THE AGE OR MAN.

Patea Mail, 26 May 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE AGE OR MAN.

Mr. Denton, the Geologist, has been exciting the astonishment and the ire of some of his hearers in Dunedin by asserting that the remains of Man have been found in such a position under a bed of stalagmite, as would show that he lived some 300.000 years ago. For aught we know Mr. Denton may be right; but then—he may also be wrong. On a subject where there are so many countervailing circumstances, so much to be allowed for, so many possible intervening obstacles, so much uncertainty and so much conjecture, we imagine he is scarcely a wise man who binds himself to any positive assertion as to dates within a few thousand years. Geology is doubtless in the main a true science, but very many of its alleged facts cannot be indisputably substantiated; and as is well known, geologists are by no means agreed on this matter. Dr. Croll, who is certainly no mean authority, seems to be of opinion that man made his appearance somewhere about 100,000 years since—that is, before the last glacial epoch and after another, which he supposes occurred 160,000 years before that. But even for Dr. Oroll’s view of the case the evidence is very inconclusive. For what is it? Geologists, in accordance with calculations made as to the amount of solid matter carried off the land by rivers and watercourses, consider that it requires 6000 years to reduce the level of the land one foot, and raise the bed of the ocean tiva like extent. So, if they find a fossil imbedded in the earth at a depth of ten feet, they jump to the conclusion that it came there 60,000 years ago; and the skeleton Mr. Denton mentions, in accordance with this idea, was probably found in strata at the depth of fifty feet. It is noticeable, however, how uncertain this rule is ; it has been found, indeed, in many localities to require modification, and even after such modification the rule cannot be made absolute. A remarkable instance occurred not many years since at New Orleans. A human skeleton was found there at a depth of 50 feet. It had been calculated that land formed at the mouth of the Mississippi at the rate of one foot in a thousand years. Great, therefore, was the excitement amongst geologists when the fact of this discovery became known, and it was thought that here was a veritable skeleton of a man apparently almost identical with the Indians of the present day, who had lived 50,000 years ago. But alas! how great was the disappointment when on further inquiry it was found that that precise portion of the delta of the Mississippi had been deposited at the rate not even of one foot in 1000 years, but of a foot per annum; so that the supposed antique skeleton turned out to be that of some unfortunate Indian who had come by an accidental death on that spot only fifty years before. Besides the liability to error in that direction there are other elements of uncertainty which must always tend to render all such calculations extremely untrustworthy. The land, and for that matter, the bottom of the sea also, is everywhere and always liable to local upheavals and depressions. This very potential fact is of course acknowledged by all geologists ; they know and frequently refer to the fact that the lower strata of rocks are often found forced up by internal action far above the position they ought to occupy, and the upper strata also in like manner displaced; so generally, indeed, does this state of things prevail that it may be said to be the rule rather than the exception; so that the patience and skill of the most painstaking and astute geologist must often be < severely tried in coming to a conclusion; and when arrived at in such doubtful eases, it will probably be that which supports his favourite theory. These internal movements of the earth at times embrace large areas; at other times they are local, affecting only a few miles or a few feet; but their universality, at one time or another over the entire globe is not to be disputed. We learn, for example, that Britain has been at least twice submerged under the ocean, and again elevated to a height of 600 or 600 feet above its present level. That at the present day the northern portion of the Scandinavian peninsula is being raised, while the southern portion is proportionately sinking. That a small portion of the sea-beach near Leith has within the last few centuries been elevated to the height of thirty-five feet; and to come nearer home, that in the Pacific Ocean an immense belt of the globe extending in a semicircle which includes Samoa and Japan, and all the volcanic region from New Zealand to Iquique on the coast of South America, is being rapidly elevated. Such examples might be indefinitely multiplied, were it needful. There are also (and these are even more confusing) landslips, floods, earthquakes, and local catastrophes innumerable, which all go to swell the amount of change everywhere taking place on and near the earth’s surface, and to put anything like certainty as to the date of deposition of any particular relic, almost if not quite out of the question. All these difficulties as it appears, geologists of the present day, in their determination to uphold the uniformitarian method, are apt to ignore or to overlook, with the possible result that many relics having really no great antiquity, have come to be considered veritable memorials of many thousands of years ago. It may therefore be the rule, as stated, that the land is carried down into the ocean, there to be built up into new strata at the rate indicated, viz. one foot in 6000 years, but the other movements of the earth are so frequent, various, and universal as utterly to destroy the value of this rule as a sure basis of calculation. Indeed, notwithstanding the authority of many great names to the contrary, when we come to think of it, there is really no absolute certainty that man has existed on the globe for more than a few thousand years. If we think what history tells us of him, we look back to the time of the Druids in Britain as a period of immense antiquity, and yet it was not long before Julius Osesar. Then we come to Home, and Greece, and Babylon, and Nineveh, the ancient cities of Arabia, and Asia Minor, and Jerusalem, and Egypt. After, or rather before that, man is lost—he suddenly, and it must be confessed somewhat unaccountably disappears. He may, for the 300.000 years mentioned by Mr. Denton, have been living in caves, and fighting for a bare existence with tigers and hyenas ; but as we have shown above the proof of this is lamentably defective ; in fact, all

the human remains that have been found —the Danish kitchen middens, the Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and other skulls, may , for any proof yet presented, be only of comparatively recent date. And, finally, there can be no doubt that a catastrophe of some kind, whether fluvial or other does not certainly appear, at a not very remote period befel the greater part of the European and Asiatic continents. In that everything was deranged ; the courses of the rivers were changed; high lands were washed down and low lands were raised; indeed the face of these continents was to a great extent so altered by this catastropheas to be all but unrecognisable. It may be possible to speak with certainty as to the date of the deposit of any land, in accordance with the geological law before-mentioned even despite this upturning of all things, but we cannot but confess to very grave doubts on that point. In what we have written above, of course we do not pretend to contradict those men who have spent their lives in the study of this subject, and who see reason for coming to the conclusion they have; but the proofs that have been satisfactory to them may strike others as inconclusive; and we cannot help thinking that the whole subject is still surrounded with difficulty, and a certain amount of caution and reserve are even now at least not absolutely out of place. —Weekly Post.