Front matter (continued 2)

Table Showing Relations of Later Cenozoic Ages in Europe

Geological Periods Geography and Climate Fauna Periods Epochs

Modern or neanthropic The actual climate and geographical arrangements Modern quadrupeds, including domestic animals So-called of Iron, Bronze, and Polished Stone Recent Roman Gaulish Iberian

Post-glacial or palanthropic Cold and dry, with widely extended continents. Extension of glaciers &c. Warm and moist, extended continents Reindeer, mammoth (Elephas primigenius), hairy rhinoceros (R. tichorhinus), Elephas antiquus and R. Merkii So-called palæolithic or Age of Chipped Stone Magdalenian Soloutrian Mousterian Chellean

Pleistocene or glacial Glacial period.Submergence and diminished continents Arctic animals and plants No certain trace of Man

Pliocene First continental period. Mild climate Elephas meridionalis, Rhinoceros leptorhinus, and other extinct mammals

CHAPTER VI

END OF THE PALANTHROPIC AGE

The palanthropic age came to a tragic end, and is somewhat definitely separated from that which succeeded it. This appears from several considerations which are too often overlooked by writers who have a prejudice in favour of everything passing imperceptibly and by slow degrees into that by which it is followed—an exaggerated uniformitarianism beyond that of Lyell, but in harmony with the hypothesis of Darwin, to which many anthropologists appear to tie themselves hopelessly.

Three facts are here specially important. The Canstadt and Cro-magnon races are physically different from any modern races, and give place at the close of this age to peoples as distinct from them as any now existing, and who, on the other hand, while separated from the palæocosmic men preceding them, are linked with the races of modern times. It is no doubt true that occasional and abnormal human skulls may to this day be seen on living men which are more or less of the Canstadt or Cro-magnon type. These are good evidences of the unity of man through all the ages, but no race exists having all the peculiarities of these ancient peoples, which thus belong not to a distinct species but to a distinct racial variety of man.

Secondly, at the close of the palanthropic age we find a great change in land animals—a number of important species hunted by early man having disappeared, and the more meagre modern fauna having come in at once. Thus it may be affirmed that the land fauna of this primitive time was distinct from that now living. This implies either long time or a great physical break.

Thirdly, this change of fauna consists not so much in the introduction of new species as in the extinction of old forms, either absolutely or locally; and this agrees with the fact of diminution of land area, since it seems to be a law of the geological succession that increasing land brings in new land animals; diminishing land area leads to extinction, and not to introduction.

Fourthly, in accordance with this we find that, at the close of the palanthropic age, the continents of the northern hemisphere experienced a subsidence from which they have only partially recovered up to the present time, and which introduced the modern geographical and climatal features. This appears from raised beaches and beds of rubble, loam and loess of modern date overlying the débris of the glacial period and holding the remains of post-glacial animals. These are widely spread over the whole northern hemisphere, and ascend in some districts to high levels. An interesting illustration has recently been given by Dr. Nuesch and M. Boule, in the deposits under a rock-shelter at Schweizersbild, near Schaffhausen. [25] These show an overlying deposit with 'neolithic' implements and bones of recent animals, a bed of rubble and loam destitute of human remains, and below this a bed containing bone implements, worked flints, and traces of cookery of the palanthropic period. The whole rests on a bed of rolled pebbles, supposed to be the upper part of the glacial deposits. This shows the interval between the palanthropic and neanthropic periods, and also the post-glacial date of man in Switzerland, and it accords with a great many other instances.

Were these changes sudden or gradual? Experience has no answer, for no similar events have occurred in historic times, and though there are records in the geological history of many mutations in the elevation of the land, we have no information as to their rate of progress, and we know little of their causes. The changes of this kind known to us in modern times are merely local, not general, and in regard to their rate are of two kinds. Some are abrupt and accompanied with earthquake shocks. These are very local, and usually occur in regions of volcanic activity. Others are so slow and gradual as to be scarcely perceptible, and are often of wider distribution. It is evident, however, that these slight and local phenomena furnish but little clue to the mutations of past periods. These were on a far grander scale and affected vast areas. We have no modern instances of these almost world-wide depressions of continents under the sea, though we know that these have occurred, one of them within the human period, and it is idle to speculate as to their rate or duration in the absence of facts. We know pretty certainly, however, from the gauges of time which can be applied to the close of the glacial period, that this latest subsidence must have occurred within six thousand years of our time.

With reference to the particular movement in question, we know that the close of the palanthropic period was accompanied by a movement at least equal to the difference between the wide lands of the second continental period and the shrunken dimensions of the present lands. Besides this we find on the surface of the land modern raised beaches, deposits of loess and plateau gravels, intrusions of mud into caves of considerable elevation, and evidences, as in Siberia, of large herds of animals perishing on elevated lands on which they seem to have taken refuge. [26] In short, no geological fact can be better established than the post-glacial subsidence.

Putting these facts together, we cannot doubt that the submergence at the close of the palanthropic age was very considerable, and that it was followed by a partial re-emergence. Further, there is no evidence of any serious fractures or folding of the crust taking place at the time, though it is possible that great lava ejections like some of those of Western America may belong to this period. It is therefore allowable to suppose that the cause of submergence may have been either depression of the land, or elevation of the bed of the ocean throwing its waters over the land, or possibly a combination of both. Movements of these kinds have recurred again and again in geological time. Their causes are mysterious, but their effects have been of the most stupendous character. Fortunately, they occur at rare intervals, and that to which we are now referring is the last of which we have any record, and differs from all others in having occurred at a time when man was widely spread over the world.

The geological chronometers already referred to inform us that the land of the northern hemisphere rose from the great pleistocene submergence about eight thousand to ten thousand years ago, and the second continental period with its forests and its teeming and widely-extended animal and human life, may have been established within two thousand years of that time, or say six thousand to eight thousand years ago. How long the second continental or palanthropic period continued intact we do not know, but we can scarcely allow it less than two thousand years. Perhaps it was considerably longer. Now on historical evidence produced by Egypt, Chaldea, and other ancient countries in the Mediterranean region, we can trace the neanthropic age continuously back to, say, three thousand years B.C., or nearly five thousand years in all. Adding to this two thousand years for the palanthropic age, we are carried back to a time within one thousand years of the earliest we can assign on geological grounds to the termination of the great glacial period. Therefore, unless we suppose the last continental subsidence to have begun some time before the close of the palanthropic age, and to have continued to some degree into the beginning of the neanthropic, we cannot assign to it a very long time. That it could not have been sudden in the sense of being instantaneous is evident, because in that case terrestrial denudation of a stupendous character must have ensued, and no animal life except that of mountain tops and elevated table-lands could have escaped its destructive effects, but that it was by no means secular or long-continued is certain.

Thus we seem shut up to the conclusion that the close of the palanthropic age was marked by great geological vicissitudes of the character of submergence, leading primarily to vast destruction of animal life, and secondarily to permanent changes both in geography and climate, under which new conditions the neanthropic age was inaugurated. How this took place we have to inquire in the sequel. In the meantime we may merely remark that since the two principal races of primitive men known to us in Europe seem to have perished, we must infer that individuals of a third race beyond the limits of Europe were destined to survive, and again to replenish the earth in the new era, and that possibly these may be represented by the solitary Truchère skull. In the case of many of the more bulky and unwieldy animals inhabiting the plains the case was different. They perished, or if any survived the submergence they were unable to multiply under the new conditions.

Desperate attempts have been made in the interests of extreme uniformitarianism to discredit the abrupt change from palæocosmic to neocosmic men. It has been supposed that the latter replaced the former as conquerors—a most unlikely theory, when their relative powers are considered. It has been conjectured that as the cold decreased the old races of men followed the reindeer to the north and became Arctic peoples. But why did they not rather attack the new animals, which in that case must have come in from the south? It has even been supposed that the Esquimaux may be their descendants; but they are quite different in physical characters, and have no nearer resemblance in their arts than other rude peoples. In opposition to all this we have not only the remarkable change in the races of men and in their animal associates, but when we know that the whole geographical features of our continents have changed since the palanthropic age, and that not only are our continents reduced in size since the continental post-glacial period, but that there is evidence of re-elevation as well as subsidence, and this within a short period—say eight thousand years less the historic period on the one hand and the early palanthropic on the other—it seems impossible to doubt the greatness and suddenness of the physical break that divides the anthropic age into two distinct portions. All this may be held to be certainly known as geological fact, and it would be folly to overlook it in any discussions as to primitive man, or in any comparisons of the evidence afforded by his remains with that of early human history or tradition.

