The Geological Evidence of The Antiquity of Man

GL

ncient Alluvium of th

extinct Mammalia i

ia in the Vall

nt in Gravel

istocene Drift in V

sk

rthern and so

ns of Qu

s of M

n of the older Alluvi

ial

eistocene Period in Su

hire, an

EISTOCENE ALLUVIUM IN

en alluded to in the last chapter as characterising the gravel of Picardy, has long been known; but it was not till the year 1860, and

ur answering both to those of the higher and lower

ceedings of the Ro

blocks of granite, from a few inches to a foot or more in diameter. These blocks are peculiarly abundant in the lower drift commonly called the "diluvium gris." The g

the Amiens type, accompanied by a great number of ruder tools or attempts at tools. I visited the spot in 1861 with M. Hebert, and saw the stratum from which the worked flints had been extracted, 20 fe

s type, together with remains both of Elephas primigenius and E. antiquus. No tools have yet been met with in any of the gravels occurring at the

ns, in the higher-level drift of Charonne, near Paris; but as yet no similar derangement has been se

ich last joins the Seine near Fontainebleau about 40 miles south of Paris. The lowest formation in the cavern resembles the "diluvium gris" of Paris, being composed of granitic materials, and like it derived chiefly from the waste of the crystalline rocks of the Morvan. In it have been found the two branches of a human lower jaw with te

mbedded several flint knives, with bones of the reindeer and horse, but no extinct mammalia. Over this, in a higher bed of alluvium, were

Societe Geologiqu

s to the coincidence in date of the granitic gravel with human bones of the Grotte d'Arcy and the stone-hatchets buried in "grey diluvium" of La Motte Piquet, before mentioned; but as the associated extinct mammalia

OF TH

its geological position, the lower-level gravels of Montiers, near Amiens, already described. I visited these extensive gravel-pits in 1861, in company with

uviatile origin, for, in the interstices between the pebbles, the Ancylus fluviatilis and other freshwater shells were abundant. My companion, the Abbe E. Lambert, had collected from the gravel a great many fossil bones, among which M. Lartet h

s des Sciences Nat

5 page

suppose that the gravel containing the flint hatchet at Precy is of the same age as that of Chauny, with which it is continuous, and that both of them are coeval wi

, must have been very different when the grey alluvium in which the flint tools occur at Paris was formed. The great size of some of the blocks of granite, and the distance which they have travelled, imply a power in the river which it

M OF ENGLAND, CONTA

s we have shown to be characteristic of the basins of the Somme and the Seine. We can scarcely therefore doubt that these quadrupeds, during some part of the Pleistocene period, ranged freely from the continent of Europe to England, at a time when t

ghtly worn Chalk flints, on which a great part of London is built. It extends from above Maidenhead through the metropolis to the sea,

terly Journal of th

2 1856 p

fferent periods, at Brentford and Kew Bridge, others in London itself, and below it at Erith in Kent, on the right bank of the Thames, and at Ilford and Gray's Thurrock in Essex, on the left bank. The united thickness

age 96, he will perfectly understand the relations of the ancient Thames alluvium to the modern channel and plain of th

g fauna there is a fine illustration in Essex; for the determination of which we are indebted to the late Mr. John Brown, F.G.S., who collected at Copford, in Essex, from a deposit containing bones of the mammoth, a large bear (probably Ursus spelaeus), a beaver, stag, and

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Brown calls them ex

eaders, but he mer

Jeffreys, "Brit.

ttoralis, to which last I shall prese

the musk ox (Bubalus moschatus) was also found in the ochreous gravel of Maidenhead, by the Reverend C. Kingsley and Mr. Lubbock; the identification of this fossil with the living species being made by Professor Owen. A second fossil skull of the same arctic animal was afterwards found by Mr. Lubbock near Bromley, in the valley of a small tributary of the Thames; and two other skulls, those of a bull and a cow were dug

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y named so long ago as 1836, when the fossil was dug out of drift, in the hill called the Kreuzberg, in the southern suburbs of that city. By an account published at the time, we find that the mammalia which accompanied the musk ox wer

Bronn's Jahrbuc

cies of the same family called by Pallas Myodes torquatus (by Hensel, Misothermus torquatus)-a still more arctic quadruped, found by Parry in latitude 82 degrees, and which never s

r Deutschen Geolog

1855 page

an old river channel. Among the mammalia are Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros leptorhinus (R. megarhinus, Christol), Hippopotamus major, species of horse, bear, ox, stag, etc., and, among the accompanying shells, Cyrena fluminalis, which is extremely abundant, instead of being scarce, as at Abbeville. It is associated with Unio littoralis also in great numbers and with both valves united. This conspicuous freshwater mussel

thirty-four out of fifty-eight living quadrupeds are identical with European species, while some of those which do not extend their range to Europe are arctic, others tropical forms. The Bengal tiger ranges northwards occasional

rland, "Natural His

pag

o each fauna endowed with migratory habits, like the living musk-ox or the Bengal tiger, may have been ready to take advantage of any, even the slightest, change in their favour to invade the neighbouring province, whether in the summer or winter months, or permanentl

and again filled up the channel with argillaceous matter, evidently derived from the waste of the Tertiary London Clay. Such shiftings of the site of the main channel of the river, the frequent removal of gravel and sand previously deposited, and the throwing down of new alluvium, the flooding of tributaries, the rising and sinking of the land, fluctuations in the cold and heat of the climate-all these changes seem to have given rise to that complexity in the fluviatile deposits of the

e neighbourhood of London, as at Muswell Hill, near Highgate. In this drift, blocks of granite, syenite, greenstone, Coal-measure sandstone with its fossils, and other Palaeozoic rocks, and the wreck of Chalk and Oolite, occur confusedly mixed together. The same glacial formation is also found capping some of the Essex hills farther to t

terly Journal of th

e 110; ibid. volum

me 17 1861

ile deposits are post-glacial, in the modified sense of that term; i.e. th

pon of the spear-headed form, such as is represented in Figure 8, which we are told was found with an elephant's tooth at Black Mary's, near Gray's Inn Lane, London. In a letter d

