The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 62, December, 1862 by Various
page 62 of 280 (22%)
page 62 of 280 (22%)
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In chronology, all that is proved by these discoveries of M. Lartet is that the fossil animals mentioned above and man were contemporaries on the earth. The age of each must be determined inferentially by comparing the age of strata in which these animals are usually found with the age in which the most ancient traces of man are discovered,--such as the deposits already described in the North of France. Similar discoveries on a smaller scale are recorded by Mr. Prestwich in Suffolk, England, and in Devonshire. We are informed also by Sir C. Lyell of a recent important discovery near Troyes, France. In the Grotto d'Arcès, a human jaw-bone and teeth have been found imbedded with _Elephas primigenius_, _Ursus spelaeus_, _Hyaena spelaea_, and other extinct animals, under layers of stalagmite. Professor Pictet, the celebrated geologist, who also gives his adhesion to these discoveries of M. de Perthes, states that the cave-evidence has by no means been sufficiently valued by geologists, and that there are caverns in Belgium where the existence of human remains cannot be satisfactorily explained on the theory of a modern introduction of them. The President of the British Association (Lord Wrottesley) also states that in the cave of Brixham, Devonshire, and in another near Palermo, in Sicily, flint implements were observed by Dr. Falconer, in such a manner as to lead him to infer that man must have coexisted with several lost species of quadrupeds. Professor Owen, in his "Palaeontology," (1861,) appears to put faith in the genuineness and antiquity of these flint relics. He also states that similar flint weapons have been found by Mr. John Frere, F.R.S., in Suffolk, in a bed of flint gravel, sixteen feet below the surface, of the same geological age as that in the valley of the Somme. |
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