But if man was a witness of and sufferer in this great catastrophe, and if any men survived it, did they preserve no tradition or memory of such a stupendous event? We may imagine this to be possible. The survivors may have belonged to the rudest and most isolated of the races of men, and may have had no means of knowing the extent of the disaster or of preserving its memory. On the other hand, they may have attained to a sufficient degree of culture to have had some means of perpetuating the memory of great events. If so, we may imagine that the great diluvial cataclysm which separates the human or anthropic period into two parts may have left an indelible mark in the history or tradition of mankind. We shall inquire into this in the sequel, but must first consider what geological monuments remain of the early neanthropic age in Europe. [27]

In the meantime I may remark that, if we take the Canstadt people to represent the ruder tribes of the antediluvian Cainites, the feebler folk of Truchère to represent the Sethites, and the giant race of Cro-magnon and Mentone as the equivalent of the 'mighty men' or Nephelim of Genesis who arose from the mixture of the two original stocks, we shall have a somewhat exact parallel between the men of the caves and gravels and those we have so long been familiar with in the Book of Genesis.

CHAPTER VII

THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE

There has been much confusion among anthropologists respecting the distinction of this from the preceding age. The Cro-magnon race has been classed as neanthropic, and has been confounded with a very dissimilar people which succeeded it after an interval of some duration. The gap between the disappearance of the earlier race and the arrival of the newer has thus been overlooked, and no account has been taken of the great intervening faunal and geographical changes. This has arisen from neglecting or being unable to appreciate the geological part of the evidence; and the somewhat lamentable result has been that it is difficult for the ordinary reader to arrive at any certainty, in the midst of conflicting statements all based on imperfect data. In these circumstances it will be well to begin this chapter with some examples of the relations of these different races.

At Grenelle, near Paris, on the river Seine, there is a succession of old inundation beds of that river, extending from the oldest part of the anthropic to modern times, and furnishing what may be regarded as a chronological series for Northern France, as many human remains have been from time to time deposited on this old eddy of the Seine and buried under newer accumulations. Belgrand has shown that in the lowest gravels of this deposit the long-headed Canstadt man is alone found. Immediately above this occur remains of the Cro-magnon type, and these are associated with and overlain by beds holding large stones or erratic blocks, a monument perhaps of the physical disturbances closing the palanthropic age. Above these the next remains are those of a race of men of smaller stature and with less elongated heads, which we shall find belong to the neanthropic age. Here, as Quatrefages points out, we have a distinct stratigraphical succession, which accords with that in other localities.

If we now turn to England we may select from other examples the Cresswell caves, so carefully explored by Dawkins and Mello, and in which we have well-ascertained evidence from fossils as well as from superposition. Without going into the details as to the several chambers and passages in these caverns, we find as the result of the whole the following succession in ascending order:

1. White calcareous sand, a deposit from water, but with no animal remains.

2. Stiff red clay with blocks of limestone, and in places underlaid by a ferruginous sand. These beds, of which the red clay is the principal, contain bones of rhinoceros leptorhinus, hippopotamus, bison, bear, hyena and fox, but no human remains. Dawkins, however, shows that in other caves farther south some rude flint implements show that man had already appeared in England, though he may not have made his way as far north as Yorkshire.

3. Above this lies a stratum of red sandy cave earth, in which occur the bones of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, the horse, the bison, the bear, and the hyena, but the leptorhine rhinoceros is gone. The bones are gnawed by hyenas, and there are rude quartzite implements. Over this, and representing the later part of the palanthropic age, corresponding to some of the French, Belgian, and Lebanon caves, are an upper cave earth and breccia, rich in 'palæolithic' flint implements and bones of the animals of the mammoth age.

4. Above this, in the surface soil and disturbed portions of the underlying beds, are remains of the neanthropic period, including twelve species of modern animals, but with no trace of the great extinct quadrupeds. Connected with these were human skulls of the same type found in the ancient burial barrows of England, and belonging to races still extant. The Cresswell caves give no bones of palæocosmic men, but they very well show the succession of the early period of mild climate, the later severe climate, the extinction of the old animals contemporary with the earliest men, and the final succession of modern men and animals to the now insular Britain, which, in the times represented by the beds one, two, and three above mentioned, was a part of the mainland of Europe.

FLINT FLAKES OF TWO TYPES FROM PALANTHROPIC AND NEANTHROPIC CAVES IN THE LEBANON

But perhaps the most interesting views of the succession of early men and the gap between the palanthropic and neanthropic periods are presented by the Belgian caves explored by Schmerling and Dupont. The latter has excavated more than sixty caverns, and has carefully noted the mode of occurrence of their contents, collecting at the same time a vast number of bones and implements, now admirably arranged in the museum of Brussels. In Belgium the earlier anthropic period has been characterised as that of the mammoth. The beginning of the neanthropic is still a reindeer age, though that animal was apparently becoming rare. It existed, as we know, in Central Europe till the time of Cæsar.

RESTORATION OF THE SEPULCHRAL CAVE OF FRONTAL, BELGIUM (after Dupont) 1. and 2. Gravel and clay of mammoth age. 3. Surface of modern accumulation of angular stones and clay. (D) Slab closing the sepulchre. (S) Platform for funeral feasts. (F) Hearth. (R) Rock forming the walls of the cavern.

The caves of Furfooz, and especially that of Frontal, are among the most instructive. Dupont has found that in many caves the older remains of the mammoth age are contained in or covered by a diluvial or inundation mud, [28] which seems to be the closing deposit of this age. Now in the Frontal cave this mud remained undisturbed and extended out into a platform in front of the cave. The cave itself had been used as a place of burial, and as many as sixteen skeletons were found in it, with flint implements, perforated shells, flat pieces of sandstone with sketches of figures scratched on them, and an earthen vase. All these lay above the original palanthropic mud floor, and belonged to new tribes which probably knew nothing of their predecessors, whose bones were covered by the inundation mud below. On the platform in front of the cave was a hearth with the ashes of funeral feasts, and around this were found a multitude of bones of animals, of the modern species of the country. The people who used this cave as a sepulchre had evidently arrived in Belgium after the palæocosmic men and the mammoth were not only extinct, but their remains were buried in muddy deposits; though the reindeer and even the wild horse still existed, and the time was long before the dawn of any authentic history in that part of the world. These men have somewhat shorter heads than the old Cro-magnon race, and they are of smaller stature, and with finer and more delicate features. In these respects they resemble the men of the dolmens and long barrows of France and England, and the existing Auvergnats and Basques, and also the Lapps of the far north. Dupont observes that their materials for implements and ornaments came almost entirely from regions to the southward, and hence he infers commerce with tribes in that direction and the existence of enemies in the north. I should rather infer that the men of Frontal had immigrated into Belgium from the south, and that they were a small and poor outlying tribe of a greater people living south of them. Dupont also remarks on their evident care of the dead, a characteristic of the early neocosmic men, their belief in a future life, and the absence of warlike weapons, whence he infers that they were a mild and pacific race—a conclusion which makes against the idea entertained by some, that they may have displaced the formidable palæocosmic men by conquest.

Similar illustrations are afforded by the caves and rock-shelters of France, Switzerland, and Syria, and have convinced many of the ablest archæologists of the existence of a decided break between the palanthropic and neanthropic ages. In such a case also it is to be observed that a few decided, positive facts are of more value than any number of examples in which, from local circumstances, the succession may be obscure or uncertain.

The above examples relate to the men of the older neanthropic age, the men of the so-called neolithic or polished stone age of archæologists. These men can be shown to be identical with the oldest populations of postdiluvian Europe, peoples whose descendants exist to-day in many parts of Western Europe, though they have been more or less displaced or mixed with later intrusive races. These people have gone on without any physical cataclysm, or change of fauna, or geographical or climatal changes of any magnitude, into the ages of bronze and iron and of the modern civilisation. Thus, while the palæocosmic men passed away abruptly and have left no certain successors, those who succeeded them pass on without a break into the existing populations of the world.

We must, however, here guard ourselves from a misconception which has apparently unconsciously deceived many writers on this subject. It by no means follows from the facts insisted on above that there are no direct links of connection between palæocosmic and neocosmic men. The ancestors of the latter must have existed through the palanthropic period, and wherever they were living they may have had the same characters which distinguish them at a later time, and which persist to this day. There would therefore be nothing contradictory to our general view in finding that the small, fine-featured men who succeeded the giants of the olden time were in some more genial parts of the world extant from the first. Nay, it may even appear that they were similar to the Truchère race, and that still more primitive people whose bones are yet unknown, and who inhabited Europe in the early mild period preceding the mammoth age. Neither is there anything anomalous in the occasional reappearance of characters similar to those even of the Canstadt race at the present time, not because any modern men are direct descendants of this race, but because under certain conditions these characters tend to be reproduced. Let us put the case conjecturally as follows:

The original men who peopled the northern continents after the first glacial period were of small stature, agile, and well formed, with mild and pleasing countenance and heads of the medium (mesitocephalic) type. They were dwellers in a warm climate and subsisted on fruits. As population increased and men became hunters and fishermen, and wandered widely over the world, a large-boned, coarse-featured, and savage type of man arose, such as we find in the older caves and gravels, and weapons of kinds not needed in primitive times were invented. In this state of affairs, when the coarser and stronger races had made themselves masters of the world, and had perhaps partially intermixed with the older and more peaceful peoples, a great diluvial catastrophe occurred, which swept away the greater part of men. The survivors were of the old and unmodified stock, and it was they who repeopled the new world, finding possibly here and there some survivors of the former population, or themselves locally relapsing into a similar state. In this case all the seeming paradoxes and contradictions which have perplexed archæologists would be easily explained. We might even find occasional captives of the primitive small race among the interments of the old giants, and we might find new races of superior physical power arising in the new world and again intruding on the feebler race.