"Archaeolo

ese three genera have been dug up on the site of Waterloo Place, St. James's Square, Charing Cross, the London Docks, Limehouse, Bethnal Green, and other places within the memory of persons now living. In th

antiquaries to a sling-stone, was obtained in 1836 by Mr. Whitburn, 4 feet deep in sand and gravel, in which the teeth and tusks of elephants had been found. The Wey flows through the gorge

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r which Mr. Evans found lying on the shore at Swalecliff, near Whitstable, in the same county, where Mr. Prestwich had previously described a freshwater deposit, resting on the London Clay, and consisting chiefly of gra

, at the base of the same wasting cliff, which consists of sandy Eocene strata, covered by a gravelly deposit of freshwater origin, about 50 feet above the sea-level, from which the flint weapons must have been derived. Such old alluvial deposits now capping the cliffs of Kent seem to have bee

. Among the signs of the latter movement may be mentioned a freshwater formation at Faversham, below the level of the sea. The gravel there contains exclusively land and fluviatile shells of the same species as those of other localities of the Pleistocene alluvi

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ate 8 N

t shallow sea, and the reader will see in the map given in Chapter 13 how vast would be the conversion of sea into land by an upheaval of 600 feet. Vertical movements of much less than half that amount would account for the annexation

of the Thames; but the geological position of no one of them has as yet been ascertain

THE VALLEY OF THE

subjacent Oolite, the valley had been excavated. Mr. Evans had found in the same gravel many land and freshwater shells, and these discoveries induced Mr. James Wyatt, of Bedford, to pay two visits to St. Acheul in order to compare the implement-bearing gravels of the Somme with the drift of the valley of the Ouse. After his return he resolved to watch carefully the excavation of the gravel-pits at Biddenham, 2 miles west-north-west of Bedford, in the hope of finding there similar works of art. With this view he paid almost daily visits for months in succession to those pits,

mined the pits in company with Messrs. Prestwich, Evans, and Wyatt, and we collected ten species of shells from the stratified drift Number 3, or the beds overlying the lowest gravel from which the flint implements had been exhumed. They were all of common fluviatile and land species now living in the same part of England. Since our visit,

ACROSS THE VALLEY OF

H-WEST OF

terly Journal of th

64; and Wyatt, "Geolo

itic s

marine northern dr

et above

with elephant bones

nt impl

alluvium o

pits, at the bottom

fou

rge size, not only of the Oolite of the neighbourhood, but of Chalk and other rocks transported from still greater distances, such as syenite, basalt, quartz, and New Red Sandstone. These erratic blocks of foreign origin are often polished and striated, having

h, and then an equal thickness of underlying Oolite. After this denudation, which may have accompanied the emergence of the land, the country was inhabited by the primitive people who fashioned the flint tools. The old river, aided perhaps by the continued upheaval of the whole country, or by oscil

att obtained, January 1863, a flint implement associated with bones and teeth of hippopotamus from gravel at

beville had not enabled us to make. They teach us that the fabricators of the a

RESHWATER DEPOSIT AT HO

of that region. "The flints," he said, "were evidently weapons of war, fabricated and used by a people who had not the use of metals. They lay in great numbers at the depth of about 12 feet in a stratified soil which was dug into for the purpose of raising clay for bricks. Under a foot and a half of vegetable earth was clay 7 1/2 feet thick, and beneath this one foot of sand with shells, and under this 2 feet of gravel, in which the shaped flints were found generally at the rate

n removed when the adjoining valley was hollowed out. If the author had not mistaken the freshwater shells associated with the tools for marine species, there would have been nothing to corr

eologia" volume

Frere, are still preserved in the British Museum, and ot

SHOWING THE POSITION

NEAR DIS

osophical Transacti

Brook, a tributa

avel overlying the

gravel, with fre

nts, and bone

layey beds, wi

clay or gla

gravel below

k with

was still going on in the same brick-pit. Only a few months before his arrival, two flint instruments had been dug out of the clay, one from a depth of 7 and the other of 10 feet from the surface. Others have since been disinterred from undisturbed beds of gravel in the same pit. Mr. Amyot of Diss has also obtained from the unde

cavity a, b, c had been previously excavated out of the more ancient boulder clay Number 6. The relative position of these formations will be better understood when I have descr

s, P. Spirorbis, Succinea putris, Bithynia tentaculata, Cyclas cornea; and Mr. Prestwich mentions Cyclas amnica and fragments of a Unio, besides several land shells. In the black peaty mass Number 5, fragments of wood of the oak, yew, and fir have been recognised. The flint weapons which I have seen from Hoxne are s

TS AT ICKLINGH

bed of gravel, in which teeth of Elephas primigenius and several flint tools, chiefly of a lance-head fo

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, which bounds the valley of the Lark on the right side, is capped like the Oolite of Biddenham by boulder clay, which rises to the height of 100 feet above the Lark. About twelve years ago, a large erratic block, above 4 feet in diameter, was dug out of the boulder clay at Icklingham, which I f