators, and introducers of new modes of life, just as much as they. We have not even been able as yet to trace man back to the harmless golden age. As we find him in the caves and gravels he is already a fallen man, out of harmony with his environment and the foe of his fellow creatures, contriving against them instruments of destruction more fatal than those furnished by nature to the carnivorous wild beasts. Yet we would fain believe in an Edenic age of innocence; and physiological probability, as well as the old story in Genesis, demands that we should suppose a primitive condition in which man, careless and happy, should subsist on the spontaneous bounty of nature in some favoured 'garden of the Lord.'

_Scheme of possible Correlation of the Geological and Historical Records as to Early Man, as the Facts appear in the present Stage of Investigation, May 1894._

{ Semitic { Truchere or Prot-Iberian Race { Turanian { { Aryan Primitive { Man { Mixed Races, Cro-magnon, &c. } { } Submergence { Canstadt Race }

{ Sethites { Shem { { Ham Adam { Mixed Races, Nephelim, &c. } Noah { j.a.phet { } { Cainites } Deluge

2. If we inquire as to the nature of the interval which separates man from the lower animals, we find that it exists with reference both to his rational and physical nature. With respect to the first we may affirm in man the existence of a lower (psychical) intelligence, similar to that of the inferior animals, and of a spiritual nature allying him with higher intelligences, and with G.o.d Himself. Rightly considered, this places the doctrine of creation in a very firm position. Those who deny it must adopt one of two alternatives. Either they must refuse to admit the evidence in man of any nature higher than that of brutes--a conclusion which common sense, as well as mental science, must always refuse to admit--or they must attempt to bridge over the 'chasm,' as it has been called, which separates the instinctive nature of the animal from the rational and moral nature of man--an effort confessedly futile.

3. As to the body of man, the case is different, but still perfectly in harmony with the idea of his higher nature. Man, as to his body, is confessedly an animal, of the earth earthy. He is also a member of the province _vertebrata_, and the cla.s.s _mammalia_; but in that cla.s.s he const.i.tutes not only a distinct species and genus, but even a distinct family, or order. In other words, he is the sole species of his genus, and of his family, or order. He is thus separated, by a great gap, from all the animals nearest to him; and even if we admit the doctrine, as yet unproved, of the derivation of one species from another in the case of the lower animals, we are unable to supply the 'missing links' which would be required to connect man with any group of inferior animals.

This physical distinctness has also a special significance, inasmuch as it depends on certain negative peculiarities such as the absence of clothing, of natural weapons of attack and defence, as well as on the positive properties of the erect posture, the hands adapted to various kinds of manipulation, and the special sensory gifts. Thus viewed in relation to his environment, his wants as well as his possessions in regard to structures and powers, would be fatal to any creature not possessed of his intelligence, and we cannot conceive how such privations or such gifts could spontaneously arise in nature.

4. No fact of science is more certainly established than the recency of man in geological time. Not only do we find no trace of his remains in the older geological formations, but we find no remains even of the animals nearest to him; and the conditions of the world in those periods seem to unfit it for the residence of man. If, following the usual geological system, we divide the whole history of the earth into four great periods, extending from the oldest rocks known to us, the eozoic, or archaean, up to the modern, we find remains of man, or his works, only in the latest of the four, and in the later part of this. In point of fact, there is no indisputable proof of the presence of man until we reach the early modern period. This is, no doubt, what was to have been expected on the supposition of the orderly development of the chain of animal life in the long geologic eons; but it is not by any means the only hypothesis that was possible when, for example, the Book of Genesis was written. A more fanciful cosmologist might at that time have given precedence to man, and might have supposed that the other animals were produced later, and for his benefit, or his injury. This is the view of the sacred writer himself with respect to the local group of animals intended to be in immediate a.s.sociation with the first man. Restricted in this way, the statement of a group of animals created with man in his earliest abode is not contradictory to the order in Genesis first, nor scientifically improbable. We have seen that in any case the deductions from geology are in harmony with the earliest revelations made to the human mind on the subject, and in accordance with all the later facts of actual history.