In closing our notice of this period we may proceed to connect it with actual history in the British Islands. When the Romans invaded Britain they found in it two races of men physically very distinct, one of them the aborigines, who had made their way to the island as its first population after the close of the mammoth age, the others apparently a later intrusion. They are known to English antiquaries from their modes of burial as the men of the long and the round barrows or funeral mounds. The first of these are beyond doubt the kinsmen of our little men of the Trou de Frontal, in Belgium. They are thus described by Greenwell and Taylor [29]:

They were of feeble build, short stature, dark complexion, and somewhat long skull. They buried their dead in long barrows or mounds with interior chambers and passages; some of these are as much as 400 feet in length, and resemble artificial caves; and there can be no doubt that, as in Belgium, they buried their dead in caves when these were accessible; and the laborious construction of the long barrows when caves failed is an indication of the great importance they attached to the secure and decent sepulture of the dead. No trace of metal is found in their barrows, and but little pottery, but it is believed that they had at a very early time domesticated sheep and cattle and practised agriculture. These people are now identified with the people of the south and west of England, called by the Romans Silures. They were the builders of the cromlechs, dolmens, and other megalithic structures so common in various parts of the old continent. Their type survives to this day in the small dark people of parts of Wales and the south and west of Ireland, and in parts of the Hebrides. Their physical characters connect them with the primitive populations of the hills of Central France, with the Basques of the Pyrenees, the Corsicans, the Berbers of Africa, and the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the term Iberian has been applied to the whole group. Their language was originally not Aryan, but Turanian. They represent not merely a new race still surviving, but a distinct advance in practical civilisation over that of the peoples of the palanthropic age, in Europe at least.

At the time of the Roman conquest this primitive race had been replaced in the east of England and south of Scotland by a wholly different people, supposed to be identical with the Celtæ of the Romans. They were tall, muscular, with broader and shorter heads, fair complexion, and light-coloured hair. They buried their dead in round barrows or mounds, and seem at a very early period to have possessed bronze, and so to have introduced what has been termed the bronze age into Britain. At the time of the Roman invasion, however, they already possessed iron weapons. These people were Aryan in speech, allied to the Gauls and Belgæ, and the ancestors of the so-called Celtic populations of the British Islands.

CROMLECH AT FONTANACCIA, CORSICA (after De Mortillet)

CHAPTER VIII

THE PALANTHROPIC AGE IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY

The time was when the earlier books of the Hebrew Scriptures stood almost alone in their notices of the creation and antediluvian times, and when critics could quietly take for granted that they were altogether mythical. This state of things has now passed away from the minds of the better informed, and it may be profitable before proceeding farther to glance for a moment at some of the recent corroborations, if they may be so called, of the Bible history from altogether unexpected quarters.

In the first place, there can now be no doubt that the order of creation, as revealed to the author of the first chapter of Genesis, corresponds with the results of astronomical and geological research in a manner which cannot be accidental. [30] This old document thus stands in the position of a prophecy which has been fulfilled in its details. Besides this, the discovery of the similar though not identical Chaldean creation tablets throws a remarkable and interesting side-light on the whole question. The Chaldean tablets are unquestionably very ancient, and borrowed from still older documents from which they are alleged to have been copied. But they and the Genesis narrative are independent of each other. Neither can have been copied from the other. Thus there must have been a still more ancient common source of the narrative, and, as I have elsewhere urged, [31] the greater simplicity and monotheistic character of the Hebrew document entitle it to the palm of the higher antiquity.

With reference to the antediluvian age and the Deluge, while the Bible is here only in accord with almost universal tradition, and this in reference to an event which if it occurred at all must have fixed itself in the memory of the survivors, it is in remarkable accordance with very ancient Chaldean writings commemorative of the same event. Some principal points of this accordance are the following. The Chaldean account implies that the anger of the gods, or some of them, against an evil race of men was the cause of the catastrophe. It gives it a universal character, so far as the sphere of observation extended. It represents the survivors as saved in a ship or ark. It represents Hasisadra, its Noah, as sending out birds to ascertain the subsidence of the waters. In all these points and many others the Chaldean account agrees with the Biblical in representing antediluvian men, or some of them, as civilised, possessing domestic animals, and competent to construct large ships.

When we leave the Deluge and come to the postdiluvian or neanthropic period, similar coincidences occur. The foundation of a primitive Cushite or Akkadian kingdom in the Euphratean valley, the dispersion of men according to their families and their languages, the early kingdoms contemporary with Abraham, mentioned in the narrative of his campaign to recover the captives taken from the cities of the plain, the extremely early use of the arrow-headed characters in Asia, of the hieroglyphic writing in Egypt, and of a proto-Phœnician or early Hebrew alphabet among the Mineans of ancient Arabia, tend at once to vindicate the Bible history, and to show how at a very early period this history may have been rendered permanent in written documents. On all these grounds scientific archæologists are beginning to attach more value than formerly to the Hebrew annals, and to recognise them as true historical accounts of the times to which they relate.

It may seem rash to make such a statement at a time when it is well known that many divines of repute avow themselves as believers in the theory that the earlier Biblical books are of comparatively late composition. But Science will have her way in a matter of this kind, whatever literature or criticism may say, and she is beginning strongly to lift her voice against the destructive criticism of the Pentateuch. In a recent article, Professor Sayce, one of the best-informed experts in these subjects, uses the following language:

'Naturally, the "higher criticism" is disinclined to see its assumptions swept away along with the conclusions which are based upon them, and to sit humbly at the feet of the newer science. At first, the results of Egyptian or Assyrian research were ignored; then they were reluctantly admitted, so far as they did not clash with the preconceived opinions of the "higher" critics. It was urged, unfortunately with too much justice, that the decipherers were not, as a rule, trained critics, and that in the enthusiasm of research they often announced discoveries which proved to be false or only partially correct. But it must be remembered, on the other side, that this charge applies with equal force to all progressive studies, not excluding the "higher criticism" itself.

'The time is now come for confronting the conclusions of the "higher criticism," so far as it applies to the books of the Old Testament, with the ascertained results of modern Oriental research. The amount of certain knowledge now possessed by the Egyptologist and Assyriologist would be surprising to those who are not specialists in these branches of study, while the discovery of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets has poured a flood of light upon the ancient world, which is at once startling and revolutionary. As in the case of Greek history, so too in that of Israelitish history, the period of critical demolition is at an end, and it is time for the archæologist to reconstruct the fallen edifice.

'But the very word "reconstruct" implies that what is built again will not be exactly that which existed before. It implies that the work of the "higher criticism" has not been in vain; on the contrary, the work it has performed has been a very needful and important one, and in its own sphere has helped us to the discovery of the truth. Egyptian or Assyrian research has not corroborated every historical statement which we find in the Old Testament, any more than classical archæology has corroborated every statement which we find in the Greek writers; what it has done has been to show that the extreme scepticism of modern criticism is not justified, that the materials on which the history of Israel has been based may, and probably do, go back to an early date, and that much which the "higher" critics have declared to be mythical and impossible was really possible and true.'

In point of fact a much stronger position might be held in favour of Genesis, and we shall find in comparing it with the monuments of the palanthropic and early neanthropic ages that its statements vindicate themselves as derived from original contemporary documents, which were under no obligations to the literature or philosophy of those later times, to which they have been relegated by some of the critics.

Let us inquire a little more in detail into the general features of these early historic notices.

For the purposes of this inquiry we may content ourselves with the consideration of the ancient Hebrew documents incorporated in the Book of Genesis, and the remains which have been preserved of the old Chaldean literature. Both of these represent an antediluvian period of long duration. [32] Both refer the primitive seats of population to the Euphratean region of Western Asia. Both terminate the antediluvian age with a great diluvial catastrophe. These are sufficient points of general agreement to make it probable that both originated in one fundamental history, or at least were based on attempts to describe the same events. Otherwise there are great differences. The Chaldean accounts have a prolix iteration, which makes it probable that they were prepared for popular and liturgic use, and may not fairly represent the original documents in possession of the priestly class. They also naturally introduce all the personnel of the Chaldean pantheon, and as this must have been a thing of gradual growth it gives them an air of recency, though we know that they are very old. The Hebrew version, on the other hand, is monotheistic, and has an aspect of severe simplicity in striking contrast to the florid and popular Chaldean version.

