



Produced by Sue Asscher, Robert Prince and David Widger






THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN

By Sir Charles Lyell, BT., F.R.S., Etc.

London: Published By J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

And In New York By E.P. Dutton & Co.


With Introduction And Notes By R.H. Rastall, M.A., F.G.S.


     EVERYMAN
     I WILL GO WITH THEE
     & BE THY GUIDE
     IN THY MOST NEED
     TO GO BY THY SIDE.


     EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY

     EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS.

     SCIENCE.


     HOC SOLUM SCIO QUOD NIHIL SCIO.





INTRODUCTION.

The "Antiquity of Man" was published in 1863, and ran into a third
edition in the course of that year. The cause of this is not far to
seek. Darwin's "Origin of Species" appeared in 1859, only four years
earlier, and rapidly had its effect in drawing attention to the great
problem of the origin of living beings. The theories of Darwin and
Wallace brought to a head and presented in a concrete shape the somewhat
vague speculations as to development and evolution which had long been
floating in the minds of naturalists. In the actual working out of
Darwin's great theory it is impossible to overestimate the influence of
Lyell. This is made abundantly clear in Darwin's letters, and it must
never be forgotten that Darwin himself was a geologist. His training
in this science enabled him to grasp the import of the facts so ably
marshalled by Lyell in the "Principles of Geology," a work which,
as Professor Judd has clearly shown,* contributed greatly to the
advancement of evolutionary theory in general. (* Judd "The Coming of
Evolution" ("Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature") Cambridge
1910 chapters 6 and 7.)

From a study of the evolution of plants and of the lower animals it was
an easy and obvious transition to man, and this step was soon taken.
Since in his physical structure man shows so close a resemblance to the
higher animals it was a natural conclusion that the laws governing
the development of the one should apply also to the other, in spite of
preconceived opinions derived from authority. Unfortunately the times
were then hardly ripe for a calm and logical treatment of this question:
prejudice in many cases took the place of argument, and the result was
too often an undignified squabble instead of a scientific discussion.
However, the dogmatism was not by any means all on one side. The
disciples as usual went farther than the master, and their teaching
when pushed to extremities resulted in a peculiarly dreary kind of
materialism, a mental attitude which still survives to a certain extent
among scientific and pseudo-scientific men of the old school. In more
Recent times this dogmatic agnosticism of the middle Victorian period
has been gradually replaced by speculations of a more positive type,
such as those of the Mendelian school in biology and the doctrines of
Bergson on the philosophical side. With these later developments we are
not here concerned.

In dealing with the evolution and history of man as with that of any
other animal, the first step is undoubtedly to collect the facts, and
this is precisely what Lyell set out to do in the "Antiquity of
Man." The first nineteen chapters of the book are purely an empirical
statement of the evidence then available as to the existence of man in
pre-historic times: the rest of the book is devoted to a consideration
of the connection between the facts previously stated and Darwin's
theory of the origin of species by variation and natural selection. The
keynote of Lyell's work, throughout his life, was observation. Lyell was
no cabinet geologist; he went to nature and studied phenomena at first
hand. Possessed of abundant leisure and ample means he travelled far and
wide, patiently collecting material and building up the modern science
of physical geology, whose foundations had been laid by Hutton and
Playfair. From the facts thus collected he drew his inferences, and if
later researches showed these inferences to be wrong, unlike some of his
contemporaries, he never hesitated to say so. Thus and thus only is true
progress in science attained.

Lyell is universally recognised as the leader of the Uniformitarian
school of geologists, and it will be well to consider briefly what is
implied in this term. The principles of Uniformitarianism may be
summed up thus: THE PRESENT IS THE KEY TO THE PAST. That is to say,
the processes which have gone on in the past were the same in general
character as those now seen in operation, though probably differing
in degree. This theory is in direct opposition to the ideas of the
CATASTROPHIC school, which were dominant at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. The catastrophists attributed all past changes to
sudden and violent convulsions of nature, by which all living beings
were destroyed, to be replaced by a fresh creation. At least such were
the tenets of the extremists. In opposition to these views the school of
Hutton and Lyell introduced the principle of continuity and development.
There is no discrepancy between Uniformitarianism and evolution. The
idea of Uniformitarianism does not imply that things have always been
the same; only that they were similar, and between these two terms there
is a wide distinction. Evolution of any kind whatever naturally implies
continuity, and this is the fundamental idea of Lyellian geology.

In spite, however, of this clear and definite conception of natural
and organic evolution, in all those parts of his works dealing with
earth-history, with the stratified rocks and with the organisms entombed
in them, Lyell adopted a plan which has now been universally abandoned.
He began with the most Recent formations and worked backwards from the
known to the unknown. To modern readers this is perhaps the greatest
drawback to his work, since it renders difficult the study of events in
their actual sequence. However, it must be admitted that, taking into
account the state of geological knowledge before his time, this course
was almost inevitable. The succession of the later rocks was fairly well
known, thanks to the labours of William Smith and others, but in the
lower part of the sequence of stratified rocks there were many gaps, and
more important still, there was no definite base. Although this want of
a starting point has been largely supplied by the labours of Sedgwick,
Murchison, De la Beche, Ramsay, and a host of followers, still
considerable doubt prevails as to which constitutes the oldest
truly stratified series, and the difficulty has only been partially
circumvented by the adoption of an arbitrary base-line, from which the
succession is worked out both upwards and downwards. So the problem
is only removed a stage further back. In the study of human origins a
similar difficulty is felt with special acuteness; the beginnings must
of necessity be vague and uncertain, and the farther back we go the
fainter will naturally be the traces of human handiwork and the more
primitive and doubtful those traces when discovered.

The reprinting of the "Antiquity of Man" is particularly appropriate at
the present time, owing to the increased attention drawn to the subject
by recent discoveries. Ever since the publication of the "Origin of
Species" and the discussions that resulted from that publication, the
popular imagination has been much exercised by the possible existence
of forms intermediate between the apes and man; the so-called "Missing
Link." Much has been written on this subject, some of it well-founded
and some very much the reverse. The discovery of the Neanderthal skull
is fully described in this volume, and this skull is certainly of a low
type, but it is more human than ape-like. The same