5. The absolute date of the first appearance of man cannot perhaps be fixed within a few years or centuries, either by human chronology or by the science of the earth. It would seem, however, that the Bible history, as well as such hints as we can gather from the history of other nations, limits us to two or three thousand years before the Deluge of Noah, while some estimates of the antiquity of man, based on physical changes or ancient history, or on philology, greatly exceed this limit. If the earliest men were those of the river gravels and caves, men of the 'mammoth age,' or of the 'palaeolithic' or palaeocosmic period, we can form some definite ideas as to their possible antiquity.

They colonised the continents immediately after the elevation of the land from the great subsidence which closed the pleistocene or glacial period, in what has been called the 'continental' period of the post-glacial age, because the new lands then raised out of the sea exceeded in extent those which we have now. We have, as stated in a previous chapter, some measures of the date of this great continental elevation, and know that its distance from our time must fall within about eight thousand years. Many indications, both in Europe and America, lead to the belief that it is physically impossible that man could have colonised the northern hemisphere at an earlier date than this geologically recent continental period.

6. There is but one species of man, though many races and varieties; and these races or varieties seem to have developed themselves at a very early time and have shown a remarkable fixity in their later history.

There is reason to believe, however, from various physiological facts, that this is a very general law of varietal forms, which are observed to appear rapidly or suddenly, and then in favourable circ.u.mstances to be propagated continuously. It would seem also to apply to the introduction of forms regarded as species, since it is not unusual to find a genus at or near its origin represented by its maximum number of specific forms.

7. The precise locality of the origin of man can be defined on probable grounds as in a temperate region, supplied with the vegetable productions most useful to him in a natural state, and free from destructive animal rivals. We can scarcely suppose that this locality can have been in any of those parts of the world in which man finds the greatest difficulty in subsisting, or becomes most degraded, though this paradoxical view has been held by some archaeologists. It must rather have been in some fertile and salubrious region of the northern hemisphere; and probability as well as tradition points to those regions in South-Western Asia which have not only been the earliest historical abodes of man, but are also the centres of the animals and plants most useful to him. It is interesting to note here that Haeckel, on purely physical grounds, decides against Europe, Africa, Australia, and America, and concludes that 'most circ.u.mstances indicate Southern Asia.'

8. It is to be observed, however, that the diluvial interlude gives a double origin of man; but the historical accounts of the neocosmic dispersion, as we have already seen, refer us in this case also to the same regions of South-Western Asia. The traditions which ascribe human origin to a 'Mountain of the North' refer to the second dispersion, and coincide with the Ararat of Genesis and the 'Mountain of the North' on which the s.h.i.+p of Hasisadra was supposed by the Chaldeans to have grounded.

9. We are now in a position to correlate the historical Deluge with the great geographical changes which closed the palanthropic age. This, when regarded as an established fact, furnishes the solution of many of the most disputed questions of anthropology. The misuse of the Deluge in the early history of geology, in employing it to account for changes that took place long before the advent of man, certainly should not cause us to neglect its legitimate uses, when these arise in the progress of investigation. It is evident that if this correlation be accepted as probable, it must modify many views now held as to the antiquity of man.

In that case, the modern rubble spread over plateaus and in river valleys, far above the reach of the present floods, may be accounted for, not by the ordinary action of the existing streams, but by the abnormal action of currents of water diluvial in their character.

Further, since the historical Deluge cannot have been of very long duration, the physical changes separating the deposits containing the remains of palaeocosmic men from those of later date would, in like manner, be accounted for, not by slow processes of subsidence, elevation, and erosion, but by causes of a more abrupt and cataclysmic character.

Finally, it has been the tendency of modern geological and archaeological discovery to attach more and more value and importance to the ancient records of the human race, and especially to those precious doc.u.ments which have been preserved to our time in the Book of Genesis.

We have merely glanced cursorily at a few of the salient points of the relation of the primitive history of man in Genesis to modern scientific discovery. Many other details might have been adduced as tending to show similar coincidences of these two distinct lines of evidence. Enough has, however, been said to indicate the remarkable manner in which the history in Genesis has antic.i.p.ated modern discovery, and to show that this ancient book is in every way trustworthy, and as remote as possible from the myths and legends of ancient heathenism, while it shows the historical origin of beliefs which in more or less corrupted forms lie at the foundations of the oldest religions of the Gentiles, and find their true significance in that of the Hebrews. To the Christian the record in Genesis has a still higher value, as const.i.tuting those historical groundworks of the plan of salvation to which our Lord Himself so often referred, and on which He founded so much of His teaching.