We may first notice what history can tell of the palanthropic age, supposing this to be the same with that historically known as antediluvian. The account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis is altogether general, and has no local colouring. It evidently refers to the whole history of the making of the earth. The second chapter, on the other hand, begins at verse 4 the special history of man, and opens with a picture which is not, as some have rashly supposed, a repetition of the previous general account of creation, and still less contradictory to it, but a statement that immediately before the introduction of man the earth had been in a desolate and comparatively untenanted state, that state to which we know it had been reduced by the glacial cold and submergence.

Thus the two accounts of the creation of man, that in which he appears in his chronological position in the general development, and that in which he takes a first place, as introductory to his special history, are not contradictory, but complementary to each other; and the latter refers wholly to man and the creatures contemporary with him in the palanthropic age. It is in accordance with this, and no doubt intended by the editor to mark this distinction, that the name Elohim is used in the general narrative, and Jehovah Elohim in the special one. The failure of so many critics to notice this distinction, which must have been so plain to the primitive historian himself, is a marked illustration of the blindness of certain nineteenth-century savants, so full of their own special knowledge, yet so careless of science and common sense.

It would even seem that this distinction appeared in the Chaldean Genesis as well; for fragments of what has been called a second Chaldean Genesis have been found which seem to correspond with the statements of the second chapter of Genesis.

The following is an extract from this second Chaldean or Akkadian Genesis as translated by Pinches: [33]

1 The glorious house, the house of the gods, in a glorious place had not been made;

2 A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not been created;

3 A brick had not been laid, a beam had not been shaped;

4 A house had not been built, a city had not been constructed;

5 A city had not been made, a foundation had not been made glorious;

6 Niffer had not been built, Ê-kura had not been constructed;

7 Erech had not been built, Ê-ana had not been constructed;

8 The Abyss had not been made, Ê-ridu had not been constructed;

9 (As for) the glorious house, the house of the gods, its seat had not been made—

10 The whole of the lands were sea.

This may be supposed to correspond with the Hebrew verses following:

And no plant of the field was yet in the earth.

And no herb of the field had yet sprung up.

For Jahveh Elohim had not caused it to rain on the earth.

And there was not a man to till (irrigate) the ground.

And there went up a vapour from the earth, and watered the surface of the ground.

This is the Hebrew idea of the condition of the great Mesopotamian plain after the pleistocene submergence, and before the appearance of man. The Chaldean version refers to the same region, but is more elaborate and artificial, and brings in the historic cities of a later time. This difference alone would induce us to suppose that the Hebrew record may be a better guide for our present comparison.

The Hebrew writer in the first place gives us to understand that a period of comparative desolation preceded the appearance of man, a great winter of destruction preparatory to a returning spring. He then proceeds to localise primeval man by placing him in Eden, the Idinu of the Chaldean accounts, which we also recognise by the geographical indications of the Euphrates and Tigris as its rivers, with two companion streams which can scarcely be other than the Karun and the Kerkhat. Thus the Bible and the Chaldean account agree in their locality for the advent of man, for Idinu was the ancient name of the plain of Babylonia. It has been objected to this locality that much of this region is low and swampy, and has only recently become land by the encroachment of the rivers on the head of the Persian Gulf. But if our Biblical authority really refers to palanthropic man, we must bear in mind that in the post-glacial period the continents were higher than now, and the Babylonian plain must have been a dry and elevated district, in all probability forest-clad. We must also bear in mind that Eden was a region of country, and that the 'garden' or selected spot 'eastward in Eden' may have been some rich wooded island surrounded by the river streams, and producing all fruits pleasant to the taste and good for food. In any case the modern objections to the site are based on entire ignorance of its geological history, and only serve to show how much better informed the ancient writer was as to antediluvian geography than his modern critics. [34]

It is scarcely necessary to say that this Biblical environment of primitive man corresponds with the requirements of the case. In a genial climate and sheltered position, and supplied with abundance of food, the first men would have the conditions necessary for comfortable existence and for multiplying in numbers.

We have also in the description of one of the rivers of Eden a hint as to a few of the wants of early man beyond mere food and shelter. We are told that the district traversed by this river produced gold, bedolach, and the shoham stone. I have elsewhere shown that this river must be the Karun, draining the Luristan mountains, and that the productions indicated must have been 'native gold and silver, wampum beads, and jade and similar stones suitable for implements.' [35] Thus we have here a picture which may well represent the origin and early condition of our palæocosmic men. But the parallel does not end here.

According to the history, man falls, and is expelled from Eden, is clothed with skins, and becomes an eater of animal food. Next we find murderous violence, and a consequent separation of the primitive people into two tribes, one of which migrates to a distance from the other and adopts different modes of life. Finally, we have a mixture of the two races, leading to a powerful and terrible race of half-breeds, or metis, who filled the earth with violence. [36]

MAP SHOWING THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE SITE OF EDEN AS DESCRIBED IN GENESIS

In one point only have we reason to doubt whether this old history fairly represents the palanthropic age. It notes the invention of musical instruments, the use of metals, the domestication of animals as already existing in the antediluvian period. Of these we have little or no archæological evidence. The only musical instrument of this period known is a whistle made of one of the bones of a deer's foot, and capable of sounding a tetrachord or four notes, and we have no certain evidence of metals or domesticated animals. We must bear in mind that there may have been more civilised races than those of the Cro-magnon type, and that the latter evince an artistic skill which if it had any scope for development may have led to great results. The native metals must have been known to man from the first, though they must have been rare or only locally common; and many semi-barbarous nations of later times show us that it is only a short step from the knowledge of native metals to the art of metallurgy, in so far as it consists in treating those ores that in weight and metallic lustre most resemble the metals themselves. It is also deserving of notice that no other hypothesis than that of antediluvian civilisation can account for the fact that in the dawn of postdiluvian history we find the dwellers by the Euphrates and the Nile already practising so many of the arts of civilised life. In connection with this we may place the early dawn of literature. Without insisting on the documents which the Chaldean Noah, Hasisadra, is said to have hid at Sippara before the Deluge, we have the known fact that in the earliest dawn of postdiluvian history the art of writing was known in Chaldea and in Egypt. This at once testifies to antediluvian culture, and shows that the means existed to record important events.

There is, perhaps, no one of the vagaries now current under the much abused name of evolution more opposed to facts, whether physical or historical than the notion that, because 3000 years B.C. we have evidence of an advanced civilisation in Chaldea and in Egypt, this must have been preceded by a long and uninterrupted progress through many thousands of years from a savage state. Two facts alone are sufficient to show the folly of such a supposition. First, the intervention of that great physical catastrophe which separates the palanthropic and neanthropic periods; and secondly, the testimony of history in favour of the arts of civilisation originating with great inventors, and not by any slow and gradual process of evolution. According to all history, sacred and profane, many such inventors existed even in the palanthropic and early neanthropic ages, and transmitted their arts in an advanced state to later times. The Book of Genesis testifies to this in its notices of Tubal Cain and Jubal; and the monuments of Chaldea and Egypt show that metallurgy, sculpture, and architecture were as far advanced at the very dawn of history as in any later period. It is true that Genesis represents its early inventors as mere men, albeit 'sons of God,' while they often appear as gods or demi-gods in the early history of the heathen nations; but the fact remains that then, as now, the rare appearance of God-given inventive genius is the sole cause of the greater advances in art and civilisation. Spontaneous development may produce socialistic trades' unions or Chinese stagnation, but great gifts, whether of prophecy, of song, of scientific insight, or of inventive power, are the inspiration of the Almighty.

We have in the closing part of the Bible story of the antediluvian age even an intimation of the deterioration of climate and means of subsistence towards the end of the period. Lamech, we are told, named his son Noah—rest or comfort—in the hope that by his means he should be comforted, because of the ground which the Lord had cursed. That curse provoked by the sons of man he may have recognised as fulfilled in the gradual deterioration of the climate toward the close of the palanthropic age. There are here surely some curious coincidences which might be followed farther, did space permit.

We now come to the close of the whole in the Deluge; and as this has been made in our own time the subject of much discussion, and as it contains within itself the whole kernel of the subject, it merits a separate treatment.

CHAPTER IX

THE DELUGE OF NOAH

To the older men of this generation, who have followed the changes of scientific and historical opinion, the story of the Deluge, old though it is, has passed through a variety of phases like the changes of a kaleidoscope, and which may afford an instructive illustration of the modifications of belief in other, and some of them to us more important, matters, whether of history or of religion, which have presented themselves in like varied aspects, and may be variously viewed in the future.

