Note 114 — Chapter XIII · UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

It is curious that almost simultaneously with the appearance of Bunsen's scheme a similiar view was attempted to be maintained on geological grounds. In a series of borings in the delta of the Nile, undertaken by Mr. Horner, there was found a piece of pottery at a depth which appeared to indicate an antiquity of 13,371 years. But the basis of the calculation is the rate of deposit (3-1/2 inches per century) calculated for the ground around the statue of Rameses II. at Memphis, dated at 1361 B.C.; and Mr. Sharpe has objected that no mud could have been deposited around that statue from its erection until the destruction of Memphis, perhaps 800 years B.C. Farther, we have to take into account the natural or artificial changes of the river's bed, which in this very place is said to have been diverted from its course by Menes, and which near Cairo is now nearly a mile from its former site. The liability to error and fraud in boring operations is also very well known. It has farther been suggested that the deep cracks which form in the soil of Egypt, and the sinking of wells in ancient times, are other probable causes of error; and it is stated that pieces of burnt brick, which was not in use in Egypt until the Roman times, have been found at even greater depths than the pottery referred to by Mr. Horner. This discovery, at first sight so startling, and vouched for by a geologist of unquestioned honor and ability, is thus open to the same doubts with the Guadaloupe skeletons, the human bones in ossiferous caverns, and that found in the mud of the Mississippi; all of which have, on examination, proved of no value as proofs of the geological antiquity of man.