Note 1643 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

Another way of looking at it gives reasons for this omission: “The first chapter of Genesis is not a geological treatise. It is absolutely valueless in geological discussion, and has no value whatever save as representing what the Jews borrowed from the Babylonians, and as preserving for us an early cosmology” (Howorth’s Mammoth and the Flood, Lond., 1887, p. ix). Between Lyell and Gabriel de Mortillet (La préhistorique Antiquité de l’Homme, Paris, 1881) on the one hand and Southall on the other, there are the more cautious geologists, like Prestwich, who claim that we must wait before we can think of measuring by years the interval from the earliest men. (Cf. “Theoretical considerations on the drift containing implements,” in Roy. Soc. Philos. Trans., 1862)