As children we listened with awe and wonder to the story of the wicked antediluvians, and of their terrible fate and the salvation of righteous Noah, and received a deep and abiding impression of the enormity of moral evil and of the just retribution of the Great Ruler of the Universe. A little later, though the idea that all the fossil remains imbedded in the rocks are memorials of the Deluge had passed away from the minds of the better informed, we read with interest the wonderful revelations of the bone-caves described by Buckland, and felt that the antediluvian age had become a scientific reality. But later still all this seemed to pass away like a dream. Under the guidance of Lyell we learned that even the caves and gravels must be of greater age than the historical Deluge, and that the remains of men and animals contained in them must have belonged to far-off æons, antedating perhaps even the Biblical creation of man, while the historical Deluge, if it ever occurred, must have been an affair so small and local that it had left no traces on the rocks of the earth. At the same time Biblical critics were busy with the narrative itself, showing that it could be decomposed into different documents, that it bore traces of a very recent origin, that it was unhistorical, and to be relegated to the same category with the fairy-tales of our infancy. Again, however, the kaleidoscope turns, and the later researches of geology into the physical and human history of the more recent deposits of the earth's crust, the discoveries of ancient Assyrian or Chaldean records of the Deluge, and the comparison of these with the ancient history of other nations, rehabilitate the old story; and as we study the new facts respecting the so-called palæolithic and neolithic men, the clay tablets recovered from the libraries of Nineveh by George Smith, the calculations of Prestwich and others respecting the recency of the glacial period, and the historical gatherings of Lenormant, we find ourselves drifting back to the faith of our childhood, or may congratulate ourselves on having adhered to it all along, even when the current of opinion tended strongly to turn us away.

In illustration of the present aspects of the question I make two extracts, one from Lenormant's Beginnings of History, another from a recent work of my own.

'We are,' says Lenormant, 'in a position to affirm that the account of the Deluge is a universal tradition in all branches of the human family, with the sole exception of the black race, and a tradition everywhere so exact and so concordant cannot possibly be referred to an imaginary myth. No religious or cosmogonic myth possesses this character of universality. It must necessarily be the reminiscence of an actual and terrible event, which made so powerful an impression upon the imaginations of the first parents of our species that their descendants could never forget it. This cataclysm took place near the primitive cradle of mankind, and previous to the separation of the families from whom the principal races were to descend, for it would be altogether contrary to probability and to the laws of sound criticism to admit that local phenomena exactly similar in character could have been reproduced at so many different points on the globe as would enable one to explain these universal traditions, or that these traditions should always have assumed an identical form, combined with circumstances which need not necessarily have suggested themselves to the mind in such a connection.' [37]

On the geological side, the following may be accepted as a summary of facts: [38]

'If the earliest men were those of the river gravels and caves, men of the mammoth age or of the palæolithic or palæocosmic 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, or 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 now have. We have some measures of the date of this great continental elevation. Many years ago, Sir Charles Lyell used the recession of the Falls of Niagara as a chronometer, estimating their cutting power as equal to one foot per annum. He calculated the beginning of the process, which dates from the post-glacial elevation, to be about thirty thousand years ago. More recent surveys have shown that the rate is three times as great as that estimated by Lyell, and also that a considerable part of the gorge was merely cleaned out by the river since the pleistocene age. In this way the age of the Niagara gorge becomes reduced to perhaps seven or eight thousand years. Other indications of similar bearing are found both in Europe and America, and lead to the belief that it is physically impossible that man could have colonised the northern hemisphere at an earlier date. These facts render necessary an entire revision of the calculations based on the growth of stalagmite in caves, and other uncertain data which have been held to indicate a greater lapse of time.

'If we identify the antediluvians of Genesis with the oldest men known to geological and archæological science, the parallelism is somewhat marked in physical characteristics and habits of life, and also in their apparently sudden and tragical disappearance from Europe and Western Asia, along with several of the large mammalia which were their contemporaries. If the Deluge is to be accepted as historical, and if a similar great break interrupts the geological history of man, separating extinct races from those which still survive, why may we not correlate the two? If the Deluge was misused in the early history of geology, by employing it to account for changes which took place long before the advent of man, this should not cause us to neglect its legitimate uses, with reference to the early human period. 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 gravels and silts, spread over the plateaus between the river valleys, will be accounted for, not by any greater overflow of the existing streams, but by the abnormal action of currents of water diluvial in their character. Further, since the historical Deluge must have been of very limited duration, the physical changes separating the deposits containing the remains of palæocosmic men from those of later date would in like manner be accounted for, not by the slow processes imagined by extreme uniformitarians, but by causes of a more abrupt and cataclysmic character.' [39]

We may proceed to inquire as to whether the position which we have now reached is likely to be permanent, or may represent merely one shifting phase of opinion. For this purpose we may formulate these conclusions in a few general statements, merely referring to the evidence on which they are based, as any complete discussion of this would necessarily be impossible within the limits of this work. We may first summarise the present position of the matter as indicated by historical and scientific research, altogether independently of the Bible. [40]

1. The recent discovery of the Chaldean deluge tablets has again directed attention to the statements of Berosus respecting the Babylonian tradition of a great flood, and these statements are found to be borne out in the main by the contents of the tablets. There is thus a twofold testimony as to the occurrence of a deluge in that Babylonian plain which the Old Testament history represents as the earliest seat of antediluvian man. As Lenormant has well shown, the tradition exists in the ancient literature of India, Persia, Phœnicia, Phrygia, and Greece, and can be recognised in the traditions of Northern and Western Europe and of America, while the Egyptians had a similar account of the destruction of men, but apparently not by water, though their idea of a submerged continent of Atlantis probably had reference to the antediluvian world. Thus we find this story widely spread over the earth, and possessed by members of all the leading divisions of mankind. This does not necessarily prove the universality of the Deluge, though every distinct people naturally refers it to its own country. It shows, however, the existence of some very early common source of the tradition, and the variations are not more than were to have been expected in the different channels of transmission.

2. Parallel with this historical evidence lies the result of geological and archæological research, which has revealed to us the remains and works of prehistoric men, racially distinct from those of modern times, and who inhabited the earth at a period when its animal population was to a great extent distinct from that at present existing, and when its physical condition was also in many respects different. Thus in Europe and Asia, and to some extent also in America, we have evidence that the present races of men were preceded by others which have passed away, and this at the same time with many important species of land animals, once the contemporaries of man, but now known only as fossils. These ancient men are those called by geologists later pleistocene, or post-glacial, or the men of the cave and gravel deposits, or of the age of the mammoth, and who have been designated by archæologists palæolithic men, or, more properly, palæocosmic men, since the character of their stone implements is only one not very important feature of their history, and implements of the palæolithic type have been used in all periods, and indeed are still used in some places.

3. The prevalence among geologists of an exaggerated and unreasonable uniformitarianism, which refused to allow sufficient prominence to sudden cataclysms arising from the slow accumulation of natural forces, and which was a natural reaction from the convulsive geology of an earlier period, has caused the idea to be generally entertained that the age of palæocosmic men was of vast duration, and passed only by slow gradations and a gradual transition into the new conditions of the modern period. This view long was, and still is, an obstacle to any rational correlation of the geological and traditional history of man. Recently, however, new views have been forced on geologists, and have led many of the most sagacious observers and reasoners to see that the palanthropic period is much nearer to us than we had imagined. The arguments for this I have referred to in previous pages, and need not reiterate them, here. A few leading points may, however, be noted. One of these is the small amount of physical or organic change which has occurred since the close of the palanthropic period. Another is the more rapid rate of erosion and deposition by rivers in the modern period than had previously been supposed. Another is the striking fact that a large number of mammals, like the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, seem to have perished simultaneously with the palæocosmic men, and this by some sudden catastrophe. [41] It has also been shown by Pictet and Dawkins that all the extant mammals of Europe already existed in the post-glacial age, but along with many others now altogether or locally extinct. Thus there seems to have been the removal over the whole northern hemisphere of a number of the largest mammals, while a selected number survived and no additions were made. Again, while at one time it was supposed that the remains of palæocosmic man and his contemporaries were confined to caverns and river alluvia, it is now known that they occur also on high plateaus and water-sheds, in beds of gravel and silt which must have been deposited there under conditions of submergence and somewhat active current drift, perhaps in some cases aided by floating ice. [42] Lastly, while, as must naturally be the case, in some places the remains of ancient and more modern men are mixed, or seem to pass into each other, in others, as in the Swiss, Belgian and Lebanon caves and in the superficial deposits, there is a distinct separation, implying an interval accompanied by physical change between the time of the earlier and later men.

Such considerations as these, the force of which is most strongly felt by those best acquainted with the methods of investigation employed by geologists and archæologists, are forcing us to conclude: (1) That there are indicated in the latest geological formations two distinct human periods, an earlier and a later, characterised by differences of faunæ and of physical conditions, as well as by distinct races of men. (2) That these two periods are separated by a somewhat rapid physical change of the nature of submergence, or by a series of changes locally sudden and generally not long-continued. (3) That it is not improbable that this greatest of all revolutions in human affairs may be the same that has so impressed itself on the memory of the survivors as to form the basis of all the traditions and historical accounts of the Deluge.

This being the state of the case, it becomes expedient to review our ideas of the ancient Hebrew records, from which our early, and perhaps crude, impressions of this event were derived, and to ascertain how much of our notions of the Deluge of Genesis may be fairly deduced from the record itself, and how much may be due to more or less correct interpretations, or to our own fancy. In connection with this we may also be able to obtain some guidance as to the value to be attached to the Hebrew document as a veritable and primitive record of the great catastrophe.

The key to the understanding of the early human history of Genesis lies in the story of the fall of man, and its sequel in the murder of Abel by his brother Cain, the beginning of that reign of violence which endures even to this day. From this arose the first division of the human race into hostile clans or tribes, the races of Cain and Seth, on which hinges the history, characteristics and fate of antediluvian man; and, as we shall see in the sequel, from this arose profound differences in religious beliefs, which have tinged the theology and superstitions of all subsequent times. Of course, in making this statement I refer to the history given in Genesis, without special reference to its intrinsic truth or credibility, but merely in relation to its interpretation in harmony with its own statements.

It is further evident that this tragic event must have occurred in that Tigro-Euphratean region which was the Biblical site of Eden [43] and that while the Sethite race presumably occupied the original home of Adam, and adhered to that form of religion which is expressed in the worship of Jahveh, the coming Redeemer and the expected 'Seed of the Woman,' the other race spread itself more widely, probably attained to a higher civilisation, in so far as art is concerned, in some of its divisions, and sank to a deeper barbarism in others, while it retained the original worship of God the Creator (Elohim). Hence the Sethite race is designated as the sons of Adam (Beni ha Adam), the true and legitimate children of the first man, and the Cainites as Beni Elohim, or sons of God. [44] The mixture of these races produced the godless, heaven-defying Nephelim, the Titans of the Old Testament, whose wickedness brought on the diluvial catastrophe. These half-breeds of the antediluvian time were in all probability the best developed, physically and perhaps mentally, of the men of their period; and but for the Deluge they might have become masters of the world.

This question of different races and religions before the Flood is, however, deserving of a little farther elucidation. The names Elohim and Jahveh are used conjointly throughout the Book of Genesis except in its first chapter, and their mode of occurrence cannot be explained merely on the theory of two documents pieced together by an editor. It has a deeper significance than this, and one which indicates a radical diversity between Elohists and Jahvists even in this early period. In the earliest part of the human history, as distinguished from the general record of creation, the two names are united in the compound Jahveh-Elohim, but immediately after the fall Eve is represented as attributing to, or identifying with, Jahveh alone the birth of her eldest son—'I have produced a man, the Jahveh,' and which may mean that she supposed Cain to be the promised manifestation of God as the Redeemer. Accordingly Cain and Abel are represented as offering sacrifice to Jahveh, and yet it is said in a verse which must be a part of the same document, that it was not till the time of Enos, a grandson of Adam, that men began to invoke the name of Jahveh. It would seem also that this invocation of Jahveh was peculiar to the Sethites, and that the Cainites were still worshippers of Elohim, the God of nature and creation, a fact which perhaps has relation to the so-called physical religion of some ancient peoples. Hence their title of Beni ha Elohim. Thus the division between the Cainite and Sethite races early became accentuated by a sectarian distinction as well. We may imagine that the Cainites, worshipping God as Creator, and ignoring that doctrine of a Redeemer which seemed confined to the rival race of Seth, were the deists of their time, and held a position which might, according to culture and circumstances, degenerate into a polytheistic nature-worship, or harden into an absolute materialism. On the other hand, the Sethites, recognised by the author of Genesis as the orthodox descendants of Adam, and invoking Jahveh, held to the promise of a coming Saviour, and to a deliverance from the effects of the Fall to be achieved by His means.

It is clear that, from the point of view of the author of Genesis, the chosen seed of Seth should have maintained their separation from a wicked world. Their failure to do this involves them in the wrath of Jahveh and renders the destruction of mankind necessary, and in this the whole Godhead under its combined aspects of Elohim and Jahveh takes a part. A similar view has caused the Chaldean narrator to invoke the aid of all the gods in his pantheon to effect the destruction of man.

These considerations farther throw light on the double character of the Deluge narrative in Genesis, which has induced those ingenious scholars who occupy themselves with analysis or disintegration of the Pentateuch to affirm two narratives, one Elohist and one Jahvist. [45] Whatever value may attach to this hypothesis, it is evident that if the history is thus made up of two documents it gains in value, since this would imply that the editor had at his disposal two chronicles embodying the observations of two narrators, possibly of different sects, if these differences were perpetuated in the postdiluvian world; and farther, that he is enabled to affirm that the catastrophe affected both the great races of men. It farther would imply that these early documents were used by the writer to produce his combined narrative almost without change of diction, so that they remain in their original form of the alleged testimony of eye-witnesses, a peculiarity which attaches also to the Chaldean version, as this purports to be in the form given by Hasisadra, the Chaldean Noah, himself. [46]

Let us now inquire into the physical aspects of the Deluge, as they are said to have presented themselves to the ancient witness or witnesses to whom we owe the Biblical account of the catastrophe, and endeavour to ascertain if they have any agreement with the conditions of the great post-glacial Deluge of geology. Let it be observed here that we are dealing not with prehistoric events but with a written history, supposed by some to have been compiled from two contemporary documents, and corroborated by the testimony of the ancient Chaldean tablets copied by the scribes of Assurbanipal, apparently from different originals, preserved in very ancient Chaldean temples.

The preparation of an ark or ship, and the accommodation therein, not only of Noah and his family, but of a certain number of animals, is a feature in which most Deluge narratives agree. This implies a considerable advance in the arts of construction and navigation, but not more than we have a right to infer from the perfection of these arts in early postdiluvian times, when it can scarcely be supposed that the new communities of men had fully regained the position of their ancestors before the destruction caused by the great Flood. Lenormant, however, remarks here:

'The Biblical narrative bears the stamp of an inland nation, ignorant of things appertaining to navigation. In Genesis the name of the ark, Têbâh, signifies "chest," and not "vessel"; and there is nothing said about launching the ark on the water; no mention either of the sea, or of navigation, or any pilot. In the Epopee of Uruk, on the other hand, everything indicates that it was composed among a maritime people; each circumstance reflects the manners and customs of the dwellers on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Hasisadra goes on board a vessel, distinctly alluded to by its appropriate appellation; this ship is launched, and makes a trial-trip to test it: all its chinks are calked with bitumen, and it is placed under the charge of a pilot.'

This remark, which I find made by other commentators as well, suggests, it seems to me, somewhat different conclusions. The Hebrews when settled, either in Egypt or in Canaan, were near to the sea-coast, and familiar with boats and with the ships of the Phœnicians. If, therefore, they persisted in calling Noah's ark a 'chest,' it must have been from unwillingness to change an old history derived from their Chaldean or Mesopotamian ancestors, or because they continued to regard the ark as rather a great box than a ship properly so called. On the other hand, it is likely that the particulars in the Chaldean account came from later manipulation of the narrative, after commerce and navigation on the Euphrates and Persian Gulf had become familiar to the Chaldeans. Thus in this as in other respects the Hebrew narrative is the more primitive of the two, and is consistent with the necessity of Divine instructions to Noah, which, if he had been familiar with navigation, would not have been necessary. [47]

As in the Chaldean version, the Biblical history begins with the specification of the ark. On this (Elohist) portion it is only necessary to say that the dimensions of the ark are large and well adapted to stowage rather than to speed, and that within it was strengthened by three decks and by a number of bulkheads, or partitions, separating the rooms or berths into which it was divided. Without, it was protected and rendered tight by coats of resinous or asphaltic varnish (copher), and it was built of the lightest and most durable kind of wood (gopher or cypress). Only two openings are mentioned, a hatch or window above, and a port or door in the side. There is no mention of any masts, rigging, or other means of propulsion or steerage. The Chaldean history differs in introducing a steersman, thus implying the means of propulsion as in an actual ship.

Noah is instructed, in addition to his own family, to provide for animals, two of every kind; but these very general terms are afterwards limited by the words uph, bemah, and remesh, which define birds, cattle, and small quadrupeds as those specially intended. Noah's ark was not a menagerie, but rather like a cattle-ship, capable perhaps of accommodating as many animals as one of those steamers which now transfer to England the animal produce of Western fields and prairies. The animals portrayed on the ancient monuments of Egypt and Assyria, however, inform us that, in early post-diluvial times, and therefore probably also in the time of Noah, a greater variety of animals were under the control of man than is the case in any one country at present. [48] In the passage referring to the embarkation, only the cattle and fowls are mentioned, but seven pairs are to be taken of the clean species which could be used as food. [49] The embarkation having been completed on the very day when the Deluge commenced, we have next the narrative of the Flood itself. Here it is noteworthy that God (Elohim) makes the arrangements, and Jahveh shuts the voyagers in.

The first note that our witness enters in his 'log' relates to his impressions of the causes of the catastrophe, which was not effected supernaturally, but by natural causes. These are the 'breaking up of the fountains of the great deep' and the 'opening of the windows of heaven.' These expressions must be interpreted in accordance with the use of similar terms in the account of creation in Genesis i., the more so that this statement is a portion regarded by the composite theory as Elohistic. On this principle of interpretation, the great deep is that universal ocean which prevailed before the elevation of the dry land, and the breaking up of its fountains is the removal of that restriction placed upon it when its waters were gathered together into one place. In other words, the meaning is the invasion of the land by the ocean. In like manner, the windows of heaven, the cloudy reservoirs of the atmospheric expanse, or possibly waterspouts, or even volcanic eruptions, and not necessarily identical with the great rain extending for forty days, as stated in the following clause. The Chaldean record adds the phenomena of thunder and tempest, but omits the great deep; an indication that it is an independent account, and by a less informed or less intelligent narrator. It is worthy of note that our narrator has no idea of any river inundation in the case.

At this stage we are brought into the presence of the question: Is the Deluge represented as a miraculous or a merely natural phenomenon? Yet, from a scientific point of view, this question has not the significance usually attributed to it. True miracles are not, and cannot be, contraventions or violations of God's natural laws. They are merely unusual operations of natural powers under their proper laws, but employed by the Almighty for effecting spiritual ends. Thus, naturally, they are under the laws of the material world, but, spiritually, they belong to a higher sphere. In the present case, according to the narrative in Genesis, the Flood was physically as much a natural phenomenon as the earthquakes at Ischia, or the eruption of Krakatoa. It was a miraculous or spiritual intervention only in so far as it was related to the destruction of an ungodly race, and as it was announced beforehand by a prophet. Had the approaching eruption of Krakatoa been intended as a judgment on the wicked, and had it been revealed to anyone who had taken pains to warn his countrymen and then to provide for his own safety, this would have given to that eruption as much of a miraculous character as the Bible attaches to the Deluge. In the New Testament, where we have more definite information as to miracles, they are usually called 'powers' and 'signs,' less prominence being given to the mere wonder which is implied in the term 'miracle.' Under the aspect of powers, they imply that the Creator can do many things beyond our power and comprehension, just as in a lesser way a civilised man, from his greater knowledge of natural laws and command over natural energies, can do much that is incomprehensible to a savage; and in this direction science teaches us that, given an omnipotent God, the field of miracle is infinite. As signs, on the other hand, such displays of power connect themselves with the moral and spiritual world, and become teachers of higher truths and proofs of Divine interference. The true position of miracles as signs is remarkably brought out in that argument of Christ, in which He says, 'If ye believe not My words, believe Me for the works' sake.' It is as if a civilised visitor to some barbarous land, who had been describing to an incredulous audience the wonders of his own country, were to exhibit to them a watch or a microscope, and then to appeal to them that these were things just as mysterious and incredible as those of which he had been speaking.

Returning to the Deluge, we may observe that such an invasion of the great deep is paralleled by many of which geology presents to us the evidence, and that our knowledge of nature enables us to conceive of the possibility of greater miracles of physical change than any on record, such as, for instance, the explosion of the earth itself into an infinity of particles, the final extinction of the solar heat, or the accession to this heat of such additional fierceness as to burn up the attendant planets. All this might take place without any interference with God's laws, but merely by correlations and adjustments of them, as much within His power as the turning on or stopping of a machine is in the power of a human engineer. Further, such acts of Divine power may be related to moral and spiritual things, just as easily as any outward action resulting from our own will may be determined by moral considerations. The time is past when any rational objection can be made on the part of science to the so-called miracles of the Bible.

To return to the passengers in the ark. This must have been built on high ground, or the progress of the Deluge must have been slow, for forty days elapsed before the waters reached the ship and floated it. It is not unlikely that the ark was built on rising ground, for here supplies of timber would be nearer. It has puzzled some simple antiquarians to find dug-out canoes of prehistoric date on the tops of hills; but they did not reflect that the maker of a canoe would construct his vessel where the suitable wood could be found, since it would be much easier to carry the finished canoe to the shore than to drag thither the solid log out of which it was to be fashioned. So Noah would naturally build his ark where the wood he required could be procured most easily. The Chaldean narrator seems to have overlooked this simple consideration, for he mentions a launching and trial-trip of the ship, a sure mark that he is a later authority than the writer in Genesis.

The inmates of the ark now felt that it was moving on the waters, a new and dread sensation which must have deeply impressed their minds, and they soon became aware that the ark not merely floated, but 'went,' or made progress in some definite direction. Remark the simple yet significant notes—'The ark was lift up from the earth,' and 'the ark went upon the face of the waters.' The direction of driftage is not stated, but it is a fair inference, from the probable place of departure in Chaldea and that of final grounding of the ark, that it was northward or inland, which would indicate that the chief supply of water was from the Indian Ocean, and that it was flowing inward toward the great sunken plain of interior Asia, which, however, the ark did not reach, but grounded in the hilly region known to the Hebrews as Ararat, to the Chaldeans as Nisr. A curious statement is made here (Elohist) as to the depth of the water being fifteen cubits. Even in a flat country so small a depth would not cover the rising grounds; but this is obviously not the meaning of the narrator, but something much more sensible and practical. It is not unlikely that the measure stated was the water-draught of the loaded ark, and that as the voyagers felt it rise and fall on the waves, they may have experienced some anxiety lest it should strike and go to pieces. It was no small part of the providential arrangement in their case that in the track of the ark everything was submerged more than fifteen cubits before they reached it. Hence this note, which is at the same time one of the criteria of the simple veracity of the history. The only other remark in this part of the narrative relates to the entire submergence of the whole country within sight, and the consequent destruction of animal life; and here the enumeration covers all land animals, and the terms used are thus more general than those applied to the animals preserved in the ark. The Deluge culminated, in so far as our narrator observed, in one hundred and fifty days.

His next experience is of a gale of wind, accompanied or followed by cessation of the rain and of the inflow of the oceanic waters. [50] The waters then decreased, not regularly, but by an intermittent process, 'going and returning'; but whether this was a tidal phenomenon or of the nature of earthquake waves we have no information. At length the ark grounded, apparently on high ground or in thick weather, for no land was visible; but at length, after two months, neighbouring hill-tops were seen.

The incident of sending out birds to test the recession of the waters deserves notice, because of its apparently trivial nature, because it appears with variations in the Chaldean account, and because it has been treated in a remarkably unscientific manner by some critics. It indicates the uncertainty which would arise in the mind of the patriarch because of the fluctuating decrease of the waters, and possibly also a misty condition of the air preventing a distinct view of distant objects. The birds selected for the purpose were singularly appropriate. The raven is by habit a wanderer, and remarkable for power of flight and clearness of distant vision. So long, therefore, as it made the ark its headquarters, 'going and returning' [51] from its search for food, it might be inferred that no habitable land was accessible. The dove, sent out immediately after the raven, [52] is of a different habit. It could not act as a scavenger of the waters and go and return, but could leave only if it found land covered with vegetation. As a domesticated bird also, it would naturally come back to be taken into the ark. Hence it was sent forth at intervals of seven days, returning with an olive leaf when it found tree tops above the water, and remaining away when it found food and shelter. The Chaldean account adds a third bird, the swallow—a perfectly useless addition, since this bird, if taken into the ark at all, would from its habits of life be incapable of affording any information. This addition is a mark of interpolation in the Chaldean version, and proceeded perhaps from the sacred character attached by popular superstition to the swallow, or from the familiar habits of the bird suggesting to some later editor its appropriateness. Singularly enough, the usually judicious Schrader, probably from deficient knowledge of the habits of birds, fails to appreciate all this, and after a long discussion prefers the Babylonian legend for reasons of a most unscientific character, actually condemning the perfectly natural and clear Biblical story as artificial and due to a recent emendation. He says: 'When the story passed over to the Hebrews, the name of the swallow has disappeared,' and 'it is only from the Babylonian narrative that the selection of the different birds becomes clear.' This little disquisition of Schrader is, indeed, one of the most amusing instances of that inversion of sound criticism which results when unscientific commentators tamper with the plain statements of truthful and observant witnesses.

The uncertainty indicated by the mission of the birds seems to have continued from the first day of the tenth to the first day of the first month, when Noah at length ventured to remove the covering of the ark and inspect the condition of the surrounding country, now abandoned by the waters, but not thoroughly dried for some time longer. Still, so timid was the patriarch that he did not dare without a special command to leave his place of safety. I am aware that if the two alleged documents are arbitrarily separated it is possible to see here some apparent contradiction in dates; but this is not necessary if we leave them in their original relation. [53]

It will be observed that a narrative such as that summarised above bears unmistakably stamped upon it the characteristics of the testimony of an eye-witness. By whomsoever reduced to writing and finally edited, it must, if genuine, have come down nearly in its present form from the time of the catastrophe which it relates. It follows that the narrator leaves no place for the current questions as to the universality of the Deluge. It was universal so far as his experience extended, but that is all. He is not responsible for what occurred beyond the limits of his observation and beyond the fact that man, so far as known to him, perished. If, therefore, as some have held, [54] Balaam in his prophecy refers to Cainite populations as extant in his time, or if Moses declines to trace to any of the postdiluvian patriarchs the Rephaim, Emim, Zuzim and other prehistoric peoples of Palestine, we may infer, without any contradiction of our narrative, that there were surviving antediluvians other than the Noachidæ, whatever improbability may attach to this on other grounds, and more especially from the now ascertained extension of the post-glacial submergence over nearly all parts of the northern hemisphere.

Let it also be noticed that beyond the prophetic intimation to Noah, and the one expression, Jahveh 'shut him in,' which may refer merely to providential care, there is, as already remarked, nothing miraculous, in the popular sense of that term; and that mythical elements, such as those introduced into the Babylonian narrative, are altogether absent. The story relates to plain matters of fact, which, if they happened at all, any one might observe, and for the proof of which any ordinary testimony would be sufficient. It may be profitable, however, to revert here to the probable relation of this narrative to the geological facts already adverted to, and also its bearing on the mythical and polytheistic additions which we find in the Deluge stories of heathen nations.

Regarding the Biblical Deluge as a record of a submergence of a vast region of Eur-Asia and Northern Africa, at least, while no similar catastrophe has been recorded subsequently, it is unquestionable that submergences equally important have occurred again and again in the geological history of our continents, and have been equally destructive of animal life. It is true that most of these are believed to have been of more slow and gradual character than that recorded in Genesis, but in the case of many of them this is a very uncertain inference from the analogy of modern changes; and it is certain that the post-glacial submergence, which closed the era of palæocosmic man and his companion animals, must have been one of the most transient on record. On the other hand, we need not limit the entire duration of the Noachic submergence to the single year whose record has been preserved to us. Local subsidence may have been in progress throughout the later antediluvian age, and the experience of the narrator in Genesis may have related only to its culmination in the central district of human residence. Finally, if man was really a witness of this last great continental submergence, we cannot be too thankful that there were so intelligent witnesses to preserve the record of the event for our information.

It is needless, then, to enter into further details, though these are sufficient to fill volumes if desired, in proof of the remarkable convergence of history and geological discovery on the great Flood, which now constitutes one of the most remarkable illustrations of the points of contact of science proceeding on its own methods of investigation and Divine revelation, preserving the records of ancient events otherwise lost or buried under accretions of myth and fancy. I have already endeavoured to show that the earliest race of palæocosmic men, that of Canstadt, very fairly corresponds with what may have been the characteristics of the ruder tribes of Cainites, and that if we regard the Truchère skull as representing the Sethite people, we may suppose the Cro-magnon race to represent the giants, or Nephelim, who sprung from the union of the two pure types. I have also referred to the possibility that the Truchère race, so little known to us as yet, may have been a prot-Iberian people, possessing even before the Flood domestic animals, agriculture, and some of the arts of life, corresponding to what we find in the earliest postdiluvian nations. This is, indeed, implied in the fact that the postdiluvian nations present themselves to us at once with a somewhat advanced condition of the arts, especially in Chaldea and in Egypt. Such possibilities may serve to suggest to speculative archæologists that they cannot safely assume that all antediluvian or palæolithic tribes were barbarous or semi-brutal, or that there was a continuous development of humanity without any diluvial catastrophe. It is also somewhat rash to carry back the chronology of Egyptians and Babylonians to times when, as we know on physical evidence, the Valley of the Nile was an arm of the sea, and the plain of the Euphrates an extension of the Persian Gulf. It is fortunate for the Bible that such assumptions are not required by its history.

CHAPTER X

SPECIAL QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE

In studying the literature relating to the Deluge, we are constantly met by questions as to its so-called 'universality.' Was it a local or universal Deluge and if universal in what sense so? This is a point in which neglect or ignorance of the necessary physical conditions has led to the strangest misconceptions.

It is obvious that there are four senses in which a catastrophe like the Deluge of Noah may be affirmed or denied to have been universal.

1. It may have been universal in the sense of being a deep stratum of water covering the whole globe, both land and sea. Such universality could not have been in the mind of the writer, and probably has been claimed knowingly by no writer in modern times. Halley in the last century understood the conditions of such universality, though he seems to have supposed that the impact of a comet might supply the necessary water. Owen has directed attention to the fact that such a deluge might be as fatal to the inhabitants of the waters as to those of the land. In any case, such universality would demand an enormous supply of water from some extra-terrestrial source.

2. The Deluge may have been universal in the sense of being a submersion of the whole of the land, either by subsidence or by elevation of the ocean bed. Such a state of things may have existed in primitive geological ages before our continents were elevated, but we have no scientific evidence of its recurrence at any later time, though large portions of the continents have been again and again submerged. The writers of Genesis i. and of Psalm civ. seem to have known of no such total submergence since the elevation of the first dry land, and nothing of this kind is expressed or certainly implied in the Deluge story.

3. The Deluge may have been universal in so far as man, its chief object, and certain animals useful or necessary to him, are concerned. This kind of universality would seem to have been before the mind of the writer when he says that 'Noah only, and they who were with him in the ark, remained alive.' [55]

4. The Deluge may have been universal in so far as the area and observation and information of the narrator extended. The story is evidently told in the form of a narrative derived from eye-witnesses, and this form seems even to have been chosen or retained purposely to avoid any question of universality of the first and second kinds referred to above. The same form of narrative is preserved in the Chaldean legend. This fact is not affected by the doctrine held by some of the schools of disintegrators, that the narrative is divisible into two documents, respectively 'Jahvistic' and 'Elohistic.' I have elsewhere [56] shown that there is a very different reason for the use of these two names of God. But if there were two original witnesses whose statements were put together by an editor, this surely does not invalidate their testimony or deprive them of the right to have it understood as they intended.

It is thus evident that the whole question of 'universality' is little more than a mere useless logomachy, having no direct relation to the facts or to the credibility of the narrative.

There are also in connection with this question of universality certain scientific and historical facts already referred to which we may again summarise here, and which are essential to the understanding of the question. Nothing is more certainly known in geology than that at the close of the later tertiary or pleistocene age the continents of the northern hemisphere stood higher and spread their borders more widely than at present. In this period also they were tenanted by a very grand and varied mammalian fauna, and it is in this continental age of the later pleistocene or early modern time that we find the first unequivocal evidence of man as existing on various parts of the continents. At the close of this period occurred changes, whether sudden or gradual we do not know, though they could not have occupied a very long time, which led to the extinction of the earliest races of men and many contemporaneous animals. That these changes were in part, at least, of the nature of submergence we learn from the fact that our present continents are more sunken or less elevated out of the water, and also from the deposit of superficial gravels and other detritus more recent than the pleistocene over their surfaces. We are thus shut up by geological facts to the belief in a Deluge geologically modern and practically universal.

One other objection to the Deluge narrative perhaps deserves a word of comment—that urged against the statement of the gradual disappearance of the waters. The extraordinary difficulty is raised respecting this, that the water must have rushed seaward in a furious torrent. The objection is based apparently on the idea that the foundation for the original narrative was a river inundation in the Mesopotamian plain. This cannot be admitted; but if it were, the objection would not apply. River inundations, whether of the Nile or Euphrates, subside inch by inch, not after the manner of mountain torrents. Thus this objection is another instance of difficulties gratuitously imported into the history.

In point of fact the narrator represents the Deluge as prevailing for a whole year, which would be impossible in the case of a river inundation. He attributes it in part, at least, to the 'great deep'—that is, the ocean; and he represents the ark as drifting inland or toward the north. Such conditions can be satisfied only by the supposition of a subsidence of the land similar in kind, at least, to the great post-glacial flood of geology. Partial subsidences of this kind, local but very extreme, have occurred even in later times, as, for instance, in the Runn of Cutch, the delta of the Mississippi, and the delta of the Nile; and if the objectors are determined to make the Deluge of Noah very local and more recent than the post-glacial flood, it would be more rational to refer to subsidences like those just mentioned, and of which they will find examples in Lyell's Principles and other geological books. It is, however, decidedly more probable that Noah's Flood is identical with that which destroyed the men of the mammoth age, the palæocosmic or 'palæolithic' men; [57] and in that case the recession of the waters would probably be gradual, but intermittent, 'going and returning,' as our ancient narrator has it; but there need not have been any violent débâcle.